Treasure Traditions in Greece (Oxford Treasure Seminar Series)

In this talk I will survey the diversity of treasure traditions in Greece. Treasures may take many forms beyond objects buried with the intention of later recovery by their owners. In general, treasures are valuables currently hidden and thus mainly objects of the imagination, the location of which may be revealed in mystical revelations, sometimes in dreams. Treasures may be guarded by spirits and difficult to recover. The search for them may be anti-social or criminal. Treasures, I contend, are like rivets holding the past and the present together. In imagining them and occasionally finding them Greek people engage in a relationship to the past that promises to open a new future.