This contribution offers an overview of recent fieldwork and museum-based projects focused on the Rhodian countryside and Dodecanese islands. The excavations conducted by the Ephorate of Antiquities of the Dodecanese over the past two decades, paired with the study of Rhodian collections in the Louvre and British Museum, among other museums, have developed and promoted the archaeological record of the region. The Kymissala Archaeological Research Project led by the University of the Aegean and a collaborative doctoral project investigating the British Museum’s collections from Kamiros each demonstrate the potential of revisiting historic excavations through topographical surveys and archival documentation.

Over the past year the School has delivered a rich and varied research programme combining a range of projects in antiquity, spanning the Palaeolithic to Byzantine periods, science-based archaeology to epigraphy (including the work of the Fitch Laboratory and the Knossos Research Centre), with research in sectors from the fine arts to history and the social sciences (see Map 2).

At Knossos, new investigation in the suburb of Gypsadhes, directed by Ioanna Serpetsedaki (23rd EPCA), Eleni Hatzaki (Cincinnati), Amy Bogaard (Oxford) and Gianna Ayala (Sheffield), forms part of Oxford University's ERC-funded project Agricultural Origins of Urban Civilisation. The Gypsadhes excavation features large-scale bioarchaeological research, aimed at providing the fine-grained information necessary to reconstruct the Knossian economy through time.

Votive gifts from Sicily and southern Italy are most prominent among the objects discovered in Greek sanctuaries, especially Olympia, the most significant location for such material in Greece. Foreign objects from the west were an early focus of archaeologists working on Olympia (for example Karo 1937; Kunze 1951; Kilian 1977a; 1977b; von Hase 1979; 1997; Herrmann 1983; Moustaka 1985; Kyrieleis 1986; Söldner 1994; Strøm 2000; Naso 2000a; 2000b; 2006; 2011; 2012; Baitinger 2013; Aurigny 2016), in particular spectacular pieces with inscriptions, such as two bronze helmets of the central Italian Negau type (Fig. 84) (Egg 1986: 51–61, 198–99, nos 185–86, pls 108, 109a). The inscription confirms the dedication by Hiero I, the tyrant of Syracuse, following his victory over the Etruscans at the naval Battle of Cumae in 474 BC. As we know from Pindar's victory odes and from monuments dedicated at Olympia, the powerful tyrants of Sicily maintained strong links to the sanctuary (for example Philipp 1992; 1994; Giangiulio 1993; Di Vita 2005; Dreher 2013).