Semni Papaspyridi-Karouzou (Greek: Σέμνη Παπασπυρίδη-Καρούζου; 1897 – 8 December 1994) was a Greek classical archaeologist who specialized in the study of pottery from ancient Greece. She was the first woman to join the Greek Archaeological Service; she excavated in Crete, Euboea, Thessaly, and the Argolid, and worked as curator of ceramic collections at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens for over thirty years. She experienced political persecution under the Greek military junta of 1967–1974. She has been described by the archaeologists Marianna Nikolaidou and Dimitra Kokkinidou as "perhaps the most important woman in Greek archaeology", and by the newspaper To Vima as "the last representative of the generation of great archaeologists".
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Semni Karouzou in the context of Greek Archaeological Service
The Greek Archaeological Service (Greek: Αρχαιολογική Υπηρεσία, romanised: Archaiologikí Ypiresía) is a state service, under the auspices of the Greek Ministry of Culture, responsible for the oversight of all archaeological excavations, museums and the country's archaeological heritage in general.
The Greek Archaeological Service is the oldest such institution in Europe: it was founded in 1833, on the back of state efforts to regulate antiquities that had been ongoing since at least 1825, and given its legal basis in 1834. Its officers were known as "ephors" for most of its history, and have included some of Greece's foremost archaeologists, including Christos Tsountas, Valerios Stais, and Semni Karouzou. Its directors, originally under the title of "Ephor General", have included Kyriakos Pittakis, Panagiotis Kavvadias and Spyridon Marinatos, and have been influential both in the excavation and conservation of Greek antiquities and in the shaping of archaeological law.