Greetings!
It’s hot in Nicosia, heralding summer. Though many of us can’t travel to Cyprus yet, CAARI’s doors do await us. The Institute has triumphed over the pandemic’s adversities and anticipates full summer occupancy and the steady resurgence of archaeological work over the coming year. 

We have many new faces. With pride, we welcome a full roster of ambitious new fellowship recipients who will come to CAARI over the year ahead. Their projects are outlined below. We also have new staff members. Katerina Mavromichalou, familiar from her years as CAARI Librarian, has succeeded Vathoulla Moustoukki as CAARI’s Administrator; Anthoulla Vassiliades has assumed Katerina’s position as Librarian. We will include interviews with both in the next news-flash.

But new faces are counterbalanced by sudden and deeply felt losses. This news-flash was composed to memorialize Dr. Carole McCartney, an outstanding archaeologist who was also a staunch and dynamic friend of CAARI. Following the report from the Director, we offer our tribute to Dr. McCartney, written by Alison South, herself a noted archaeologist and long-time CAARI trustee.  
The day the news-flash was originally to have been sent, we received the sad news that Bryan Wilkins, President of CAARI’s Board, had passed away. CAARI’s President since 2015, Bryan had come to know Cyprus as a child when his father served as the U.S. Ambassador to Cyprus. Though his own profession was as a financial analyst and journalist, he remained informed and deeply interested in Cyprus and its archaeology. He steered CAARI though the completion of its new library in 2016, its 40th Birthday celebration in 2018, and the trials of the pandemic in 2020. A fuller tribute will come in the next news-flash.

Both Carole and Bryan strengthened CAARI, as you can see in our ample news below. The Director reports a successful grant; we introduce seven new fellows; and we close with a message from Vathoulla Moustoukki thanking all who joined in wishing her well in retirement.    
Message from CAARI’s Director
 
Dear friends and supporters of CAARI,
Though we feel the losses conveyed here, we are also happy to report the good news that Cyprus is moving further out of the restrictions we’ve been living under for much of this year, and we are feeling optimistic that the situation here is improving. CAARI staff will all be fully vaccinated within the next fortnight so we are as prepared as we can be to receive visitors as they are able to arrive. We still have limits on numbers permitted in the library and we will be maintaining our social distancing and hygiene protocols but now with the warm weather it is pleasant to meet up with friends and colleagues outdoors.

CAARI has been busy online and all our lectures are now up on our YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/c/CAARICyprus.. We held a workshop in April for the participants of our conference held in collaboration with the British Museum: ‘Empire and Excavation: Critical Perspectives on Archaeology in British Period Cyprus, 1878–1960’ and we plan to publish this volume in 2022. Our last two online lectures have been delivered by fellow Australians (pure co-incidence really!) and we’ve held these events in cooperation with the Australian High Commission in Cyprus. If you missed Andrew Sneddon’s fascinating lecture on Bronze Age Alambra in March you can find it on CAARI’s YouTube channel. Many of you will be keen to hear the lecture delivered just this past week by former CAARI Director Robert Merrillees on the topic of ‘Leonardo da Vinci's legendary visit to Cyprus in 1481 A.D. and its link to Lefkara’.

CAARI received a Shepard Urgent Action Grant from ASOR at the beginning of the year to enable us to refurbish the Late Chalcolithic (c. 2900–2700 BC) roundhouse replica that serves as a visitor centre for the archaeological site of Kissonerga-Mosphilia.
The mud of the roundhouse walls had degraded in recent years after a couple of very wet winters. The work has been slow due to the lockdowns and restrictions of movement over the past few months but the project is now almost complete and you will be able to read about it soon on the ASOR website. In the image above you can see Paul Croft and Dean Wiltshire hard at work putting the final rendering on the walls. Note how lovely the stonework around the roof is. He has added an extra lip of stones on the exterior so that rainwater doesn’t run down the walls. We don’t know for sure that this technique would have been used in the Chalcolithic but it is an effective measure to preserve the structure and quite probably Chalcolithic people would also have come up with creative solutions like this to solve their problems.

