The film follows the excavation at the ancient site of Eleutherna. Located on the northwestern slopes of Mount Ide, “relentlessly welcoming as the weather”.
For a better understanding of excavation methods we have to bear in mind that archaeological research is a scientific activity. Just as observation and experimentation are used in physics to test the validity of an hypothesis about the natural world, excavation is similarly used in archaeology to test the validity of an hypothesis about ancient civilization.
Nikos Stambolides, professor of archaeology, together with a group of students from the University of Crete and Notis Anguelarakis, professor of prehistoric archaeology and physical anthropology, draw and evaluate information from the bones of the tombs of Orthi Petra -Eleutherna’s necropolis- where funeral pyres of the dead, and even human sacrifices have been located and researched. The information they supply about the burial ritual is very similar to those described in Homer’s Iliad.
Ancient Eleuthera is a stromatography of space anf time on which the city’s history has been imprinted, as it would have been on a real archive.
- Direction: MEMI SPYRATOU
- Production: LAMBRAKIS RESEARCH FOUNDATION
