Refounding Sikyon: the creation of a monumental landscape

The refoundation of Sikyon in 303 BCE by the Macedonian general and future king of Macedon Demetrios Poliorketes at a new location may have been primarily dictated by geopolitical concerns, but it also gave its founder the opportunity to materialize his ambitious urbanistic and architectural plans. The results of the past and current excavations at the site by the Archaeological Society of Athens and of the intensive urban survey conducted in the 2000s revealed clear traces of landscaping and remains of impressive monuments that betray the dynastic aspirations of Demetrios, and his desire to put a Macedonian stamp on the new city.

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Yannis Lolos is Associate professor in Classical Archaeology at the University of Thessaly. Professor Lolos studied History of Art and Archaeology at the University of Paris (Paris IV-Sorbonne) where he obtained a B.A. (Maîtrise) in 1990 and a Master’s degree (D.E.A.) in 1992.  Lolos enrolled in doctoral studies at the Graduate Group of Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology of the University of California at Berkeley. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1998 with a dissertation on the topography of the territory of ancient Sikyon. During 1995-1996, he was a regular member at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, and in 1998-1999, he served as visiting assistant professor in Classical archaeology at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor). In 2002, Lolos joined the teaching staff of the department of History, Archaeology and Social Anthropology of the University of Thessaly. He has participated in a number of archaeological field projects in Attica, Crete, Corinth, Nemea, Stymphalos as well in the Etruscan town of Musarna in central Italy. Since 2004, Lolos has directed the Sikyon archaeological project, and from 2018 onwards he has co-directed the Greek-Dutch excavations at Magoula Plataniotiki in the plain of Almyros (Thessaly).

Yannis Lolos is the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards. In 2011-2012, he was nominated as Samuel H. Kress Lecturer in Ancient Art for the Archaeological Institute of America. He is a corresponding member of the Archaeological Institute of America (since 2014) and of the German Archaeological Institute at Athens (since 2021). Lolos’ research interests include landscape archaeology, ancient Sikyon, Greek and Roman architecture, and the archaeology of the Hellenistic and Roman cities. He has published two monographs, one on the Land of Sikyon (Hesperia supplement 39, Princeton 2011) and another on the Via Egnatia – one of the most important Roman highways east of the Adriatic Sea (Olkos publisher, Athens 2008). In addition, he has edited and co-authored the two-volume publication of the results of Sikyon’s urban survey (Sikyon I: The Urban Survey, Meletemata 82, Greek National Research Foundation 2021) as well as numerous articles on accredited journals, collective volumes and proceedings of conferences. He has also built and regularly updates the bilingual website for the Sikyon Project: http://extras.ha.uth.gr/sikyon