Who is the author?

Ioannis Smyrnaios is an archaeologist based in Athens. He was born in Greece in 1976, and his difficult-to-pronounce last name reflects his Asia Minor descent. To his friends, he is also known as Yiannis, Yanni and Yan.

His early years

Ioannis spent his early school years in Athens, where he attended the 52nd Gymnasium and Lyceum of Kolonos, the former neighbourhood of the great philosopher Plato and the famous playwright Sophocles. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, the glamour of Kolonos had significantly declined from its glorious days in the 5th century BC. Just like many other contemporary teenagers of working-class background, Ioannis suffered hardships until he figured out what he wanted to do in life, but most of all, until he managed to find an opportunity to fulfil his dream.

Ioannis began working at 17 in a washing machine factory. He joined the military a year later to confront the brutality of human nature and his deep repulsion at following orders. After that, he spent almost a decade wandering through various professional fields, including catering, accounting, and trade. His early education included vocational training in Computing, Accounting, and Finance, after which he earned a Vocational College degree and a State Certification of Professional Skills as an accountant in 1998. He worked in accounting and finance for 5 years but changed careers after finding the work boring and the pay low.

From an early age, Ioannis had two passions: martial arts and foreign languages. In the former, he studied Kyokushinkai, Aikido, and Aikijutsu. In the latter, he studied English, German, French, Italian, Welsh, and Arabic. Between 1998 and 2002, he studied acoustic and electric guitar at the Pan-Ionian Music School. He became the guitarist for an infamous heavy metal band that dissolved in the mid-2000s without releasing a single album. Since then, he plays occasionally for fun; his last concert was in June 2026.

Studies and early involvement in archaeology (2002-2009)

Ioannis was always attracted to antiquities and archaeological sites. After all, this is one of the great advantages of having been born in Greece: antiquities are everywhere around you! During his vacations, Ioannis always enjoyed visiting old cities, archaeological sites, historical monuments and museums with collections of archaeological artefacts. To him, history and archaeology were always another passion. From 2000 onwards, he became involved in archaeological excavations, first as a volunteer and then as a site assistant. Although his early archaeological work was seasonal, he participated in numerous excavations in Crete, the Peloponnese, and Macedonia.

In 2002, Ioannis enrolled in the Greek Open University for the BA course ‘Studies in Hellenic Culture’. There, he studied a wide variety of modules such as: Introduction to Hellenic Culture Studies; Greek History; Ancient Greek and Byzantine Representational Arts and Architecture; Public and Private Life in Ancient Greece and Byzantium; Ancient Greek Literature; Modern Greek Literature; Ancient Greek theatre; Ancient Greek and Byzantine Philosophy; European Philosophy; Music and Dance in Ancient Greece and Byzantium; Archaeology in Greece; and finally, Modern Greek Theatre and Cinema. During his six years of study at the Greek Open University, he worked full-time and practised archaeology in his spare time. His BA studies were also challenged by the sudden loss of his entire family and by professional and economic misfortunes that followed shortly thereafter. With the help and support of a few good friends, Ioannis graduated from the Open University in July 2008.

From 2006, Ioannis slowly expanded his social network and contacts with people managing various international archaeological projects, primarily in the Netherlands and the UK. After finishing his BA in 2008, and with the full support of his lecturer and first mentor in archaeology, he decided to leave Greece and seek an archaeological career abroad.

In 2008, he moved to the UK to pursue his MA in ‘Ceramic and Lithic Analysis for Archaeologists’ at the University of Southampton. There, he was trained in the analysis of excavated pottery and worked stone; ceramic petrography, thin section analysis and interpretation; archaeological illustration; theoretical approaches in the analysis of ceramics and lithics in context; practical analysis of large ceramic and lithic assemblages, coming from a variety of archaeological contexts and cultural groups; recording methods; data analysis, presentation and publication; use of advanced archaeological software; and statistics. During his spare time, he attended modules in Osteoarchaeology (advanced human skeletal studies and bones in context) and Maritime Archaeology (ancient Mediterranean seafaring). He graduated in September 2009 after submitting his MA dissertation, titled “An Investigation of Ceramic Production in Meroitic Lower Nubia during the Period of Roman Occupation in Qasr Ibrim”.

