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Ancient Greek ‘Oral’ Histories: Old flames, new science Stephen Buckley
Event details
Ancient Greek writers recorded oral histories of the time, but did you know that ancient Greek mouths continue to ‘speak’ from beyond the grave?
Archaeological chemist Stephen Buckley of the University of York reveals the unexpected tales preserved on ancient Greeks’ teeth and shows how their chemical ‘fingerprints’ provide the earliest evidence for the use of coal in the western world - 3,000 years before its role in the modern industrial revolution that remade our world.
Find out all about the molecular ‘oral’ histories of ancient Greece, which also show the important role that women played in this coal-based pyrotechnological revolution in metal and pottery production that characterised the last phase of Bronze Age Greece.
About the speaker
Stephen Buckley is a Research Fellow in Bioarchaeology at the University of York. His research focuses on archaeological chemistry, particularly the use of chemical methods to understand the process of mummification. As part of the university’s Mummy Research Group (set up in 1999), Stephen worked on archaeological projects in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt, the Yemeni Highlands, Rome, and a number of museums, before becoming a Wellcome Research Fellow in Bioarchaeology in 2004 (joint Archaeology and Chemistry) based at the University of York’s bioarchaeology centre (BioArCh).
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