Although the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted travel to Greece for much of the last year and a half, work on the Eastern Boeotia Archaeological Project continues unabated and we look forward to sharing updates about the fruits of this labour over the coming months.

On a related note, we happy to announce that an open access, comprehensive report on excavations on the acropolis of Eleon from 2011–2018 was published in the American Journal of Archaeology in 2020. This report serves as an introduction to the site and the archaeological finds made during the inaugural excavation campaigns. We would like to thank all of the students and collaborators who contributed to this research, whether by participating in the field school, conserving and illustrating the finds, or studying material in the apotheke—none of this would be possible without teamwork!

Finally, this blog post serves as the introduction to a series of dispatches, not from the field as is usual for the summer, but rather the classroom. During the spring semester 2021, students in Dr. Trevor Van Damme’s GRS 482A: Material and Literary Cultures of Boeotia seminar had an opportunity, not only to learn about the rich cultural history of the region around ancient Eleon, but to actually study finds from the site for their final research projects. Students were able to draw on primary documentation from the Eleon archives (excavation notebooks, conservation reports, line illustrations, and photography) in order to contextualize their finds and identify useful comparanda from Boeotia and beyond.

The results of this work were exceptional. So exceptional in fact that we wanted to share their findings with our readers over the coming weeks. We very much hope to see all of the contributors in the field at Eleon in the summer of 2022. Until then, please read and enjoy!