About 8 km south of Rethymno, along the road to Spili, lies the well-signposted archaeological site of Armenoi. It is a cemetery with more than 200 chamber tombs dated to the Late Bronze Age.

Someone on Reddit’s AskHistorians wondered if bows were unpopular in ancient Greece. An uncritical reading of the ancient sources might, at first glance, suggests that this was indeed the case, but nothing could be further from the truth.

The Apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla is a fascinating read that enjoyed wide popularity for centuries. It presented Thecla as a powerful figure who overshadows Paul. Thecla made an unexpected decision which meant that through Christianity she was actually liberated from the concerns of the body and from the dominion of a future marriage.

Our ideas of the past are often based on mere scraps of evidence. Nowhere is this more literally true than when it comes to reconstructing ancient wall-paintings, such as the “Saffron Gatherer” from Knossos.

One of Josho’s favourite episodes of the science-fiction television series Star Trek: Voyager (1995-2001) deals with the problems inherent in reconstructing the past, how the past influences the present, and how it paves the way to the future.

A ceramic centaur figurine from Lefkandi is one of the most recognizable artifacts from Early Iron Age Greece. But can it be identified as one of the earliest depictions of Chiron, the mythical teacher of heroes?

Around the mid-sixth century BCE, Greek vase-painters began depicting mythological episodes involving the hero Herakles set in Libya and Egypt. While these are typically seen as visualizations of Greek preoccupation with barbarian “others,” closer examination reveals a more complex reality.

The publication of a new edition of Eric Cline’s book 1177 BC causes Josho to think about how we frame “collapse”, and whether the end of hierarchical societies is really as bad as many scholars seem to suggest.

Our understanding of ethnic diversity within the classical world owes much to how museums have curated their Greco-Roman antiquities. These collections were strongly influenced by the interests and values of the original collectors themselves, many of whom were antiquarians living and working in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This article raises the question of whether their traditions have had an impact on how we understand and curate Black bodies in Greco-Roman galleries today.

In Early Iron Age Kommos, joint participation in religious activity by Cretans and Phoenicians may have fostered a shared identity and ensured peaceful collaboration and coexistence.