You’ll see from the reports below that we have an amazing cohort of fellows this year, with a diverse and fascinating set of research topics. We look forward to welcoming all our fellows as travel becomes possible from their places of origin and we will keep everyone updated on how their research proceeds.

Very few excavation teams or researchers will make it here this summer and, again, we’ve had to cancel the CAARI annual summer archaeological workshop. Therefore, as an alternative we will be inviting excavators and researchers to contribute to a podcast series hosted by the Bank of Cyprus Cultural Foundation. This will be a challenge, asking participants to bring their experience with Cypriot archaeology to life (whether excavation, material culture or any aspect of research into the past) to a general audience in 15 minutes using only sound, instead of our usual reliance on imagery. We will be launching this very soon so please keep your eyes (and ears) out!

Wishing all of our friends good health. May we see you here before too long,

Lindy Crewe, PhD
Director, CAARI

CAARI Remembers Carole McCartney
(1965-2021)

Alison South
Dr. Carole McCartney
All at CAARI, and the entire archaeological community in Cyprus, are deeply saddened by the loss of our wonderful friend and colleague Carole McCartney, who died in March 2021.
 
Originally from Pittsburgh, Carole pursued her archaeological studies from the late 1980s at the University of Edinburgh, completing a PhD in 1996. Thus she first came to Cyprus as one of Professor Eddie Peltenburg’s group excavating Chalcolithic and earlier sites at Lemba and Kissonerga in the south-west of the island. Like a number of others from the Edinburgh team, she devoted herself to Cypriot archaeology and became a noted expert. Her personal life also became centered in Cyprus when she married Pambos Michael: they built a home and raised their two children Nina and Emilios in Kissonerga, where they always gave a warm welcome to visiting colleagues.
 
Carole’s chosen field of research was a challenging one, the lithic (chipped stone) industries of early prehistoric Cyprus, which had hitherto been considered unsophisticated and lacking in connections with surrounding areas. Carole’s work played a major role in completely changing this picture, and showing that the earliest colonization of the island was contemporary with the PPNA (Pre-Pottery Neolithic A) on the mainland of the Levant (far earlier than previously thought). She studied the lithics from many sites in Cyprus and some in Syria and Jordan, publishing numerous articles, and co-edited an important conference volume. Her range extended well beyond Antiquity: she knew not only the early material but also the lithics of all periods, a unique skill. Latterly she started her own project (with collaborators) involving excavation at one of the two earliest settlements, at Ayia Varvara.
Carole during fieldwork at Ayia Varvara-Asprokremmos, photo by Harry Paraskeva
Carole’s progress in her research was the more impressive as she lived at the far end of the island from the resources available in Nicosia, and for many years had no official academic position. However, she kept in touch by making a notable effort to attend lectures and conferences and meet with colleagues, often at CAARI, where she held the John Grier Bartol Fellowship in 1996-7. Later she became an Honorary Research Fellow, and subsequently Post-doctoral Fellow at the University of Cyprus and collaborated in major projects with the Archaeological Research Unit there.
 
CAARI is deeply grateful to Carole for a very special reason. Over the years since its foundation in 1978, CAARI had welcomed numerous scholars who carried out their research with the support of major fellowships such as those offered by the Fulbright Commission, National Endowment for the Humanities and Council of American Overseas Research Centers, together with a number of smaller CAARI-administered grants from funds generously donated by various supporters. However, the goal of being able to offer CAARI’s own substantial (at least one academic year) post-doctoral fellowship remained elusive. Following the lamented passing of Eddie Peltenburg in 2016, his family offered a very large donation in his memory, dedicated to setting up a Peltenburg Fellowship at CAARI. Carole’s commitment to Cypriot archaeology, and to the memory of Eddie and his work, led her in collaboration with her father Robert McCartney, to make a further most generous donation of $100,000. This has made it possible to set up the Peltenburg Fellowship on a sound basis, so that it can continue to benefit young scholars of Cypriot archaeology for many years to come.
 
The tragic loss of Carole McCartney leaves a huge gap in the study of earliest Cyprus. Most importantly, she was a wonderful person, a warm friend with a lovely sense of humor and a vigorous discussant of archaeology and modern politics, and a great wife and mother. We all send our warmest condolences to her family in Cyprus and the USA.
 
