We Proudly Present
Our 2025 Keynote Speakers
Drs. Sharon Stocker & Jack L. Davis
University of Cincinnati
Lord of the Gold Rings:
The Grave of the Griffin Warrior
at Pylos, Greece
Abstract
After a lapse of 45 years, the University of Cincinnati resumed archaeological excavations at the Palace of Nestor in Pylos, Greece on May 18, 2015. During the first campaign, a rich, unlooted Late Bronze Age grave was discovered a few hundred meters from the Palace. The grave contained the burial of a single male warrior, accompanied by a staggeringly large number of grave goods manufactured of gold, silver, ivory, bronze, and semiprecious gemstones. This presentation will describe the excavation of the Grave of the Griffin Warrior and discuss in detail some of the artifacts found therein, including four gold rings and the Pylos Combat Agate. The discovery of so many gold rings in association with the male individual was unexpected and unprecedented, as is the intricate detail preserved on the Combat sealstone. The iconography of these objects is extraordinary and of great significance for the study of Minoan and Mycenaean art and ideology in the early Late Bronze Age. This unique, undisturbed burial affords an unparalleled opportunity to examine aspects of Early Mycenaean funerary ritual, gender association with grave goods, and burial structure that cannot be obtained through more standard multi-individual burial contexts. Its finds have also produced a number of challenging conservation issues.
About Our Speakers
Dr. Sharon Stocker
is a Senior Research Associate in the Department of Classics at the University of Cincinnati. She is professional archaeologist with extensive experience excavating in Greece and Albania, having served as co-director of archaeological surveys in the hinterlands of the Greek colonies of Epidamnus and Apollonia in Albania and of excavations at a recently discovered Greek sanctuary near Apollonia. Since 2015, she has been the co-director of the University of Cincinnati’s excavations at the Palace of Nestor at Pylos, Greece in excavations conducted in collaboration with the Greek Ministry of Culture. Dr. Stocker also directs the publications program for excavation. For her extraordinary contributions to the field of archaeology, she was chosen to be a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London as well as a Commander of the Order of the Phoenix in the Republic of Greece. The importance of Dr. Stocker’s work is reflected in the numerous grants she has received from the Institute for Aegean Prehistory, the J.M. Kaplan Fund, the Leventis Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and more. She is the author of Mycenaean Wall-Painting in Context (2015) and A Sanctuary in the Chora of Apollonia: Excavations at the Site 2004-2006 (2022) as well as many articles and book chapters.
Dr. Jack L. Davis
is the Carl W. Blegen Professor of Greek Archaeology at the University of Cincinnati, where has he taught since 1993. In Greece, he has directed archaeological regional studies projects on the island of Keos, in the Nemea Valley, and in the area of the Palace of Nestor in Messenia. He participated in the publication of excavations on Keos and on Melos and is an authority in the archaeology of the Aegean islands. Since 2015, he has co-directed the University of Cincinnati’s excavations at the Palace of Nestor with Sharon Stocker. Dr. Davis served as the Director of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens from 2007 to 2012. He is currently one of the institution’s Trustees as well as an Overseer of its Gennadius Library. Dr. Davis too has received many prestigious awards for his archaeological work, including the Special Civic Merits Award from the President of Albania, the Gold Medal for Distinguished Achievement from the Archaeological Institute of America, and in 2021, he was named a Commander of the Order of the Phoenix by the President of the Hellenic Republic. In 2019, he was selected to deliver the renowned Sather Lectures at the University of California, Berkeley, where he held the Sather Professorship. His publications are abundant, including the books Landscape Archaeology as Long-Term History: Northern Keos in the Cycladic Islands (1991), Sandy Pylos: An Archaeological History from Nestor to Navarino (1998), Between Venice and Istanbul: Colonial Landscapes in Early Modern Greece (2007), and The Pylos Regional Archaeological Project (2017).