History

The BSA, 1886. Watercolour sketch by Francis Penrose

Since 1886 the British School at Athens has acted as a focus for British research on the Greek world from prehistory to the present across a broad range of arts, humanities and social science disciplines. Originally housed entirely in a single building designed by its first Director, Francis Cranmer Penrose, the BSA now comprises a hostel, an extensive library and a substantial archive, plus the Marc and Ismene Fitch Laboratory for science-based archaeology. The BSA also maintains a research centre at Knossos, that grew out of the estate created by Sir Arthur Evans, the site’s first British excavator from 1900; the centre comprises the Stratigraphical Museum, accommodation and a small library.

The Menelaion and Mt Taygetos, 1909.

The BSA is probably best known for its long history of archaeological research at many locations in the eastern Mediterranean, with a strong focus on Greece, and including some ‘household names’, such as Knossos, Sparta and Mycenae. Locations include Cyprus, western Turkey and Egypt, as well as many sites in the Aegean from Macedonia, through Epiros and Thessaly to Boeotia, Attica and the Peloponnese, and on many islands including Crete, the Cyclades, Euboea, Kythera and Chios. The tradition began with Penrose, whose study of ancient Athenian architecture was published by the Society of Dilettanti in 1851, continued with major figures like Sir Arthur Evans, Alan Wace, Sir John Boardman, Sinclair Hood to more recent holders of the Disney Chair of Archaeology at Cambridge, Colin Renfrew and Cyprian Broodbank. Fieldwork has involved excavation, but the BSA also pioneered systematic regional studies and adopted new techniques as these became available, such as geophysical prospection, while also deploying bioarchaeological approaches (human osteology, zooarchaeology and archaeobotany) and materials analysis.

Fitch Laboratory, 1987 sketch.

Research in science-based archaeology was firmly established at the BSA in 1974, when the Marc and Ismene Fitch Laboratory opened, with Richard Jones as its first Fellow. Specialising in the study of ceramics, the laboratory not only led the field in chemical analysis, but pioneered and developed the technique of ceramic petrology. The laboratory is now a leading international centre in its field, with a small research staff and frequent academic visitors. Ceramic petrology remains a major focus, complemented by chemical analysis using WD-XRF equipment installed in 2011, but the laboratory also hosts archaeologists working on human and animal bone and on plant remains. Its truly international reach is reflected in many collaborations not only with UK and Greek researchers and institutions, but also with others elsewhere in Europe, Asia and Australia.

A. Toynbee, Finlay terrace, 1911-12.

With its justifiably strong tradition in archaeological research, it is all too easy to characterise the BSA as an archaeological institute pure and simple. However, the BSA has always had a broader vision of Hellenic studies. In the early 20th century, for example, Directors Richard Dawkins (1906-13) and Alan Wace (1914-23) and Assistant Director Frederick Hasluck (1911-15) embodied this broad view, conducting linguistic and anthropological research, as well as archaeological. Dawkins went on to hold the inaugural Bywater and Sotheby Chair of Byzantine and Modern Greek Language and Literature in Oxford, while Wace became Laurence Professor of Classical Archaeology in Cambridge. The anthropological tradition was maintained subsequently by scholars such as John Campbell, Renée Hirschon, Margaret Kenna and Roger Just. Modern history and literature have also played an important part in our activities from Arnold Toynbee (BSA member 1911-12 and first holder of the Koraes Chair of Modern Greek and Byzantine History, Language and Literature at Kings College London) through Richard Clogg (Professor of Modern Balkan History at Kings) to Roderick Beaton, who retired from the Koraes Chair in 2018.

Daphni monastery, Byzantine Research Fund, BSA Archive.

Art too has long played an important role in the BSA’s activities. Shortly after its foundation, in 1888, Robert Weir-Schultz and Sidney Barnsley, members of the Arts and Crafts movement arrived at the BSA on travelling scholarships, with the goal of documenting Byzantine monuments (some no longer in existence) in Greece and the eastern Mediterranean. The Byzantine Research Fund Archive, the product of their and others’ investigations, remains as a jewel in the crown of the BSA’s Archive. Since 2001 the BSA has offered an annual Arts Bursary to offer artists an opportunity to develop and enhance their work by spending three months in Greece. They live and work in the attic of Penrose’s original building in the Eleftherios Art Studio, created in 2011 through the generosity of Lou Kollakis.

