Imagining Macedonia in Prehistory, ca. 1900-1930

My subject is the peculiar reputation Macedonia acquired in the discipline of Aegean prehistory. The province, I observe, came to be regarded as not simply deficient by comparison with that discipline-s core provinces (mainly in the south of Greece), but as their very antithesis, their 'Other'. This happened as soon as prehistoric research in Macedonia began, in the early decades of the 20th century. I turn, therefore, to the prehistorians- texts from that period, and try to document the tropes in which Macedonia's alterity was cast. I also trace the epistemic effects of those tropes, the research questions they engendered and the limits to knowledge they prescribed. I also try to historicize the development of Macedonia's alterity by placing it in the context of early 20th-century disciplinary premises and quests.