For a longer appreciation of Carole’s work, see the obituary in Levant:

Welcome the Recipients of CAARI’s Fellowships for 2021-2022


Edgar J. Peltenburg Postdoctoral Fellowship in Cypriot Prehistory

Established three years ago, this fellowship is unique to CAARI. Each year it supports the work of an outstanding young scholar in the field that Professor Peltenburg developed so significantly.

Dr. Charalambos Paraskeva
Peltenburg Fellow

Western Cyprus Survey:
From an Analogue Past to a Digital Future
As a former doctoral student of Professor Edgar Peltenburg, it is a great honour to receive the namesake postdoctoral fellowship from CAARI. The research project that I will be undertaking concerns the Western Cyprus Survey (WCS). A long-term survey focusing on the prehistoric occupation of the Paphos district, this project was carried out from the mid-1970s to the early 2000s by the Lemba Archaeological Project spearheaded by the late Professor Peltenburg. Long dormant and still unpublished, the project has been recently rekindled by Dr. Diane Bolger, who has assembled a team of experts with a view to conclude all remaining material analyses and publish the results. As the data analyst of the WCS, I will be preparing in the duration of the CAARI Fellowship all the necessary digital infrastructure. The latter includes the development of a software solution for the detailed recording of spatial entities surveyed and archaeological artifacts collected by the WCS; the integration of the former data into a custom-built geodatabase to support mapping, enrichment, and spatial analysis, and finally the digitization of all past analogue data held by the WCS. The above endeavours are expected to lay the groundwork for the successful conclusion of Eddie’s last major unpublished project in Cyprus, whilst in tandem it is planned to make available to all archaeologists working on survey projects in Cyprus the software solution developed under a Creative Commons license. Finally, I look forward to using CAARI’s extensive archaeological library and to become more actively engaged with the institute’s community via a series of planned workshops and public-outreach events.
CAARI/CAORC Postdoctoral Fellows

Annual funds from the Council of American Overseas Research Centers enable CAARI to offer two postdoctoral grants to American scholars to pursue research that will bring Cyprus into both their classroom teaching and their publications.

Dr. Lisa Mahoney
CAARI/CAORC Postdoctoral Fellow
DePaul University

Western Cyprus Survey:
From an Analogue Past to a Digital Future
This project treats the virtues and interpretive issues of the “Frankish” icon on Lusignan Cyprus, the holy image produced at the instigation of a patron of European descent and faith during those centuries when the island was ruled by French crusader kings. This icon type makes manifest deeply connected multi-confessional communities and, as a result, resists easy definition and circumscription. Two icons located today in the Byzantine Museum (Nicosia), however, offer clarity in both regards, providing rare indications of their original context, patronage, and workshop practices that allow for more general observations regarding the ways in which the Frankish icon’s appearance and function conformed to the site-specific requirements of a politically charged landscape.
Dr. Ian Randall
CAARI/CAORC Postdoctoral Fellow
University of Puget Sound

The Empire in Crisis: Structural Perception and Responses to Disaster on the Byzantine Littoral
My project seeks to examine the taphonomy of disaster at the site of Kourion following the earthquake that devastated the city in the late fourth century CE. By looking at consumption patterns within the ceramic assemblages from work by the Kourion Urban Space Project (KUSP), directed by Dr. Tom Davis and Dr. Laura Swantek, and previous work at the House of Eustolius and the main basilica, I will be constructing a model of ‘communities of practice’ that sought to reconstitute new urban identities in the wake of the crisis. The various class-based priorities that informed these communities of practice led to different approaches to clean-up and recovery related activities, these in turn helped formulate divergent identities, sometimes at odds with the official, Imperially led recovery efforts. By examining the material traces of a new, post-disaster Kourion the germ of local, Cypriot identities can be discerned, complicating the Constantinopolitan-centered view of social life in early fifth-century CE Cyprus.
CAARI Predoctoral Research Fellowships

CAARI offers the only research grants for graduate students that are specifically earmarked for Cyprus. It is impossible to overestimate the importance of these grants in attracting gifted young scholars who work on Cyprus, and in enabling the research that they do.

