Crete, Palaikastro: Scene from a festival of wrestling on the beach

Department Archive
Collection BSA SPHS Image Collection
Reference No. BSA SPHS 01/6292.C4458
Level Item
Description Glass negative, quarter plate size, a copy negative.
Dimensions 10x8 cm
Place Roussolakkos
Palaikastro
Donor/Creator The British School at Athens
Bosanquet, Professor Robert Carr
Project Palaikastro Excavation 1902-1906
Scope and Content Part of a group of images from the British School at Athens excavations at Palaikastro, Crete in the 1902-1905. The original description in the SPHS negative register reads: "Palaikastro: a festival. Wrestling on the beach".
Notes Dates based on the Palaikastro campaign. The image was used for the 1936 Exhibition of Minoan Civilization and the first 50 years work of the BSA at Burlington House in London.
Further information Scenes from Modern Greek Life
Historic images often show scenes from modern life. These are not modern in the current sense, but reflect a time they were taken. Some were captured unintentionally, recording an aspect of contemporary activity while composing scenes of other interest such as ancient or historical monuments. However, many were taken with the express purpose of recording folk life, part of a trend in the latter part of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. The process of categorizing these ethnographic scenes of everyday life in image collections reflected contemporary folklore categories: material life (eg. domestic architecture, dress, craft and agricultural production), social life (eg. games, festivals) and spiritual life (eg. superstitions, religious activities).

However, a significant idea encapsulated in these ethnographic images was the 19th-century concept of continuity - relics or survivals - of ancient social life and practices in the present. In Greece, this concept of continuity was notably promoted by the scholar of folklore (laographia), Nikolaos Politis, and held by many British classicists and archaeologists of the time. In fact, the Irish classical scholar, J.P. Mahaffy encapsulated this idea in his 1876 travel book, Rambles and Studies in Greece: "Everywhere the modern Greek town is a mere survival of the old". These survivals were often linked to classical literature, cult and myth by scholars of the Greek world.


It is clear that these images are not simply quaint historical scenes, but they embody principles inherent in the discipline of Hellenic Studies in the recent past.

Reference 1936 Exhibition Catalogue. 87.No. 394d.