ABSTRACT
One of the greatest demographic upheavals in Greece began in 1873 when masses of Greeks flooded into the United States in search of work. The movement was so widespread that between 1900 and 1915 no less than one quarter of adult Greek males had braved the transatlantic journey.1 When the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 placed restrictive quotas on immigration, the next wave of Greeks entering the U.S. dissipated.2 Hence 1873 and 1924 bracket a finite period of time when histories of Greece and America directly intersected. The demographic magnitude of this population shift left permanent marks on American society, evident in the foundation of Greek communities in every state and the unprecedented abandonment of the Greek countryside. Unlike other ethnic minorities of the U.S., not all Greeks naturalized; almost 40% of the half-million admitted to the U.S. before 1931 returned to their homeland.3 Although xenitia (“life in the foreign land”) has become an integral part of Greece’s 20th-century national narrative, it has not received
the scholarly attention it deserves.4 Caught between two nations and two separate academic traditions, the material culture of xenitia has slipped through the cracks. For Greeks, archaeology is defined as the study of antiquity, an endeavor deeply intertwined with the construction of the nation-state. Archaeology and modernity are hence mutually exclusive, leaving an insurmountable gap between New and Old World traditions.5 In America, Greek archaeology is subsumed under the discipline of Classical Studies. Americans studying the Ancient Greek world are trained in an academic enclave that offers limited exposure to the archaeology of other periods and locales.6 Surprisingly enough, most classical archaeologists have never used a spade in their own backyard. The possibility of Greek-American archaeology, therefore, seems to be condemned by both Greek and American institutions and attitudes. Our inability to design trans-geographic investigations is unfortunate, since archaeology commands the theoretical foundations and methodological techniques necessary for a full exploration of migration, ethnicity, and acculturation.7
