January 8, 2019 - Catch up on the latest news from CAARI!


Dear : 
Warm wishes from all of us at CAARI a generous, productive 2020 CE! Our news-flash brings you a message from CAARI's Director celebrating her big new book. It brings vivid reports of fellowship research from three of CAARI's Fellows. Then Professor Pamela Gaber discusses her latest scholarly conclusions about Cypriot sculpture.

But first, here's a traditional evocation of New Year's celebrations on Cyprus!  


Traditional Cypriot Vasilis Bread

Here is CAARI Administrator Vathoulla Moustoukki with her famed and delectable traditional Vasilis Bread-St. Basil's loaf. With the picture are the recipe and the ritual. You can actually make your own Cypriot New Year's delectation. And if you get the gold coin, make a gift to CAARI!

Vathoulla's Vasilis Bread

500 grams of all-purpose flour
A pinch of salt
2 tablespoons of olive oil
5 grams of dried yeast
1/4 teaspoons of dried mahlepi and 
     masticha mixed together (if 
     these aren't available you can 
     combine star anise and almond 
     extract)
½ teaspoon of ground cinnamon
Lukewarm water (up to 1½ cups)
5 tablespoons of sesame seeds for 
   the topping
  • Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F)
     
  • Mix the flour with the salt, cinnamon, mahlepi and maticha. Add the olive oil and knead until smooth. Mix the yeast into half a cup of lukewarm water and let it rise for 5-8 minutes. .
  • Add the yeast and further knead it into the dough, adding more water as you need it.
     
  • Let the bread rise for around 20 minutes to one hour (depending upon the weather and the temperature of the room) until it doubles in size. Then work and knead the dough again into a round shape. Leave aside some strips of dough to make the decoration.
     
  • Insert a 'flouri' (gold coin) into the dough to hide it (if you don't have a special coin you can wrap any coin in tin foil). Add the strips, and then roll the finished dough into the sesame seeds. Place it onto a baking tray and leave it to rise again for about 10 minutes. Bake it for about one hour. 
Once the loaf is cool , cut slices in a circle for your family and friends. The first slice is for Saint Basil (Ayios Vasilis); then move around cutting slices, starting with the older members of the family, ending with the youngest. Whoever is lucky enough to get the flouri gets the luck for the year (you must save the flouri in your wallet to keep the luck)!


Message from CAARI's Director

Dear friends and supporters of CAARI,

The new decade is upon us so it seems a good time to reflect on what we have achieved and to let you know where CAARI will be heading in 2020. We certainly had a busy and productive 2019. One of my personal highlights from 2019 was the book launch we held on the 24th October for the volume ' Figurine Makers of Prehistoric Cyprus. Settlement and Cemeteries at Souskiou ', which I edited with Dr Diane Bolger. I am very proud that we were able to bring the final excavation of Professor Eddie Peltenburg of the Chalcolithic site of Souskiou to publication. Many of the contributors were able to attend our evening reception and it was a packed event with around 90 people in the CAARI library. Diane Bolger and I gave short presentations, followed by a toast to Eddie Peltenburg's memory by the Director of the Leventis Foundation, Cyprus   , Prof. Charalambos Bakirtzis.

Some of the contributors to the Souskiou publication. L-R: Bob Miller, Paul Croft, Kirsi Lorentz, Lina Kassianidou, Lindy Crewe, Diane Bolger, Harry Pareskeva, Carole McCartney

We're now looking forward to an equally stimulating 2020. This spring, I'll be heading to two conferences to present on my research on the Cypriot Bronze Age, one in Athens and a second in Bologna. In May, CAARI will be holding a special two-day conference organised by our inaugural CAARI Edgar Peltenburg Fellow in Cypriot Prehistory, Dr Anna Spyrou. We're very excited about this event. Its topic, ' Plants, Animals and People in the Eastern Mediterranean: Diachronic and Interdisciplinary Approaches to Consumption ', is sure to generate some fascinating discussion. Not only do we have a stellar set of academic papers lined up but the planned reception will showcase traditional Cypriot food and drink and involve local producers. In addition to the CAARI annual summer archaeology  workshop, to be held 20th June in Nicosia, we will also be jointly organising a conference with the British Museum in November on the theme of ' Archaeology in British period Cyprus: Critical Approaches and Cross-Cultural Perspectives '. The call for papers will be coming out soon so for those who have a research interest in this field, please do consider submitting a paper.

