You are cordially invited to the lecture Neighbours in exchange. Bridging cultures, shaping identities: Ionians, Aiolians, Lydians and Carians, ca. 800-400 BCE by Jan Paul Crielaard (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam & Netherlands Institute in Athens) on 8 May 2026 at 17.00 at ANAMED. 

Traditional and current views hold that Greeks and Anatolians living in western Asia Minor and some of the offshore islands during the Archaic period constituted distinct and clearly distinguishable entities. The aim of this lecture is to explore the grey zones between Ionians, Aiolians, Lydians, and Carians. It will examine cultural interactions, intercultural exchange, and identities across a number of domains and registers, including language; religion and cult; dress; drink, food, and foodways; music; and interpersonal relationships such as intermarriage.

For each of these domains, the lecture will consider how intercultural exchanges occurred, at which social levels, and how these exchanges affected or related to cultural, social, political, ethnic, or gender identities. As a source of inspiration, it draws on the case of the Anatolian Greeks of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries AD—not to establish direct parallels, but to cultivate sensitivity to the complexity and variability of circumstances in a non-nation-state context. The rich body of evidence from this case provides valuable insights into the variability of intercultural interactions, as well as the dynamics and fluidity of identities and their many shades of grey.

Jan Paul Crielaard is Professor of Pre- and Protohistoric Archaeology of the Mediterranean at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and newly appointed Director of the Netherlands Institute in Athens. In Amsterdam he lectures in the programmes of the Amsterdam Centre for Ancient Studies and Archaeology (ACASA), a partnership between the Vrije Universiteit and the University of Amsterdam. His research focuses on the early Iron Age and the Archaic period, often combining written and archaeological information. He has published extensively on topics such as intercultural contacts within the Mediterranean region, Greek colonisation, elites and elite behaviour, ethnicity, and archaeology and the Homeric epic. He has conducted fieldwork in Greece, Cyprus, Turkey and Italy. Since 2010, he has led the Plakari Archaeological Project in Karystos and the Southern Euboia Sea and Land Routes Project, both on the island of Euboea, Greece.