Professor James Whitley

College position: Visiting Fellow

Subject: Archaeology and Classics

Professor James Whitley is a Visiting Fellow at Magdalene.

James Whitley undertook both his first degree (Classics Part I, Archaeology Part II) and his PhD at Cambridge, where he was a student at Gonville and Caius College. For his PhD, he was supervised first by Colin Renfrew and then by Anthony Snodgrass. He subsequently obtained first the School Studentship (1986-87) and then the Macmillan-Rodewald Studentship (1988-89) at the British School at Athens. During and after his PhD, he worked closely with Simon Stoddart and Caroline Malone on the Gubbio Project. He has excavated in Scotland, England, Italy and Greece. From 1992 until 2015, he directed the Praisos Project in eastern Crete, a combination of survey and excavation that resulted in more than ten publications.

His first teaching post was at Vassar College, New York State, in 1990. From September 1990 until May 2025, he taught and conducted research at Cardiff University, being appointed Professor in 2008. His teaching included courses on Greek archaeology from the Aegean Bronze Age to the Hellenistic period, as well as the core theory course (co-taught with prehistorians) for the Archaeology (BA/BSc) degree scheme. Between 2002 and 2007, he was Director of the British School at Athens. His responsibilities included reducing the substantial deficit he inherited from his predecessor, David Blackman, publishing the annual summary of archaeological discoveries in Greece, Archaeology in Greece, and mentoring junior researchers. Since 2008, he has served on both the Senate and Council of Cardiff University and became known for his opposition to the construction of further large buildings with expansive atria and Costa Coffee franchises, but no additional teaching space.

Publications include around ninety articles, thirty of them in refereed journals, three monographs and three edited volumes. The most recent monograph is Knossos: Myth, History and Archaeology (Bloomsbury, 2023). An earlier book, The Archaeology of Ancient Greece (CUP, 2001), won the Runciman Prize in 2002. Further books and articles are in preparation, the latest being Homer and the New Materialism, which is due to be published in the Journal of Hellenic Studies in 2027.

Research Interests

His research interests lie at the intersection of Classics and Archaeology, particularly Greek archaeology, although he has also worked in Italy. A theoretical classical archaeologist, he completed a PhD that sought to apply methods drawn from the more theoretically informed traditions of prehistoric and anthropological archaeology to Greek material, beginning with Early Iron Age burials at Athens and Knossos. This led him to the study of Archaic Greece, and particularly Archaic Crete, whose marked differences from what is conventionally understood as Archaic Greek material culture and art remain insufficiently explained.

More recently, he has developed an interest in the significance of ancient Greek scripts and their relationship to visual culture, leading to a number of publications on the subject. He also retains an interest in Homer and in the ways that the New Materialism is bringing archaeologists and literary scholars into closer dialogue.

Qualifications

  • BA (now MA) in Classics (part I) and then Archaeology (part II), University of Cambridge
  • PhD (Archaeology), University of Cambridge

Career/Research Highlights

  • The Archaeology of Ancient Greece wins the Runciman prize (2002)
  • Too Many Ancestors wins the Antiquity prize (2002)
  • Appointed Director of the British School at Athens in 2001; took up the post in 2002-07

Professional Affiliations

  • Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London
  • Member (permanent) of the British School at Athens (as 'directeur ancien')
  • Member of the Archaeological Institute of America

KEY PUBLICATIONS

Monographs

Knossos: Myth, History and Archaeology. London: Bloomsbury, 2023.

The Archaeology of Ancient Greece. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Style and Society in Dark Age Greece. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Edited Volumes

An Age of Experiment: Classical Archaeology Transformed 1976-2014. Co-edited with Lisa Nevett. Cambridge: McDonald Institute, 2018. [Festschrift for Anthony Snodgrass].

Parallel Lives: Ancient Island Societies in Crete and Cyprus. Co-edited with Gerald Cadogan, Katerina Kopaka and Maria Iacovou. British School at Athens Studies, 20. London: British School at Athens, 2012.

