The 3.43 square kilometer island of Delos is designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site due to its prominence as an Ancient Greek trading center and sanctuary of Apollo. When the French Archaeological School began excavations there in the 1870s, they employed peasants from the neighboring island of Mykonos who had rented small plots of land to farm and to graze their animals. These peasants developed an intimate knowledge of the island’s landscape, climate, and geology that was reflected in the humble dwellings that they built for themselves out of locally sourced materials, including pieces from ancient ruins. Boulouki, a travelling workshop of architects, engineers, historians, and conservationists reviving traditional building techniques, is now working with the Ephorate of Antiquities of the Cyclades and the French Archaeological School to restore one such dwelling, the Farmstead of Markos, named after the last farmer who lived on the island. For their SNFPHI project, Boulouki will create an accessible digital archive—encompassing oral testimonies from the farmers’ descendants, photographs, architectural drawings and reports from the restoration project —that explores Delos’ recent agricultural history and how farmers-excavators related to the ancient past. The archive will be presented through a series of exhibitions in Delos, Mykonos, and Athens and accompanied by workshops where participants will work with archive materials to create comics depicting Markos’ experiences as a farmer and excavator.

Image: Farmstead on Delos. © Boulouki 2024.