practices of his own time. His analysis in these articles has been criticised for assuming that the conclusion was self-evident, and offering little analysis or criticism of the sources beyond a face-value reading. When Jakob Fallmerayer argued in 1830 that the Greek population had been totally replaced during the Early Medieval period by Slavic migration, Pittakis showed him false manuscripts intended to discredit his hypothesis. Criticism Pittakis's lack of philological education and theoretical archaeological knowledge limited the effectiveness of his scholarship and restorations. His work has been described as 'empirical' rather than systematic, and often characterised by a failure to keep records of what he had removed, particularly of remains later than the Classical period. In particular, Ludwig Ross criticised his clearing work in the Propylaea for failing to make any record of the later buildings he demolished. He was further criticised in the contemporary press for his practice of building 'walls' by setting various antiquities into plaster, which often broke up ensembles or presented artefacts of different periods and provenances together, and by British contemporaries for his practice of storing antiquities away from public view, denying most scholars access to them. His unsystematic record-keeping meant that he often published the same object or inscription multiple times, sometimes giving contradictory accounts of the date and place of its discovery, or recorded finds without giving their proper context. Pittakis' collaborator, Alexandros Rizos Rangavis, later described his approach to restoration as 'unmethodical and by chance', and it was generally poorly received by both Greek and foreign observers. He has been criticised for undertaking restoration work with little prior study or documentation of the buildings, and for reconstructing both the Parthenon and the Erechtheion to place better-preserved items of masonry in more prominent positions, regardless of the original construction. His use of modern bricks where anastylosis could not be carried out as has been described as 'amateurish'. During his reconstruction of the Parthenon, he filled missing portions of the Doric columns with cylindrical brickwork, ignoring the fluting characteristic of the style. Fani Mallouchou-Tufano has described his restorative work as characterised by 'enthusiasm … innocence, naivity and ignorance', pointing to his use of improvised material, including tree trunks, to restore the orthostates of the Erechtheion, as well as to a story reported by Rangavis of Pittakis' improvised repair to a column of the Propylaia, using a large hand saw, which almost caused the collapse