High-above-the-mountains is a team-project made of three motivated researchers specialized in different fields of archaeology.
Members of the team are: Gianluca Cantoro, Stefania Michalopoulou and Christina Tsigonaki. Here few info about the three of us.
Gianluca Cantoro
Gianluca is landscape archaeologist and photointerpreter. His background is in Roman provinces archaeology (BA and MA at the University of Pisa, Italy) and aerial archaeology of mountainous landscapes (PhD on Crete at the University of Foggia, Italy). He is an active member in international communities of remote sensing experts and he often organizes workshops and summerschool in Europe, serving as aerial or ground tutor.
He had the opportunity to organize the first aerial archaeological survey in Crete (first flights in 2009 for INSTAP and then 2011 for IMS-FORTH) and the main idea for this project started then.
His actual fields of interest involve the use of modern digital technologies and tools (digital laser scanning and aerial/ground photogrammetry) for the documentation and study of cultural heritage.
Stefania Michalopoulou
Stefania Michalopoulou is archaeologist with specialization in Zooarchaeology and Prehistory. She studied at the University of Athens – Greece (BA, MA, PhD).
She has worked for the Greek Ministry of Culture and the National Hellenic Research Foundation in the past.
She was trained in archaeological excavation as student and later as member of research teams in various sites with chronology spanning from Paleolithic to Byzantine period.
Part of her work on zooarchaeological materials (big mammal fauna and herpetofauna mainly of Neolithic but also Archaic, Roman and Early Byzantine period’s) is in the process of being published.
Her research interests span from zooarchaeology and prehistory (her main fields of work) to ethnoarchaeology and landscape archaeology, with a principal focus on animal-landscape interactions.
Christina Tsigonaki
Christina Tsigonaki is assistant professor in Byzantine Archaeology at the Department of History & Archaeology of the University of Crete and member of the Institute of Mediterranean Studies (Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas).
She received a D.E.A. in Byzantine Archaeology from the University Paris I, Panthéon-Sorbonne. She received her Ph.D. from the same University with a scholarship by the Greek State Scholarship Foundation (IKY). She is a member of the interdisciplinary research group for Ancient Itanos, East Crete. Since 2009 she has been conducting the excavation of Sector II at Ancient Eleutherna, Central Crete. Her research interests are focused on the archaeology of the East Mediterranean at the early Byzantine period, with emphasis on architecture and topography.