Between September 2009 and April 2010, Ioannis travelled to various countries and participated in a range of international projects that broadened his personal and professional horizons. He lived for a short period in Belfast; he joined a medical expedition of Médecins du Monde on the island of Crete and worked as a coordinator in the organisation’s mobile dental unit; he participated in British and German excavations in Sudan; and finally, he was chosen to lead the Greek expedition of Médecins Sans Frontières in Haiti, at the time when earthquakes had inflicted severe damage to the island and its population.

Academic research and international projects (2010-2019)

In April 2010, Ioannis moved to Cardiff for his PhD on Greek Early Iron Age pottery. His project focused on the technological study of Athenian Geometric and Orientalising finewares (c. 900-600 BC), in relation to the broader social transformations of the Attic Early Iron Age and the rise of the Athenian polis. During his PhD studies, he engaged with archaeological theory, particularly behavioural analysis and the chaîne opératoire approach. He conducted ceramic analyses using advanced statistics and sophisticated microscopic techniques, including Thin Section Microscopy (TSM), Scanning Electron Microscopy coupled with Energy Dispersive X-Ray Spectroscopy (SEM-EDX), X-Ray Diffraction (XRD), and Energy Dispersive X-Ray Fluorescence (ED-XRF). He conducted extensive field research at the Athenian Agora in collaboration with the American School of Classical Studies at Athens; at the Kerameikos Museum in collaboration with the Greek Antiquities Services and the German Archaeological Institute at Athens; at the Museum of the British School at Athens and the Fitch Laboratory under the broader supervision of the British School; and finally, at the British Museum in London.

He has three years of postgraduate teaching experience (2013-2016) in modules such as the Archaeology of the Ancient Mediterranean Societies, Aegean Bronze Age, Classical Greece, Ceramics, Discovering Archaeology, Introduction to Greece and Rome, Great Discoveries in Archaeology, and Archaeological Illustration. He also has three years of community engagement experience as a coordinator in the SHARE with Schools outreach project; in archaeological excavations for volunteers and the broader public; in the CAER Heritage Project and the excavation of the Iron Age Caerau hillfort; in experimental archaeology workshops; and in laboratory-based archaeological demonstrations.

Ioannis’s PhD project was self-funded through personal work, and a bursary from the Greek Archaeological Committee UK covered part of his tuition fees. During his time at Cardiff, he worked several part-time jobs offered by the institution. More specifically, in 2010, he worked for the International Students Office, and between 2013 and 2016, he worked simultaneously for the Library Services and the Invigilation Office. During his last two years with the Invigilation Office, he was promoted to Senior Invigilator Supervisor.

When not in Wales, Ioannis continued his involvement in international archaeological projects. In 2011, he conducted ethnographic research on contemporary Cappadocian pottery production at Avanos, Turkey. In 2012, he worked as a ceramics specialist in Egypt, and more specifically at the Bubastis excavation, conducted jointly by the Universities of Potsdam and Würzburg, and the Tuna el-Gebel excavation, conducted by the University of Munich. That same year, he participated in an international conference at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbour, where he produced his first publication in the edited volume “Theoretical Approaches to the Archaeology of Ancient Greece”.

On Guy Fawkes Day, 5th November 2015, Ioannis submitted his PhD thesis under the title “The Correlation of Technological and Stylistic Changes, and Society, in the production of Attic Geometric and Orientalising finewares (c. 900 – 600 BC)”. He passed his PhD viva on 29th February 2016, a leap day that appears once every four years.

On the day of the British Referendum, 23rd June 2016, Ioannis moved to Ipswich, where he began his career in British Commercial Archaeology. He worked as a Senior Finds Officer for Suffolk Archaeology CIC for two years. He analysed and published various archaeological artefacts, including prehistoric and Roman pottery, fired clay, ceramic building material, worked and heat-altered lithics, shell, animal bone, iron, and ceramic and lithic small finds. He was also actively involved in public engagement activities in Suffolk, Cambridgeshire and Essex. On 15th July 2018, Ioannis moved to Milton Keynes and worked as a Finds Manager for Cotswold Archaeology for one year. His duties included the analysis and publication of archaeological artefacts from Eastern and Southern England; the training of staff on archaeological finds; the reviewing of study methodologies and reporting on inorganic finds; the development of new communication protocols and programming systems across the company’s offices; and finally, a variety of outreach activities in Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire.

