Giorgio Buchner

Giorgio Buchner (born August 8, 1914 in Munich - † February 2, 2005 in Porto d'Ischia on the Italian island of Ischia ) was a German-Italian archaeologist who was primarily known through his excavations of the early Greek settlement Pithekoussai on Ischia and the discovery of the so-called Nestor Cup became known.

Giorgio Buchner was the only son of the biologist Paul Buchner and the Italian artist Massimiliana Coppa. He attended high school in Breslau , began studying in Leipzig in 1934 before emigrating to Italy, where he continued to study in Naples and Rome. In 1938 he graduated from the University of Rome with a degree in prehistory . For his dissertation, he carried out excavations on Vivara (at Punta Capitello ) and on Ischia ( Castiglione d'Ischia ), each of which uncovered the remains of Bronze Age settlements. Noteworthy were fragments of Mycenaean ceramics , which came to light in Castiglione d'Ischia, in larger quantities on Vivara and which testify to early trade relations with Greece. The results of these excavations were never finally published later.

In 1940 Buchner took on the Italian citizenship. His appointment as chief civil engineer of the British Navy stationed on Porto d'Ischia in 1944 enabled him to continue his archaeological research and to achieve the establishment of a small museum with the local authorities, which he opened together with the volcanologist Alfred Rittmann in 1947. From 1946 Buchner belonged to the staff of the Soprintendenza archeologica di Napoli .

In 1952 he began in Lacco Ameno with the excavations of Pithekoussai, an early colony or trading post of Euboean Greeks from the 8th century BC. BC, on Ischia. First he explored the necropolis, which brought to light the so-called Nestor Cup, which bears one of the oldest inscriptions in the Greek alphabet . He then excavated the Acropolis of Pithekoussai on Monte di Vico and a nearby metalworking district of the settlement.

After leaving the Soprintendenza archeologica di Napoli in 1979, Buchner was made honorary curator of the antiquities on Ischia for life. In this role he worked out plans for a museum in Lacco Ameno, which was finally opened in 1999.

Publications (selection)

• Vita e dimora umana nelle Isole Flegrean dalla preistoria ai tempi romani , Roma 1938 (partial publication of his dissertation)
• With David Ridgway: Pithekoussai I. La necropoli. Rome 1976
• With Costanza Gialanella, Museo Archeologico di Pithecusae Isola d'Ischia. Istituto Poligrafico dello Stato - Libreria dello Stato, Rome 1994
• With Alfred Rittmann, Origine e passato dell'isola d'Ischia. Gaetano Macchiaroli, Naples 1948

Web links

Obituary by David Ridgeway , in the Independent, April 8, 2005

literature

• Marco Pacciarelli: Giorgio Buchner e l'archeologia preistorica delle isole tirreniche. In: Constanza Gialanella - Pier Giovanni Guzzo (Ed.): Dopo Giorgio Buchner. Studi e richerche su Pithekoussai. Atti della Giornata di Studi Ischia, 20 giugno 2009. Naus, Pozzuoli 2011, pp. 43-56.
• Felice Senatori: Nella 'preistoria scientifica' di Giorgio Buchner. Lo scavo del Castiglione a Ischia nella corrispondenza (1939-1943) con Umberto Zanotti Bianco. In: Oebalus. Studi sulla Campania nell'Antichità 7, 2012, pp. 295–361.