In Greece, and about 2,000 miles from the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, UC Berkeley is celebrating 100 years of archaeological excavation at a site of the ancient Panhellenic Games, a religious and athletic event that inspired the modern Olympics.
Berkeley’s Nemea Center for Classical Archaeology in Ancient Nemea, Greece, also is marking the campus’s 50th year there. The 45-acre site opened in 1924, but Berkeley arrived in the early 1970s. Its first full season of excavation was in 1974, with Stephen Miller, a Berkeley classics professor, as director.
Since then, faculty, students and local residents have unearthed important and headline-grabbing antiquities that include a stadium and track, an entrance tunnel lined with ancient runners’ graffiti; the 4th century Temple of Zeus, where athletes made sacrifices before competing; an early Christian basilica; a hero’s shrine; a bathhouse; and what’s considered the world’s oldest remaining athletic locker room.
Last April, as a nod to the historical importance of the site and the excavation, research and conservation done there, the Olympic torch passed through Ancient Nemea on its way to Paris.