Visiting scholar at CU-Boulder wins ‘Genius Grant’

A visiting scholar at the University of Colorado Boulder Classics Department is among 24 winners of MacArthur Fellowships, popularly called “Genius Grants.”

Dimitri Nakassis, associate professor of classics at the University of Toronto, earned the award because of his “rare intellectual breadth, comprising philology, archaeology and contemporary social and economic theory,” the MacArthur Foundation announced on Sept. 28.

The MacArthur Fellowship, which rewards individuals who “show extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction,” comes with a stipend of $625,000, paid over five years.

One of the things that stands out most about the study of ancient Greece is how little we understand about ‘the 99 percent,’ if you like."The money comes with no strings attached, to give recipients “maximum freedom” to pursue their creative vision, the foundation states.

Nakassis is noted for challenging the long-held view that Late Bronze Age Mycenaean palatial society (1400–1200 BC) was a highly centralized oligarchy, “distinct from the democratic city-states of classical Greece.”

In his book Individuals and Society in Mycenaean Pylos, he contends that political power was more broadly shared than previously thought.

Nakassis is a visiting scholar in classics at CU-Boulder this academic year; last year, he was a visiting associate professor. He is project co-director of the Western Argolid Regional Project (WARP), which is striving to understand the nature of human activity in southern Greece throughout prehistory and history.

Sarah James, assistant professor of classics at CU-Boulder, also serves as WARP co-director, as does Scott Gallimore, a classicist at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario.

This week, Nakassis discussed the implications of his work. “One of the things that stands out most about the study of ancient Greece is how little we understand about ‘the 99 percent,’ if you like,” he said.

“Most of our evidence is heavily tilted towards the elite class and the urban centers they lived in.”

The WARP researchers are in the upland valleys of the Inachos River, an area that's “virtually unknown archaeologically but lies in the shadow of Argos,” one of the most important cities in ancient Greece.

“Our feeling is that we're never going to understand how a city like Argos worked if we don't know what's happening in its countryside, just like you couldn't understand Colorado's economy if you only studied Denver, without looking at agriculture or mining,” Nakassis said.

WARP isn't the only project doing this, he added. “Together with other projects, we're improving our understanding of how these societies worked, top to bottom.”

As a classicist who holds a degree in economics, Nakassis stressed—and exemplifies—the importance interdisciplinary collaboration in archaeology.

As he put it, archaeology entails the understanding of languages of societies being studied, their history, the geology of their land, and increasingly, scientific study of ancient materials—“not to mention other ancillary skills, like statistics and database management.”

Nakassis credits his economics degree with a heightened appreciation of the insights that quantitative social science approaches yields. “I only wish I had paid closer attention in the statistics course that was required for my economics major!”

Nakassis said his time at CU-Boulder, which has a “very welcoming, vibrant community,” has been great.

“I grew up in Maryland, so it wasn't until I came to Colorado that I really appreciated the lyric ‘For purple mountain majesties / above the fruited plain!’”

For more on the MacArthur Foundation, click here. See the University of Toronto's announcement of the grand here. Nakassis is scheduled to give a presentation on his work with WARP as part of International Archaeology Day on Oct. 24 at the CU Natural History Museum; the event is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. and conclude at 4 p.m. and will include 10 speakers giving presentations about their research. Nakassis is scheduled to speak about 2 p.m.

—Clint Talbott
Oct. 6, 2015