Looking into a plot of 1,000 sq.m. in Geraki, Laconia, a village of Southern Greece, an international team of archaeologists has been constructing the distant past of the acropolis of Ancient Geronthrai. The excavation at Dontakia – as the locals call the acropolis – began in 1995 by the University of Amsterdam and the Dutch Institute at Athens. Finds dating to many different eras, from the Late Neolithic to the Greek Civil War, are mere fragments of everyday life. How difficult is it to connect pieces from a reality that has been lost, from a society that has no written sources left? How is the daily life of “people without history” being reconstructed, and how is people’s relationship with their past being formed? For all these years, researchers have been working every summer for a six-week period in their excavation pit and their study room, observing and being observed by the local community of Geraki. Yet, it seems that archaeology is not only a matter of dealing with ancient remains ― archaeology has an actual impact on people’s lives. Between olive trees and stones, in these harsh landscapes of the Southern Mediterranean, archaeologists along with the people of Geraki add their own layer of time to the eternal quest for understanding the past.

With the support of the Nederlands Instituut Athene.