Sacrality and the Greek Polis

480 BCE: Reconsidering the Chronological Anchor of Archaic and Classical Greece

Conference, 23–26 June 2022

Conference Center Soeterbeeck, Ravenstein, The Netherlands

For the history of Greece, one of the main ‘anchor’ dates is 480 BCE. In that year, the Persian armies led by king Xerxes occupied large parts of Greece. For the history of Greece, both before and after the Persian wars, the watershed of 480 has developed as one of the main anchors on which the interconnected fabric of relative dates seems to depend. The solidity of this framework was the topic of this conference. The conference brought together specialists in subdisciplines of Greek history and archaeology to share, debate, and test shifting views on the significance of 480 on the chronology of Greek history of the Archaic and Classical periods.

Click here to download the program.

For abstracts of most contributions, click here.

Handouts are available here: