The 33rd Annual Meeting of the European Society for Astronomy in Culture (SEAC) took place from September 4 to 8, 2026, in Volos, Thessaly, Greece, under the theme “Star Lore in the Land of the Centaurs.” At the conference, Eberhard Zangger, President of the Luwian Studies Foundation and a long-standing member of SEAC, presented findings from an ongoing research project entitled “Staging the Divine: Cosmology, Epiphany and Hydraulic Display at Eflatunpınar.” The project is being conducted in collaboration with Dr. Alper Aşınmaz of Goethe University Frankfurt and Prof. Nermin Atila of Hitit University in Çorum, Türkiye.

For Zangger, the conference also marked a return to the place where his career as a geoarchaeologist began. In the autumn of 1982, as part of his master’s thesis research, he and a fellow student spent two months conducting fieldwork in Volos to reconstruct changes in the coastline since the Neolithic period. The results of this study are still prominently featured on information panels at the archaeological site of Dimini and in visitor brochures.

Dr. Elisavet Nikolaou, Head of the Department of Classical Antiquities at the Ephorate of Antiquities of Volos, kindly guided Zangger on two days through the Mycenaean buildings excavated over recent decades on the Pefkakia peninsula and beneath the Neolithic settlement of Dimini. The photograph shows him standing among the remains of Megaron A at Dimini-Iolkos, an area currently closed to visitors.

The discussions at the conference and the visits to archaeological sites provided valuable insights and inspiration for further research. The exchanges also generated initial ideas for future collaborative projects and publications.