the inaccuracy with which he reconstructed or interpreted certain texts. His reconstructions of Athenian monuments have also been criticised for their haphazard methods, and for the licence with which Pittakis removed post-Classical structures and reorganised ancient remains. Doubts have also been raised as to Pittakis' scholarly integrity, particularly concerning matters pertaining to Greek nationalism. In November 2013, a colloquium in Pittakis' memory was held at the Epigraphical Museum in Athens, entitled 'Light upon the Stones' (). Nationalism As a young man, Pittakis was a member of the nationalist Filiki Eteria, and expressed Greek nationalist views throughout his life. The Archaeological Society of Athens, which he helped to found and in which he played a leading role until 1859, has been described as 'an intransigent ideological exponent of pure Classicism throughout the 19th century', and as both 'elitist' and 'archaistic'. Reflecting in 1836 on his experience of archaeology before the War of Independence, he wrote of his 'fear of the Turks', and the haste with which he was forced to carry out his informal archaeological work on the Acropolis during the occupation. In support of his excavations of the Athenian Agora in the area of Vrysaki, Pittakis claimed that all but 60 houses in Athens had been destroyed by the Turks, a figure questioned by modern studies. Pittakis' accounts of the Turks' indifferent or destructive attitude to antiquities have been interpreted as part of a commonplace in pre-revolutionary Greece, where the Ottomans were presented as religious zealots liable to destroy Greek monuments: an argument which has been called 'overstated' in modern times, but which was used in the 19th century as a 'colonial tool' to justify the removal of antiquities to European collections and, after independence, to justify the demolition of Ottoman remains by presenting them as of little value compared with the 'authentic' Classical remains beneath them. From 1836 onwards, he continually obstructed and frustrated British efforts to obtain plaster casts of the Parthenon sculptures still stored on the Acropolis, which Charles Newton, the Keeper of the British Museum, complained had left the sculptures there 'as leaves torn out of a manuscript are to the book itself.' In 1852, Pittakis published a series of articles entitled 'Materials to be used to prove that the current inhabitants of Greece are descendants of the Ancient Greeks'. In these papers, he attempted to find analogues in Classical literary sources for popular phrases and