Tracing “Greek” Heritage: Anthropological Insights into Intangible Heritages, Collective Memory, and Identity on the Black Sea Littoral

Abstract:Despite its public invisibility, fragments and transfigurations of Greek heritage continue to permeate and affect the social lives of local communities in the Trabzon region. An examination of the persistence of Greek heritage in Trabzon suggests that heritage should not be sought solely through material traces and remnants: intangible heritages take peculiar shapes in localized contexts in relation to members’ wider socio-economic and political engagements in the present, requiring researchers to be attuned to discreet, somewhat mythical, non-public, and elusive aspects of local socialities.