Building Communities: House, Settlement and Society in the Aegean and Beyond. Co-edited with Nick Fisher and Ruth Westgate. British School at Athens Studies, 15. London: British School at Athens, 2007.

Selected Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Writing to the Gods? Archaic votives, inscribed and uninscribed. In M. Haysom, M. Mili and J. Wallensten (eds), The Stuff of the Gods: The Material Aspects of Religion in Ancient Greece, 193-213. ActaAth-4°, 59. Athens: Swedish Institutes of Athens and Rome, 2024.

From cups to kraters: the surfaces of writing in Early Attica (800-500 BC). In A. Duplouy and N. Arvanitis (eds), Attica from the Late Bronze Age to the end of the Archaic period: The spatial roots of politics and society, 153-70. Supplement no. 13 to Annuario della Scuola Archeologica di Atene e delle Missioni Italiane in Oriente. Paris and Athens: Scuola Archéologica Italiana di Atene, 2024.

The case for ethnological antiquarianism: the intellectual life and research culture of the British School at Athens, 1900-1920. In B. Forsen, G. Salmeri and D. Shankland (eds), The Long March of Archaeology in the Eastern Mediterranean: Political and Cultural Entanglements, 179-94. Rome: Edizioni Quasar, 2024.

Κατέσκαψαν Ιεραπύτνιοι: The destruction of political communities in Crete in the 2nd Century BC and the resilience of the Cretan polis. Annual of the British School at Athens, 113, 2023, pp. 323-47.

Chapter 14: Why με? Personhood and agency in the earliest Greek inscriptions. In P. Boyes, P. Steele and N.E. Astoreca (eds), The Social and Cultural Contexts of Historic Writing Practices, 269-287. Contexts and Relations between Early Writing Systems, 2. Oxford: Oxbow, 2021.

Homer and history. In C. Pache, C. Dué, S. Lupack and R. Lamberton (eds), The Cambridge Guide to Homer, 257-66. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020.

Style and personhood: the case of the Amasis painter. Cambridge Classical Journal, 64, 2018, pp. 178-203.

Citizenship and commensality in Archaic Crete: Searching for the Andreion. In A. Duplouy and R. Brock (eds), Defining Citizenship in Archaic Greece, 227-48. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.

The material entanglements of writing things down. In L.C. Nevett (ed.), Theory in Ancient Greek Archaeology: Manipulating Material Culture, 71-103. Proceedings of the First Conference held at the University of Michigan. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2017.

Homer’s entangled objects: Narrative, agency and personhood in and out of Iron Age texts. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 23, no. 3, 2013, pp. 395-416.

Archaeology in Greece, 2003-04. Archaeological Reports, 50, 2004, pp. 1-92.

Objects with attitude: Biographical facts and fallacies in the study of Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age warrior graves. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 12, 2002, pp. 217-32.

Too many ancestors. Antiquity, 76, 2002, pp. 119-26.

Cretan laws and Cretan literacy. American Journal of Archaeology, 101, 1997, pp. 635-61.

Beazley as theorist. Antiquity, 71, 1997, pp. 40-47.

Tomb cult and hero cult: the uses of the past in Archaic Greece. In N. Spencer (ed.), Time, Tradition and Society in Greek Archaeology: Bridging the 'Great Divide', 43-63. London: Routledge, 1995.

The monuments that stood before Marathon: tomb cult and hero cult in Archaic Attica. American Journal of Archaeology, 98, 1994, pp. 213-30.

Protoattic pottery: a contextual approach. In I. Morris (ed.), Classical Greece: Ancient Histories and Modern Archaeologies, 51-70. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Social diversity in Dark Age Greece. Annual of the British School at Athens, 86, 1991, pp. 341-65.

The social context of literacy in Archaic Greece and Etruria. Simon Stoddart. Antiquity, 62, 1988, pp. 761-72.

Early states and hero cults: a re-appraisal. Journal of Hellenic Studies, 108, 1988, pp. 173-82.