Caroline Barnes
The Helena Wylde Swiny and Stuart Swiny Fellowship
The University of British Columbia

Building the Past: The Role of Memory and Architectural Continuity at Kition
My project assesses the relationship between memory and the built environment at Kition in the Early Iron Age (EIA). The reuse of ashlar masonry and the adoption of architectural style from the preceding Late Bronze Age (LBA) lend insight not only into urban form, but also into human experience, legitimization of identity, and personhood. For my project, I will apply archaeological methodology concerning built environments, favoring a theoretically integrative and intersectional approach to Kition-Kathari. Though convenient categorizations are used to delineate between historical epochs, in lived experience, the transitions between these periods were not so marked. Studying the built environment at Kition will provide valuable insight into the reality of the transition between the LBA and EIA, and untangle complex assemblages of Cypriot experience and ethnicity as Greek and Phoenician “colonizers” established a presence on the island. In response, my research asks: Are inherently mutable modes of ethnicity materialized in the enduring built environment at Kition? And more broadly, how can we utilize integrative approaches in archaeology to enhance a diachronic understanding of experience in urban environments?

Maria Hadjigavriel
The Danielle Parks Memorial Fellowship
Leiden University

Exploring the Philia Transition: Reassessing Pottery Assemblages in the Cyprus Museum
My project focuses on the macroscopic study of pottery assemblages from sites of northern and central Cyprus dating to the Late Chalcolithic (ca. 2900/2700-2400 BCE) and Philia Phase (ca. 2400-2350/2250 BCE). By reassessing pottery wares and comparing them to well-studied coeval assemblages from western Cyprus I intend to gain a thorough understanding of the transition from the Late Chalcolithic into the Philia Phase. This project will be conducted within the framework of my PhD research, which investigates how archaeological artifacts and associated production technologies were embedded in cultural contexts of Anatolia and Cyprus over ca.2900-2250 BC. Concepts like interaction and appropriation are employed to illuminate how objects and technologies circulated between Cyprus and Anatolia at the time and how they were incorporated, valued, and given meaning in local contexts.

Eleanor Q. Neil
The Anita Cecil O’Donovan Fellowship
Trinity College, Dublin

Inclusion and Multivocality: evaluating community archaeology through outreach, digital media and narrative creation
Community archaeology is archaeology that is done for, with, or by the community. This is a broad definition, broadened further by the untold ways in which a community might define itself. However, a unifying element of community archaeology projects is the desire to create a more holistic, inclusive practice and realign traditional power structures. This can incorporate intentional shifts away from top-down interpretations of the past and the inclusion of multiple narratives in a site or landscape’s interpretation.

I am focusing on three strands of community archaeology—in-person programming, digital creations and multivocal narrative creation. I will be doing this through examinations of a diverse set of Cypriot archaeological projects and their methodologies including the Troodos Archaeological and Environmental Survey Project (TAESP) and the Settled and Sacred Landscapes of Cyprus (SeSaLaC), projects with different research focuses, locations and in various stages of completion.
Scholar in Residence for 2021-2022

Each year, CAARI welcomes an established scholar to reside for a period at the Institute as a mentor and model. Interchange across disciplines and age groups is an invaluable part of the CAARI experience.


Dr. Ronaldo G. Gurgel Pereira
CHAM - FCSH, Universidade Nova de Lisboa

Iron Age Steatite Scarabs from Cyprus: a study on typology and iconography considering the so-called “Tyrian Group” Scarabs (8th – 5th centuries BCE)

During my residence at CAARI, I will be studying steatite scarab amulets from the Cyprus Archaic I and II periods. The proposed corpus includes material from Agia Irini and Kition. These finds came mostly from temple areas, hence a religious context.
Most of the material seems to have been made locally, suggesting a strong link with the East. Their iconography and style combine Egyptian and Egyptianizing motifs and scenes, which points to a Levantine influence. The commercial and cultural connection of Kition with Tyre justify a common preference for typological features, particular materials, and an iconographic repertory.

Scarabs likely produced in Cyprus and Tyre present parallels to others which surfaced in Sardinia, Italy, and Tunisia. As their motifs and scenes are variations on a limited number of themes, the idea of a single stylistic group gains strength.