History not only brings people to the BSA and their accumulated wisdom and knowledge; it also brings physical materials. The original core of the BSA’s Library was the collection of George Finlay (1799-1875), historian and Philhellene, and his name is commemorated in Athens in the Finlay common room, part of our Hostel. As a result of a shrewd collection policy and many generous donations, not least from the Friends of the BSA, the Library has now grown to over 70,000 volumes housed over several levels, including rooms that commemorate Penrose, Payne and Kollakis. A recent donation from Prof. Richard Clogg will significantly boost our holdings in modern Balkan history, thus supporting researchers in this area who have until now been dependent on other holdings in Athens. The Library not only forms a resource for British scholars who visit Athens, but also attracts a large community of local students and scholars who use its facilities and engage through it with the world of British research and its practitioners.

From a notebook of Sir William Gell, BSA Archive.

Finlay’s collection also enriched our Archive, including his correspondence (notably with 19th-century traveller William Martin Leake), manuscripts of his historical works and his annotations of the itineraries of Sir William Gell, another 19th-century traveller to Greece, some of whose notebooks the BSA later acquired through Thomas Ashby, then Director of the British School at Rome. Like our Library, the Archive has grown, receiving valuable depositions from BSA projects, as well as holding papers documenting over a century of the BSA’s own institutional development, and some valuable historical collections, such as the Byzantine Research Fund Archive, already mentioned, and the papers of the Noel Baker family, one of the longest continually resident British families in Greece. Materials accreted over the years also include a small collection of antiquities housed in our on-site Museum, a third legacy of Finlay, with the addition of materials from BSA projects. Some material has been published in the ABSA: the Geometric pots (Coldstream), the terracottas (Pisani), the inscriptions on stone (Lambert), architectural members (Tomlinson), sculpture (Waywell), and Black-figure and East Greek pots (Smith).

Research activity presupposes dissemination of its results to scholars and the general public. Since 1894 we have published the Annual of the BSA, while we have met the need for information summarising ongoing field research in Greece since 1954 with Archaeological Reports. Both journals are now published by Cambridge University Press and the latter now provides a range of synthetic contributions that summarise recent trends in the archaeology of Greece across all periods. The need for an information source that captures the volume of new data being generated in the field is now met by AGOnline, a constantly updated web-based resource we produce in collaboration with the French School at Athens. In addition, the BSA publishes three monograph series: Supplementary Volumes, produced since 1966, which present the results of BSA-sponsored archaeological activities, plus BSA Studies in Greek Antiquity, successor to our Studies series initiated in 1995, now published by Cambridge University Press, and BSA Studies in Modern Greek and Byzantine Studies, published by Routledge.

Postgraduate course in Greek Epigraphy.

Finally, any field of scholarship depends for its renewal on training future generations. The BSA offers a range of courses for undergraduate and post-graduate students, which help them experience first-hand the places and the materials of the ancient and modern Greek world. The longest-lived of these is the undergraduate course on the ‘Archaeology and Topography of Greece’, which has run continuously since 1973 (with the exception of 1974, the year the Junta fell) and has not only started many an academic career, but also inspired a life-long affection for the BSA among participants, wherever their careers have taken them.

Founded in 1886, the BSA provided a base in Greece for research in Hellenic studies. In the very different academic and geo-political world of the second decade of the 21st c., we continue to offer that base, together with a broad range of contacts and services that facilitate a wide spectrum of research across the humanities and social sciences in all periods from antiquity to the present. Our activities today – in Greece and elsewhere – reflect the broad vision of Hellenic studies espoused throughout our history. You will find information in other areas of this website that offer more specific detail about the breadth, depth and diversity of the research we conduct, facilitate and promote, as well as our activities in the arts and in outreach. The BSA is proud to combine a long tradition with innovation, a 19th-century institution that functions effectively in the 21st century world.

BSA Athens, 2018

More about the history of the BSA can be found in the following publications:

• Macmillan, G. (1910). A Short History of the British School at Athens, 1886-1911. ABSA 17: ix-xxxviii.
• Waterhouse, H. (1986). The British School at Athens: The First Hundred Years (London).
• Gill, D.W.J. (2011). Sifting the Soil of Greece: the Early Years of the British School at Athens (1886-1919) (London).