Wednesday 3 September 2025, 6.30pm
Vere Gordon Childe Centre Boardroom
The University of Sydney
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The ancient Greeks are famous for their settlements around the Mediterranean during the first millennium BCE. Their expansion, however, was not always long distance. The paper presents the Early Iron Age settlement at Oropos, in Northern Attica, opposite the site of Eretria and across the South Euboic Gulf. Near-continuous excavations since 1985 have revealed one of the best settlements of the 8th and 7th centuries, with more than 40 buildings uncovered to date. As a result, Oropos offers unparalleled insight into the organization and activities of an Early Iron Age community. Oropos may be plausibly identified with Homeric Graia, mentioned in The Iliad. The Graians were seafarers who appear to have travelled both to the North Aegean as well as in Southern Italy and Sicily. It is possible that the Greeks received their name in the West thanks to those Graians who first visited the Gulf of Naples alongside the Eretrians, with whom they shared a common cultural lifestyle.