In 2019, he was offered a Teaching Fellowship at the Open University of Cyprus, at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, for the programme ‘Studies in Hellenic Culture’. On 8th October 2019, Ioannis returned to his homeland, Greece, to reconnect with his past, continue his archaeological activities and expand his knowledge in new research areas.

The Greek reconnection (2019-2026)

During his work in Greece between October 2019 and October 2026, Ioannis was actively involved in teaching, research and publications, in both Classical Archaeology and other disciplines. At the same time, he offered his services as a freelance archaeologist, artefact specialist, archaeological illustrator and archaeological consultant in Greece and abroad. He became involved in the study of 19th and early 20th-century material culture in Greece and beyond, with particular interest in the archaeology of World Wars I and II. He was engaged in the promotion, study and preservation of recent material culture, and the study of artefacts that fell under the broader umbrella of ethnography. These included post-Ottoman ceramics, building materials, furniture, early electromechanical devices, textiles, jewellery, military equipment, ecclesiastical artefacts and recent works of representational art.

During the subsequent COVID-19 quarantines (2020-2022), Ioannis experimented with and expanded his operations in other commercial fields. In 2021 and early 2022, he followed vocational courses and training seminars in freehand sketching, computer illustration, architectural design and photography. In February 2021, he founded the Greek Real Estate Investments Group, an online platform for property agencies and private landlords active in Athens’ real estate market. His involvement in real estate and property investments led him to a different appreciation of modern architecture and city planning, areas in which he developed teaching materials and educational tours. In May 2021, he published his first book in Greek, titled “The Frappé Generation”. In July 2023, he published his second book in Greek, titled “The Meat Grinder”. In May 2025, he finished his third book in Greek, titled “The Parapsychologists”, which remains unpublished at the request of a friend. Together, the three books make up the author’s Cyprianic Trilogy. They are social fiction comedies inspired by real historical events that satirise the life and experiences of a convicted senior submarine officer.

In September 2022, Ioannis enrolled in the Sivitanidios Public School of Arts and Vocations, where he studied Mechanical Engineering part-time for three years. In June 2025, he graduated with two specialisations: (a) plumbing and hydraulic heating systems, and (b) refrigeration, ventilation and air-conditioning systems. Although his studies were fuelled by his curiosity and personal interest in engineering, his first specialisation proved useful in archaeology, an outcome that nobody would have expected.

Since the end of the COVID-19 pandemic in July 2022, Ioannis has worked as a freelance commercial archaeologist on major housing and infrastructure projects in Greece and abroad. In October 2023, he became a consulting partner at the Ilisos Archaeology Group, Greece’s first commercial archaeology unit. In April 2024, he was involved in the systematic excavation of three medieval kilns in Andalusia, Spain. In May 2025, he discovered and excavated under high pressure a Late Roman/Early Byzantine aqueduct site in Vrilissia, associated with a later extension of the Hadrianic Aqueduct of Athens. After tremendous effort, unusual workplace bullying and intimidation, and many institutional obstacles, the site was declared protected. That same year, Ioannis undertook an archaeological rescue survey at one of Attica’s oldest prehistoric defence sites, covering 3.2 acres alone, where, despite his efforts, the site was de-characterised for development.

Like many fieldwork veterans, Ioannis suffered various injuries during his involvement in commercial archaeology. During an excavation at a waterlogged site in 2024, he was nearly electrocuted due to a malfunctioning water pump. Today, he lacks two fingers, suffers from elbow epicondylitis and shoulder bursitis, and has lost part of his hearing after prolonged exposure to machining noise. Disappointed by the Greek Antiquities Service and Greek developers in general, he terminated his involvement in Greek commercial archaeology in early 2026.