The archaeology of classical Greece developed in the shadow of Greek historical scholarship, and it has restricted itself too modestly to the study of individual artefacts. A wide variety of modern developments in archaeology have been neglected, and classical archaeology has become something of a backwater. The contributors to this book review the history of the field and aim to demonstrate that modern archaeological approaches can contribute to a richer understanding of Greek society. They also insist that this complex, literate and highly unusual system of states poses important questions for archaeologists of other regions.