Epic Memory: History of Project - *** THIS FORUM IS ARCHIVED ***

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The initial fieldwork for this project took place during a twelve-day period between September 6th and 18th, 2002 in the Hania region of Western Crete. The project team was lead by Professor Richard Martin, and included Professor Anastasia- Erasmia Peponi, Corby Kelly, Eirini Andrikopoulou, Eirini Visvardi, and Christopher Witmore. The project concentrated on village communities in the vicinity of the coastal towns of Souyia (including Koustogerako and Moni) and Hora Sphakion (including Anopoli and Askifou).

The primary objective of this fieldwork at the broadest level was to get a sense of the place and pervasiveness of oral traditions in select communities of Western Crete. The fieldwork conducted during the summer of 2002 was an initial step in working towards a series of goals which will only be met through further fieldwork. There are several long-term aims of this project. First and foremost, to study and document commemorative forms of oral tradition and their relevance in the everyday lives of these communities. More specifically we are interested in the textures of oral and material articulations of local history and memory and their significance in the construction of personal and communal identities and connections to place. Second, to map the range of forms through which memory and history are articulated. These include songs such as rizitika, or poetry in the popular mantinades, and even portions of epic. Third, to analyze the role of context and setting in the evocation or performance of these forms. The emphasis here is on the exchange which occurs between place and performance—site-specificity. Fourth, finally, to map some of the myriad ways in which oral tradition contributes to connections between identity and landscape.

Beyond these general aims there are more specific goals resulting from the interests of individual team members. Of general concern in this respect is the relevance of the study of contemporary societies to the disciplines of archaeology and classics in the 21st century. We emphasize the notion of experiential immersion in performative contexts. This creates a space for exploring the details and textures within moments where potential connections and points of comparison between past and present may be articulated by archaeologists or classicists. This work has significance in archaeological fieldwork, for example, in that such moments are constitutive of contemporary understandings of and relations with landscape and place. In many respects, our understanding of such moments is based upon the work of Deleuze and Gatarri and rhizome theory, and intersects with literary notions of intertextuality [link].

Portions of this fieldwork were recorded through the medium of digital video. Video provides an appropriate medium for capturing the textures and details, in short the multiplicity, of these moments. It allows one to mediate the ineffable. We establish video as the major component of our archive and are currently editing a short documentary focusing on the museum proprietor and bard-like figure Georgios Hatzidakis. Here it should be emphasized that our contacts in the local communities were with very circumscribed groups of individuals. Our time was short, but we were able nevertheless to establish an overall orientation for our primary objective.

In what follows we include narratives of two events in the region’s past that are emphasized in the articulation of Sphakian identity—the revolt of Daskaloyannis and the Allied withdrawal and German occupation during WWII. We also include as two additional nodes, a brief discussion of an earlier study by folklorist James A. Notopoulos and the field notes from a visit to a local war museum during our fieldwork. These four sections constitute the material bases or assemblage points around which we work in discussing issues of memory, history, and performance.

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