British School at Athens : Assistant Director

Dr Michael Loy

British School at Athens
52 Souedias Street
Athens, 10676
+30 211 1022 804

assistant.director@bsa.ac.uk

As Assistant Director, I co-ordinate the BSA courses and teaching for both undergraduate and graduate students, and I manage the security and maintenance of the Athens hostel. I serve as Curator of the BSA museum, and I also contribute to the Archaeology in Greece Online project.

I have recently completed a draft manuscript for my monograph on economic and political networking in the Archaic period. Using social network analysis to handle large quantities of old excavation data, this study considered the extent to which the ‘big data’ of Greek archaeology can contribute to debates on the ‘rise of the polis’ and on the nature of the ancient economy. In the next phase of this work, I will continue to work on state interactions but this time in the Classical period.

In 2022 I am working on two collaborative projects. First, in collaboration with Jack Davis and Sharon Stocker and as part of the Palace of Nestor Excavations project, I continue to work on the 1930–1950s excavation archives from Pylos, using GIS and 3d visualisation to re-study the distribution of finds in Late Bronze Age tholos tombs. Second, and as part of a BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grant co-directed with Jana Mokrišová, I am working on the economic history of rural Samos in the first millennium B.C. This research is conducted under the framework of our BSA field-project, co-directed with Anastasia Christophilopoulou and Naoíse Mac Sweeney.

I co-convene two ECR study networks, one UK-based for those working on LBA/EIA/Archaic period archaeology topics, and the other for Athens-based PhDs and postdocs working on any period of the archaeology and history of Greece. If you are not on our mailing lists but would like to get involved, please get in touch!

Publications

Books

Loy, M. (submitted). Connecting Communities. Economic and Political Networks in Archaic Greece.
Loy, M., Salmon N., Smith, K. (eds) 2022. The Archaeology and Topography of Greece. Fifty years of the British School at Athens Undergraduate Course. (Short Run Press).

Peer-reviewed articles

Loy, M. 2022 (forthcoming). ‘A brief history of the BSA Museum Study Collection’, Archaeological Reports 68.
Loy, M. and Slawisch, A. 2021. ‘Shedding light on the matter: evaluating changing patterns of object dedication in Ionian sanctuaries (seventh/sixth – fifth/fourth centuries BC) with lexicometrical analysis’, Journal of Greek Archaeology 6.
Loy, M., Stocker, S.R. and Davis, J.L. 2021. ‘From Archive to GIS: Recovering Spatial Information for Tholos IV at Pylos from the Notebooks of Lord William Taylour’, Internet Archaeology 56. https://doi.org/10.11141/ia.56.5
Loy, M. 2020. ‘The islands of the Saronic Gulf: connections and cultural histories’, Archaeological Reports 66, 161–72.
Loy, M. 2019. ‘Early modern travellers in the Aegean: routes and networks’, BSA 114, 369–98.
Loy, M. and Mullen, A. 2019. ‘A Greek inscription with rider iconography from South Shields, Britain’, ZPE 209, 140–4.

Chapters in edited volumes

Loy, M. (forthcoming). ‘Travelling to the temple of Poseidon at Sounion. Land routes and sea routes’, in Angliker, E., and Tae Jensen, J. (eds), Traveling and Cult Practices in the Ancient Mediterranean.
Loy, M. 2020. ‘Descent with modification? Survey methodologies and scholarly networks’, in Wilkinson, T.C. and Slawisch, A. (eds), The Fieldwalker.org

Conference Proceedings

Loy, M. 2021. ‘The export of marble in the sixth century BC: Paros and its networks’, in Katsonopoulou, D. (ed), Paros V. Paros through the ages. From Prehistoric times to the 16th Century AD. Proceedings of the fifth International conference on the Archaeology of Paros and the Cyclades. Paroikia, Paros, 21-24 June 2019 (Athens)

Reviews

Loy, M. 2022. ‘Review of Irene Lemos, Antonis Kotsonas, A companion to the archaeology of early Greece and the Mediterranean’, Journal of Hellenic Studies 142.
Loy, M. 2020. ‘Review of Katja Sporn, Alexandra Kankeleit, Die Abteilung Athen des DAI und die Aktivitäten deutscher Archäologen in Griechenland 1874-1933.’, Bryn Mawr Classical Review 7.47.

Reports

Web publications