Between Archaeologies: Kyriakos Pittakis and His Wall of Spolia on the Acropolis

Abstract: In 1836, Kyriakos Pittakis became General Ephor (Overseer) of the antiquities of Athens. Compared to his peers, Pittakis lacked academic education, but he was famous for his passion for protecting the antiquities, and for the unorthodox means he adopted to that end. Pittakis buried ancient fragments in water-wells, he nailed and plastered them together in makeshift "tableaus"—all in order to deter looters. When cleaning the Acropolis plateau from centuries' worth of rubble, Pittakis refused to throw anything away: He stacked unclassifiable fragments on top of each other along the perimeter of the plateau, until these formed an imposing wall of spolia which dominated the experience of the site for decades. His aim was pragmatic—to store these fragments until their historic provenance was determined—but the result of this cumulative process has evident aesthetic aspirations, echoing older practices of vernacular spoliation. This article understands Pittakis as a person who lived and worked between two different archaeologies: the Western epistemology of his fellow archaeologists and of the Greek state, and the indigenous archaeology of the local population who built ancient fragments into the walls of their houses and churches.