ABSTRACT
A museum, as a place of safekeeping for the material heritage of the past, is asked to play a multitude of roles. The exhibition, as its title indicates, focused on the first decade of the Archaeological Service of Macedonia, founded amid the political, military, national, social and economic turmoil that swept the region. This chapter highlights the historical-political significance attached to the antiquities and the degree to which archaeological research was influenced by the historical circumstances of the time. The Ephorate of Antiquities was one of the first state services to be founded in Thessaloniki, on 9 November 1912, just a fortnight after the city's liberation, in order to protect the antiquities of Macedonia. Among the first acquired antiquities a prominent position is held by the finds of an excavation that took place in the summer of 1913, by the newly-founded Antiquities Service, on Greek soil.
