Dear William,

Happy New Year to all from CAARI! New Year’s Day—Protochronia—stands at the very center of the Feasts of Christmas here, and for children it truly is the center, since that is when St. Basil brings the presents. January 1 is St. Basil’s feast day. It opens, either at midnight or in the morning, with the traditional vasilopita or St. Basil’s cake, a sweet confection with endlessly varied recipes but always a coin baked into the dough. It is customarily cut by the head of the household, with the first slice for Christ, the next for St. Basil, and then one for each family member, whose name is spoken as it is cut. The person in whose slice the coin appears will have luck in the coming year. CAARI Director Lindy Crewe has provided a picture and recipe of the vasilopita prepared by her husband, Dr. Manolis Melissaris aka ‘The λoneλy oλive,’ a consummate chef, so we can share the custom with you just below.

From holiday delectations, Dr. Crewe turns to her “Message from the Director” to relate the seasonal activities of the Institute. Then Professor Bleda Düring shares a beautiful reflection on his time as CAARI’s Scholar in Residence during the fall semester. He shows so clearly the deep value to researchers of the fellowships that CAARI can offer thanks to the generosity of friends and supporters like you. A very different but equally evocative insight into the fruits of one of CAARI’s fellowships is presented then by artist, cartoonist, and archaeological illustrator Glynnis Fawkes. It is a painting by her artist father, Tom Fawkes, who spent some time at CAARI while Glynnis was a Fellow. It captures so beautifully the combination of liberation and concentration that many of us feel when working in the library, and we thank Glynnis warmly for making us aware of it. A reflection on the value and cost of CAARI’s fellowships follows. And at the very end of the newsletter, do note the invitation to all dig directors and chefs to share their digs’ favorite recipes for the next newsletter.



Vasilopita (New Year’s Cake)

A Recipe by Acclaimed Greek Cook Chryssa Paradissi (Izmir, 1908 – Athens, 1987)

4 cups of flour

2 cups sugar

6 level teaspoons baking powder

1 cup butter (melted)

1½ cup milk

A dash of vanilla extract or zest of one orange (or both, to taste)

3 eggs

Icing sugar



Mix together well the flour, sugar, and baking powder.

Add the melted butter, milk, and vanilla extract and/or orange zest.

Whisk the mixture for about 2 minutes (if using an electric whisk, more if by hand), then add eggs and whisk for an extra 2 minutes or until all the ingredients are well blended.

Pour the cake mix into a greased 26cm/10in diameter tin lined with baking paper.

Slip a lightweight coin (the ‘flouri’) wrapped in tin foil in the cake trying not to let it sink to the bottom. Bake the cake at 180 degrees Celsius/356 Fahrenheit (either fan assisted or not) for about an hour or until a wooden skewer or a knife comes out clean.

When cool, turn the cake out and sprinkle a layer of icing sugar (disguising the location of the coin, should it have come through).

Regarding recipes: Be sure to note the summons at the very end of this newsletter calling on all dig chefs and directors to submit your dig’s FAVORITE recipe for inclusion in the next newsletter.



Message from CAARI’s Director

Dear friends and supporters of CAARI,

It is a sunny start to the New Year here in Cyprus and we are back at CAARI planning for what looks to be a very busy year. Our final lecture for 2022 was by our current Peltenburg Fellow, Dr Giulia Muti, who gave us a fascinating insight into prehistoric textiles. Our audience included not only archaeologists but also professional weavers on Cyprus, eager to learn how textiles were produced in the past. You can find the link to YouTube here at http://caari.org/events/. We are still in the process of scheduling the lecture series for the spring but will have the full program up soon. So keep an eye on our website, and do join us for some exciting archaeology content, live or online.

We’ve seized the opportunity over the quiet winter period to undertake some refurbishments in the residence. We’ve repainted some of the rooms and replaced the wooden shutters on the building that were in dire need of repair. We all adore our glorious listed building but it is certainly an ongoing process keeping it maintained! For now, we are ready to welcome the 2023 cohort of students and researchers who begin to trickle in from this week. The Fellowship Committee is also in the process of assessing the applications for the fellowships for this year and we have an impressive number and quality of applicants.

We cut our special CAARI vasilopita this week during our regular CAARI Wednesday coffee morning with some of our resident researchers and friends. I was lucky enough to find the ‘flouri’ in my slice, hopefully bringing luck for the year!

CAARI staff and researchers preparing to cut the vasilopita

I close with a very important ‘save the date’ notice! We have scheduled the annual CAARI Summer Archaeological Workshop for Saturday the 17^th June this year, back at our favorite venue, the Bank of Cyprus Cultural Foundation at Phaneromeni. We look forward to welcoming all the local and international archaeologists and students back for the workshop, and of course the evening party at CAARI, after a break of three years.

With very best wishes for a peaceful, productive and happy 2023,

Lindy Crewe, PhD

Director, CAARI

My Stay as a CAARI Scholar in Residence

 Prof. Bleda Düring

Leiden University

In the month of November 2022 I had the pleasure to stay at CAARI as a scholar in residence, thereby fulfilling a dream of many years. I had first stayed at CAARI briefly in 2018 – when I was in Nicosia for a talk, and I was immediately charmed by the building, the library and the general atmosphere of the place.

Since 2015 I have been directing excavations on Cyprus at the site of Chlorakas-Palloures, located near Paphos, an amazing Chalcolithic (ca 3500-2500 BCE) settlement with very rewarding finds (see www.palloures.eu). Yet, after seven seasons at the site, I had barely seen anything of Cyprus beyond the Paphos region, and I had not really had the opportunity to engage substantially with the Cypriot archaeological community. This was mainly due to my obligations at home at the University and of course to my family, which meant that staying beyond the excavation season was usually not an option. However, I felt it was not right to only come to Cyprus for my own site and not engage with its archaeology and society more broadly.

