The cultural biography of material goods in Homer's epics

Jan Paul Crielaard

Department of Archaeology Free University, Amsterdam

Introduction: Homeric archaeology as a scholarly discipline

This contribution deals with Homer and archaeology1. It starts from a very basic question : is there such a thing as «Homeric archaeology» and if so, what is it about ? An answer to the first part of this question may be relatively simple, and should be in the affirmative. Universities around the world offer courses in «Homeric archaeology». Also, the ongoing publication of a prestigious series with the title Archaeologia Homerica would seem to suggest that we are dealing with a distinct academic discipline. The second part of the question regarding the scope of the discipline is a little harder to answer. Ever since the days of Heinrich Schlie- mann's discoveries at Troia and Mykenai, archaeology has occupied its own particular place next to literary, philological and historical approaches to the study of the Homeric epics. Despite that, surprisingly little effort has been made to explicate the discipline's aims and methods or formulate directions that it may take in the future. If we look at the standard commentaries and textbooks, such as Archaeologia Homerica, or A Companion to Homer edited by Wace and Stubbings, or Morris and Powell's A New Companion to Homer, we observe that these matters are

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