Foreign Archaeological Schools in Greece
A Critical Reappraisal through the Lens of Commons and Anthropology of Infrastructures
Foreign archaeological schools in Greece together with the Greek state’s archaeological service have played a pivotal role in shaping both scholarship and development in Greece since the nineteenth century. Acting as infrastructures of knowledge and diplomacy, institutions and Ministry of Culture have transformed landscapes, generated employment, and catalyzed tourism. Yet these contributions were often incidental by-products of scholarly and diplomatic agendas, entangled with power asymmetries, even displacements, and what Michael Herzfeld names 'crypto-colonial' dependencies.
This project reframes the legacy of Foreign Schools and the Ministry through the dual lens of commons and infrastructure, highlighting how foreign schools and the Greek Archaeological Service stabilise exclusionary logics—diplomatic prestige and sovereign control—while limiting community participation. Case studies reveal the paradox of archaeology as both development and, inclusion, access, exclusion in different scales, while sustained reliance on heritage tourism exposes economic fragilities.
The project aims is to reimagine foreign schools not as commons institutions themselves but as facilitators of co-stewardship, opening sites, archives, labs, and decision-making arenas to local communities. Drawing on anthropology of material culture and archaeology, the project seeks the potentialities of retooling infrastructures toward shared governance and redistributed benefits can archaeology in Greece move from development by default to equitable heritage commons.
An infrastructural approach to archaeology
Infrastructures must be seen not as neutral supports but as political forms. They allocate mobility, visibility, and legitimacy unevenly. They create path dependencies—what can be done is constrained by what the infrastructure already allows—and they normalize hierarchies: experts over publics, center over periphery, permit-holders over neighbors. Crucially, infrastructures also embody what term “infrastructural violence”: the systematic exclusion, marginalization, or disruption of certain populations through material and bureaucratic systems. In Greek archaeology, this has taken the form of village relocations (Delphi, Olympia), exclusion of local voices from archives and interpretive authority, and the precarious labor conditions of Greek contract archaeologists.
Thus, the infrastructures of foreign schools and the Archaeological Service preserve antiquities but also stabilize asymmetries. They materialize power relations in bricks, files, and bureaucratic scripts. Any transition toward “heritage commons” that ignores these infrastructural dynamics risks remaining purely rhetorical.
This project reframes the legacy of Foreign Schools and the Ministry through the dual lens of commons and infrastructure, highlighting how foreign schools and the Greek Archaeological Service stabilise exclusionary logics—diplomatic prestige and sovereign control—while limiting community participation. Case studies reveal the paradox of archaeology as both development and, inclusion, access, exclusion in different scales, while sustained reliance on heritage tourism exposes economic fragilities.
The project aims is to reimagine foreign schools not as commons institutions themselves but as facilitators of co-stewardship, opening sites, archives, labs, and decision-making arenas to local communities. Drawing on anthropology of material culture and archaeology, the project seeks the potentialities of retooling infrastructures toward shared governance and redistributed benefits can archaeology in Greece move from development by default to equitable heritage commons.
An infrastructural approach to archaeology
Infrastructures must be seen not as neutral supports but as political forms. They allocate mobility, visibility, and legitimacy unevenly. They create path dependencies—what can be done is constrained by what the infrastructure already allows—and they normalize hierarchies: experts over publics, center over periphery, permit-holders over neighbors. Crucially, infrastructures also embody what term “infrastructural violence”: the systematic exclusion, marginalization, or disruption of certain populations through material and bureaucratic systems. In Greek archaeology, this has taken the form of village relocations (Delphi, Olympia), exclusion of local voices from archives and interpretive authority, and the precarious labor conditions of Greek contract archaeologists.
Thus, the infrastructures of foreign schools and the Archaeological Service preserve antiquities but also stabilize asymmetries. They materialize power relations in bricks, files, and bureaucratic scripts. Any transition toward “heritage commons” that ignores these infrastructural dynamics risks remaining purely rhetorical.
