Remote Sensing with Giannis Apostolou – Mountain Stories, Mountain Futures
In this episode Jason König and Faidon Moudopoulos-Athanasiou interview Giannis Apostolou about his work as a landscape archaeologist. Giannis is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford.
Giannis first explains his family connections to the mountains, and then introduces the topography and culture of the region he works on, Grevena in northern Greece.
As Giannis explains, one of the key goals of his work is to reconstruct the past landscapes of regions that in the past have been viewed as outside history. That involves looking beyond literary sources, with their stereotypes of uncivilised rural populations.
For example, he aims to generate a more complex history of the phenomenon of erosion, viewing it not straightforwardly as a matter of environmental degradation, but also as an opportunity for cultural adaptation.
Giannis then goes on to talk about the ‘remote sensing’ techniques that lie at the heart of his work, for example aerial photography, satellite imagery, and laser technology, with its capacity to reveal structures and settlements that have previously been hidden from view. All of that is combined with local testimony, which plays a crucial role in building up a coherent picture.
One of the contributions the project has made has been to reconstruct a very long history of habitation long before the Hellenistic period that helps us to challenge stereotypes of this and other mountain regions as marginal.
Finally we talk about future challenges for Grevena, especially the challenge of finding ways to bring people into the region, in the face of depopulation and economic decline, and the lack of visibility for landscape archaeology as an academic discipline in Greece.
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Sound editor: Zofia Guertin
Video editor: Mary Woodcock Kroble