So, when I had a sabbatical at Leiden University – a reward for four years of senior administrative duties – I had little doubt about where I wanted to go. The stay at CAARI was a perfect place to rekindle my research. It has a library well stocked with publications that one will not find in most other places, and just getting back up to speed on archaeological publications was one of the major things I did at CAARI. 

I was also able to get to know better the archaeologists based on Cyprus, including staff working at the University of Cyprus, the Cyprus Institute, CAARI, and scholars such as Bernard Knapp and Jenny Webb working in Nicosia. Most of these colleagues I already knew at some level and with some of them I have collaborative projects, but often my contact with them consisted only of an email correspondence. The opportunity to talk to these colleagues more extensively was invaluable, and in many cases it helped with developing future research plans. In Nicosia there is a remarkably lively archaeological community, with talks at the Archaeological Research Unit, at CAARI, and at the Cyprus Institute, and there were numerous excursions to archaeological sites. I presented two talks myself – which helped me sharpen my ideas and get feedback from colleagues, and was able to meet many colleagues through these activities.

Another great benefit of staying at CAARI was the opportunity to see more of Cyprus and its archaeology. I have fond memories of visits to the mines of Asgata and Mathiatis, and of seeing copper smelting and pottery production in action (my thanks go out to Vasiliki Kassianidou for organizing these trips). 

Mathiatis Mine

I visited prehistoric sites in the Troodos, hiked in its mountains, and I visited my own excavation site – and found an amazing green paradise, so different from the site in summer! 

Palloures in November

I also spent happy hours in various museums in Nicosia with archaeological collections, noticing things I had previously overlooked.

Finally, I have spent my time at CAARI working on new projects and publications. In particular, I am working on analyzing anew how Cyprus became reconnected to the broader eastern Mediterranean in the third millennium BC by looking at this issue through an Anatolian perspective. While this project will take some months to finish, my time at CAARI provided a very good start to explore data and previous scholarship on the matter. 

All in all the time spent at CAARI was really valuable and I feel grateful to the CAARI staff, to Lindy Crewe, Katerina Mavromichalou, and Anthoulla Vassiliades, for making we feel welcome and at home. I hope to return someday…



 Tom Hawkes,

View from the French Window in the CAARI Library

Glynnis Fawkes

University of Vermont

In June 2000, at the end of my Fulbright year at CAARI, my parents, artists Tom and Judy Fawkes, visited me at CAARI, and my dad took photos in the library that he later referenced to make this painting. My dad's career spans decades, and his work is included in numerous private and museum collections. He paints Mediterranean, especially Italian, landscapes, gardens, and interiors, and exhibits at the Russo Lee Gallery in Portland, OR. From this trip to Cyprus he made several paintings, including the view from the French window in the CAARI library. I remember he asked if he might temporarily shift some tables (careful not to disturb scholars at work?) so he could get a clear shot of the whole doorway. I was so glad to have CAARI as a base for my parents to explore the island—as CAARI was my home for that year and beyond.

One can almost feel the warm, fragrant air wafting in the window here. The painting is now at the Russo Lee Gallery in Portland, Oregon. You might recognize it, as it appeared on CAARI’s Giving Tuesday postcard this year. 

Glynnis Fawkes’ own images and publications appear on her Web site, www.glynnisfawkes.com/. On the CAARI Web site, she has contributed an overview of her career as it developed from her year at CAARI at a Fulbright Fellow: see caari.org/former-caari-fellows/.  



Funding CAARI’s Fellowships: Giving Tuesday

Professor Düring’s vivid account of his recent research time at CAARI, Tom Fawkes’ warm evocation of sunlit mornings in CAARI’s library, and Glynnis Fawkes’ own reflections on the significance of her Fulbright year at CAARI all illustrate how rich and wide-ranging the rewards of CAARI’s fellowships can be. We believe it is crucial to maintain CAARI’s fellowships: they vitalize our community by drawing ever fresh people and ideas into it; at the same time they help sustain graduate students, support significant research projects, and attract capable, ambitious minds to the field. But rising travel costs and surging local expenses are making it ever harder to sustain the requisite funds.   

So CAARI has highlighted Giving Tuesday and earmarked all Giving Tuesday donations to fellowships. Many of you did give this year, and we send warm thanks for your generosity. Giving Tuesday itself will recur each November on the first Tuesday after the USA’s Thanksgiving, but donations to it can be made at any time, using the dropdown box at www.caari.org/donate to earmark the funds for fellowships.

We have also created a new page on our Web site: caari.org/former-caari-fellows/ (or click on Fellowships, and you’ll see this link). This is the page with Glynnis Fawkes’ reflection on her year at CAARI as a Fulbright Fellow. We will add to it regularly. Log on at intervals to see its new statements and to be inspired by them. And if you have held a fellowship at CAARI, please send us a reflection on its value in your career, with a JPG or PNG image of you, for inclusion on that page (acarr@smu.edu). 



Let the stories of CAARI’s Fellows inspire you!

WWW.CAARI.ORG/SUPPORT

or

We extend our heartfelt thanks to all who help us realize CAARI’s mission of supporting new and seriously innovative research on Cyprus itself and its eastern Mediterranean context.

For the Next CAARI Newsletter

We invite ALL dig directors and chefs to send your dig’s FAVORITE recipe to acarr@smu.edu for inclusion in our early spring newsletter. If possible, send a picture to illustrate it! The newsletter will be an inventory of great recipes to strengthen stamina and stretch the budget. And if they help you save on meals at home, send the savings on to www.caari.org/donate for CAARI fellowships!