A debate on style, meaning and dating of scarab iconography and typology may contribute to the study of Egyptian and Egyptianizing influences in the Iron Age I-II workshops from Cyprus.
Thank-You to All From Vathoulla Moustoukki

Rev. Charles U. Harris, then President of the CAARI Board, and Vathoulla Moustoukki at the inauguration of CAARI’s premises at 11 Andreas Demetriou Street on June 11, 1991.
It is really too difficult for me to write this message. I started working at CAARI when CAARI was just one year old, and I left after forty and a half years.

In 1978 CAARI was housed in rented premises, and I was hired by the first and second Directors Dr. Anita Walker and Dr. Ian Todd. In the library we had about ten to fifteen books, and the only work I had to do was to fill in a pre-printed form (stencil that time) to say if there was (or was not) a room available, and then to receive payment from the residents. I also helped the cleaner, who came twice a week. And I was—as I remained—responsible for purchasing the breakfast and cleaning supplies. In 1980 Dr. Stuart Swiny took over as director. He really made CAARI known world-wide. Under his supervision I was put in charge of purchasing and cataloguing the library books, and he also handed over to me the Institute’s accounts. 
 
As a traditional Cypriot I had never been out of Cyprus, and at that time, people like me did not even have the courage to talk to a teacher, so for me to talk with a university professor was outrageous!

When I became more familiar with CAARI, I asked to know more about archaeology and excavations in general. I wanted to understand more about archaeologists’ work in order to be, in a way, part of their lives. My first experience with excavation was at Sotira-Kaminoudhia.  

I became friends with almost all the people, students or professors, who passed through CAARI all those years. Some of them I consider part of my family, or my children, as I do not have children of my own. Now I have lots of children that I love and care about.

I have worked with all CAARI directors, past and present until now. The transition from one director to the other was always a little bit strange. I was lucky because I knew most of them before they became directors and we were friends, but everyone works differently. Each director added something new to the life of the Institute.

I would like to thank all directors and their wives or husbands as I learnt a lot from each one, and even if we didn’t always agree we talked and found a solution. It was life-time experience working with Drs. Anita Walker, Ian Todd, Stuart Swiny, Nancy Serwint, Robert Merrillees, Tom Davis, Andrew McCarthy and Lindy Crewe.  I was lucky because I’ve had a good relationship with the librarians and of course with the long-term housekeeper, Photoulla Christodoulou.  Thank you to all.

Also, I owe a big thank-you to all CAARI Trustees and Presidents of the Board through the years, as well as, Advisory Board members. They have been very good to me and I can say they trusted me. I also would like to thank all members of the Department of Antiquities of the Republic of Cyprus officers and staff, as well all the Professors and staff of the Archaeological Research Unit, University of Cyprus.

I started at CAARI as a secretary, knowing nothing about archaeology, and I am leaving with not only knowledge about Cypriote archaeology, but I also learned a lot in general about life. As Stuart said when he was first appointed as Director “do not call me Dr., because my hair is not gray yet” (he was then 36). Now, am leaving with gray hair… due to age, but you cannot tell…

CAARI sends its THANKS to many supporters!
Slowly, the pandemic is losing its grip on our habits and spirits, and we can see to our joy that much we’d feared was lost has survived. CAARI’s still here! Our staff is new and fresh; a new class of fellows will be coming as they can; reservations for accommodation are beginning to resume. Our survival is due in important ways to our staunch friends and supporters. We thank you all for your steady help.

But please don’t flag! We need help to survive our survival! The challenges remain real. Curtailed income cannot shrink the pressure of ongoing expenses; increased reliance on digital resources has yielded higher bills; throughout the economy, the costs of survival are being paid in higher prices. CAARI is feeling all of these impacts. You are probably feeling them, too. So don’t feel reticent if you must make a small gift. We are grateful for every addition. Together as a community, we can see CAARI through Covid’s long shadow into confident vitality with steadily funded fellowships, ever stronger library, and ever more dynamic research initiatives.

To all who help CAARI sustain its potent mission: thank you for your generous participation! Recent tensions have made clearer than ever the sensitivity of the eastern Mediterranean, and its importance in our world. Keep helping CAARI sustain the concerted, conscientious investigation of its history.