‘Grave Z’ at Demetrias and the Notorious Case of the Volos Gold Wreath. Arvanitopoulos’s Archives and Early Twentieth-Century Greek Archaeology

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Owing to its research history, the study of ancient Thessaly is particularly reliant on archaeology legacy data. The region was extensively investigated by its first director of antiquities, Apostolos S. Arvanitopoulos (active 1905–1926), who conducted large-scale excavations (most of them still unpublished), opened a major museum, and published hundreds of inscriptions. Scattered among many academic institutions and until the late 1990s mostly inaccessible, Arvanitopoulos’s very rich archives are invaluable for recontextualizing archaeological finds but also constitute historical sources in their own right. The so-called ‘Grave Z’ at Demetrias will be used as a case study to showcase the potential and the challenges of Arvanitopoulos’s archives. Alongside the recontextualization of some of the most impressive sets of grave-goods from Demetrias, these archives inform our knowledge about Arvanitopoulos, the impact of contemporary affairs and politics on archaeology during the turbulent period of the early twentieth century, the involvement of academics in the antiquities trade, and ultimately, the history of Greek archaeology as a discipline.