Nanno (Ourania) Marinatos (

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

: Ναννώ (Ουρανία) Μαρινάτου; 1950-) is Professor Emerita of

Classics Classics or classical studies is the study of classical antiquity. In the Western world, classics traditionally refers to the study of Classical Greek and Roman literature and their related original languages, Ancient Greek and Latin. Classics ...

and Ancient Mediterranean Studies at the

University of Illinois Chicago The University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) is a public research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its campus is in the Near West Side community area, adjacent to the Chicago Loop. The second campus established under the University of Illinois sy ...

, whose research focuses on the

Minoan civilisation The Minoan civilization was a Bronze Age Aegean civilization on the island of Crete and other Aegean Islands, whose earliest beginnings were from 3500BC, with the complex urban civilization beginning around 2000BC, and then declining from 1450B ...

, especially

Minoan religion Minoan religion was the religion of the Bronze Age Minoan civilization of Crete. In the absence of readable texts from most of the period, modern scholars have reconstructed it almost totally on the basis of archaeological evidence of such as M ...

Early life and education

Nanno Marinatos was born in Athens in 1950; her parents were Aimila Loverdos and

Spyridon Marinatos Spyridon Nikolaou Marinatos ( el, Σπυρίδων Νικολάου Μαρινάτος; November 4, 1901 – October 1, 1974) was a Greek archaeologist, best known for leading excavations at Akrotiri on Santorini (1967–74), where he died and i ...

, an archaeologist of the Bronze Age Aegean. Named Ourania after her grandmother, she was nicknamed "Nanno" by her father after a woman associated by ancient sources with the poet

Mimnermus Mimnermus ( grc-gre, Μίμνερμος ''Mímnermos'') was a Greek elegiac poet from either Colophon or Smyrna in Ionia, who flourished about 632–629 BC (i.e. in the 37th Olympiad, according to Suda). He was strongly influenced by the examp ...

. Marinatos studied at the German School in Athens, from where she graduated in 1968. She studied classical philology and archaeology at the University of Colorado at Boulder, receiving her PhD in 1979.

Career

Marinatos is Professor Emerita of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies at the University of Illinois Chicago, where she was previously Head of Department. Prior to joining the University of Illinois Chicago in 2001, she taught at Oberlin College, Ohio, the

University of Bergen The University of Bergen ( no, Universitetet i Bergen, ) is a research-intensive state university located in Bergen, Norway. As of 2019, the university has over 4,000 employees and 18,000 students. It was established by an act of parliament in 194 ...

, and the

University of Zurich The University of Zürich (UZH, german: Universität Zürich) is a public research university located in the city of Zürich, Switzerland. It is the largest university in Switzerland, with its 28,000 enrolled students. It was founded in 1833 f ...

. She has excavated at the prehistoric site of Akrotiri on

Santorini Santorini ( el, Σαντορίνη, ), officially Thira (Greek: Θήρα ) and classical Greek Thera (English pronunciation ), is an island in the southern Aegean Sea, about 200 km (120 mi) southeast from the Greek mainland. It is the ...

and at Tell el Da'ba in Egypt. She has published research on

, particularly on the roles of iconography and symbolism; on Arthur Evans' excavations at

Knossos Knossos (also Cnossos, both pronounced ; grc, Κνωσός, Knōsós, ; Linear B: ''Ko-no-so'') is the largest Bronze Age archaeological site on Crete and has been called Europe's oldest city. Settled as early as the Neolithic period, the na ...

; on the site of Akrotiri; on the work of her father Spyridon; and on

ancient Greek religion Religious practices in ancient Greece encompassed a collection of beliefs, rituals, and mythology, in the form of both popular public religion and cult practices. The application of the modern concept of "religion" to ancient cultures has been ...

more widely. She has been described as 'a leading figure in the area of interconnections between the ancient Aegean and the wider world of the Eastern Mediterranean, the Near East, and Egypt'.

References

{{Authority control Greek women archaeologists Living people Archaeologists of the Bronze Age Aegean University of Colorado Boulder alumni Greek academics Year of birth missing (living people) Oberlin College faculty Archaeologists from Athens