British School at Athens: Annual Course for Undergraduates

This three-week course began with synoptic lectures, offering students a basic understanding of the chronology and geography of Greek history, and introducing the key themes and skills of the course. Students were also offered a tour of the Fitch Laboratory and handling sessions in the BSA Museum and Archive.

The course this year aimed to be truly diachronic, covering as evenly as possible sites and museums from the Bronze Age right through to Modern Greece. After site- and museum-based lectures in Athens, Attica, and Central Greece, the course departed for a seven-day journey around the Peloponnese. This section of the course covered sites from prehistory (Mycenae, Tiryns, Pylos), through the Classical and Hellenistic periods (Eleusis, Messene, Nemea), all the way through to the Late Byzantine (Mystras) and Venetian (Methone) periods.

Additional highlights of this course included visits to the interiors of the Parthenon, the temple of Apollo Epikourios at Bassai, on-going excavations at Messene, and the temple of Zeus at Olympia. Students were asked to write a journal, describing their experience visiting sites, including drawing sketches of artefacts and monuments and extensive descriptions, demonstrating also in a more creative way their deep understanding of the materials covered throughout the course; and tutors offered optional evening workshops on ‘additional’ course content, including sessions on digital humanities and curatorial practice.