Tatiana Markaki, Associate Professor at the University of Amsterdam, will speak about her book Women and material culture in 17th-century Crete. Insights from the Venetian notarial archives
Saturday, APRIL 18
7:30 PM
at Stegi VITSENTZOS KORNAROS(V. Kornarou 97, Sitia)
The book examines the material daily life of women in Crete during the late Venetian rule, a period that chronologically coincides with the era of Vitsentzos Kornaros (1600-1650). The monograph is a scholarly work aimed at an English-speaking audience to contribute to the integration of the case of Crete’s material culture into the corresponding European context during the 17th century and to the understanding of women’s material world in the wider Mediterranean region.
The research is based on the quantitative and qualitative analysis of women’s movable property inventories from the State Archives of Venice and offers interesting information about the possessions of women living in the geographical district of Candia (territorio di Candia) and who are of marriageable age. The abundant extensive descriptions of objects and, especially, their valuation, differentiate the Cretan archival documents from corresponding sources in European research on material culture. The detailed records ‘depict’ goods for which no archaeological remains have been preserved in Crete, and their valuation offers the possibility of a comparative approach.
This approach to the study of material goods from the urban area of Candia, from rural settlements in Crete, and from Venice itself, reveals and documents specific trends in domestic material culture, such as practices of appropriation, conspicuous consumption, and cultural exchanges between the metropolis and Venetian possessions. At the same time, the relationships between material objects, intangible culture, and female identities are highlighted. Finally, the importance of the book also lies in offering unique indications for the material choices of a demographic group often underrepresented in historiography, as the book focuses on archival material concerning women from the middle and lower social strata on the island.
✴︎ TATIANA MARKAKI is an Associate Professor and Director of the Undergraduate Program in Modern Greek Language and Culture at the University of Amsterdam (UvA). She studied Modern Greek History at the Universities of Athens and Amsterdam, and Music at the National Conservatory of Athens. She was a scholar of the Academy of Athens at the Hellenic Institute of Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Studies in Venice and conducted extensive archival research at the State Archives of Venice.
She performs administrative, teaching, and research duties in the Department of Modern Greek Studies, which is the only university institution in the Benelux that offers a full cycle of undergraduate and postgraduate studies in Modern Greek Language and Culture. She has served as an elected member of various administrative bodies within the Faculty of Humanities and the wider University of Amsterdam. She founded the Marilena Laskaridis Chair of Modern Greek Studies at the University of Amsterdam, which has been successfully operating for almost a decade. She has been president and/or board member of the Dutch Society of Modern Greek Studies, the European Society of Modern Greek Studies, and the Supervisory Board of the Netherlands Institute at Athens.
At a broader social level, for many years she has been a (co-)organizer of diverse educational and cultural events concerning the promotion of Byzantine, post-Byzantine, and modern Greek culture in the Netherlands.
Her teaching focuses on social and cultural history in Greece and the Mediterranean from the 12th century to the present, translation, and learning Greek as a second language. Her research focuses on aspects of material culture in the Venetian-ruled regions of the Greek world, Italy, and the Netherlands, gender studies, socio-economic and cultural history, and translation studies. She recently published the monograph Women and Material Culture in 17th-Century Crete. Insights from the Venetian Notarial Archives. (Alexandros Press, Leiden 2025)