Primary sources, history, and culture of northern Greece

The research Programme “Primary sources, history, and culture of northern Greece” focused on a region of primary importance in the Greek periphery during antiquity — an area long neglected by international scholarship, though knowledge about it has developed rapidly in recent decades.

The main goal of the Programme was the systematic collection, study, and publication of primary testimonia, and the use of this essential infrastructure for the production of synthetic studies on the political, social, economic, and cultural developments in the region.

More specifically, the Programme focused on the study and utilization of inscriptions, coins, and other archaeological testimonia, which constitute a significant body of primary evidence that allows us to complement and often revise the testimony of literary sources.

Short History of the Programme

The Programme “Primary sources, history, and culture of northern Greece” resulted from the merger of the Programmes on Macedonia and Thrace, its major aim being the publication of primary historical sources from the region. To this end, systematic collaboration with the Ministry of Culture and the local Ephorates of Antiquities was pursued. The successive memoranda of collaboration with the Ministry of Culture (1981, 1984, renewed in 2019), led to the formation of the Archive of Inscriptions from Macedonia, which has, to date, constituted the base for the publication of five corpora of inscriptions from Macedonia and Thrace.

From these long-term collaborative projects resulted extensive collections of epigraphic, numismatic, onomastic, and prosopographical material, which are:

a) gradually published in corpora, and
b) exploited by researchers of the Programme in monographs, articles, and conference papers.

In addition to the epigraphic and numismatic studies, which constituted the Programme’s original field of activity, collaborations with institutions of the Ministry of Culture were gradually expanded to include other archaeological finds, such as funerary monuments, sculptures, painted monuments, as well as every-day life-related objects.

For the systematic and synthetic study of archaeological finds from northern Greece, the Programme’s researchers created significant archives (of epigraphic records, drawings, squeezes, casts, maps, photographs, and pigments) to be used not only by members of the Programme but also by collaborators and other researchers from Greece or abroad.

A further outcome of years of systematic collection is also the specialized bibliographic archive of scholarly publications pertaining to the periphery of northern Greece.

Past Members of the Programme

Current Researchers at the SGRA

Sophia Kremydi, Research Director, Former Programme Coordinator

Paschalis Paschidis, Research Director

Dimitra Andrianou, Senior Researcher

Haricleia Brecoulaki, Senior Researcher

Myrina Kalaitzi, Senior Researcher

Maria Gabriella Parissaki, Senior Researcher

Emeritus Research Directors and former researchers

Miltiades B. Hatzopoulos, Member of the Academy of Athens, Research Director Emer., former Director of the Center of Greek and Roman Antiquity (KERA)

Ioannis Aslanis, Research Director Emer., Former Head of the Northern Greece Branch, former Coordinator of The Greek and Balkan Pre-and Protohistory Programme

Louisa D. Loukopoulou, Research Director Emer.

Argyro B. Tataki, Research Director Emer. †

Katerini Liampi, Professor emer. University of Ioannina

Anna Panagiotou, Professor, University of Cyprus

Despoina Papakonstantinou-Diamandourou †

Giannis Pikoulas, Professor, University of Thessaly †

Selene Psoma, Professor, NKUA

Post-Doctoral Researchers

lena Martin González

External Collaborators

Athena Iakovidou

Giorgos Mastropavlos

Giorgos Valsamakis