2019 certainly showed that research into the Cypriot past continues to flourish, as readers will appreciate from the reports contained in this Newsflash. Right now, the CAARI fellowship committee is assessing the graduate student applications for the coming year. We have a very strong cohort with so many candidates deserving of our support to spend time researching on Cyprus. Postdoctoral fellowship applications are open until January 23rd so please consider applying or pass on the message to any scholars who may be interested. As ever, our mission remains to promote and to support research into the archaeology and heritage of Cyprus. We do this through our own fellowships supported by your donations or those provided for CAARI by the Council of American Overseas Research Centers (CAORC), through encouraging use of our library and laboratory facilities to local and international scholars, and by hosting lectures and conferences open to all who wish to attend. We rely on our friends to help us achieve these goals.

From all here at CAARI we send you our best wishes for a very happy and prosperous 2020! We hope that you feel inspired to try out our vasilis bread recipe. In Nicosia we'll be enjoying vasilis bread and vasilopita cakes throughout January as everyone extends wishes for the new year to colleagues and friends.

Lindy Crewe, PhD
Director, CAARI


Prof. Elzbieta Jastrzebowska
2019 CAARI Scholar in Residence

Institute of Mediterranean and Oriental Cultures
Polish Academy of Science Warsaw

Cyprus has always been an important hub for cultural communication and exchange, not only between east and west, but also between north and south in the Mediterranean world.  Material evidence dated to Late Antiquity discovered on the island proves this phenomenon clearly. This material is related directly to my research specialty, and includes monuments of particular interest to me.  I had two research goals in coming to CAARI. On the one hand, I wanted to enlarge my study of the painted wall decoration from the fourth century that was found thirty years ago in the so-called House of Aion in Paphos by the Polish Archaeological Mission. On the other hand, I wanted to explore the origin of fifth-century capitals that had been imported to Cyprus.
  
House of Aion, Paphos figure of Euterpe. Wall painting, 4th century

The restored fragments of the wall painting from one room of the House of Aion turned out to be figures of Apollo and three muses, including the figure of Euterpe seen here. The muses were a very common topic in Roman house decoration.  Especially in the second and third centuries CE they are seen in mosaics and paintings throughout the Roman Empire, both in the west and in the east.  You can compare the Euterpe in Paphos with the figures of Euterpe in a mosaic from Vichten, Luxembourg, on the left below, or in the painting in the Slope House from the second or third century in Ephesus, on the right below. Thus thematically, the painted decoration preserved in Paphos belongs to a type that is widespread in homes around the entire Mediterranean.  At the same time, however, it is unique in its excellent artistic quality, as I had pointed out in the lecture on the paintings in Paphos given at CAARI on September 26, 2019.

Vichten, Luxembourg, figure of Euterpe
Ephesus, Slope House, figure of Euterpe
Recently, Polish archaeologists found Corinthian capitals from the fifth century in Marea, Egypt, which had been carved in Alexandrian workshops. I knew the capitals well. This gave me an idea to investigate contemporary capitals found in Cyprus, to see if any of them also originated in Alexandria-that is, in the southern part of the Late Roman Empire.  Traditionally, Cypriot capitals seem to come from Constantinople, from the northern part of the Empire. But I was able to show that the capitals in the Coastal Basilica in Kourion-seen below to the right-most probably came from Alexandria, even though many other capitals, like those in the Basilica Campanopetra in Salamis, shown below to the left, display the workmanship of Constantinople.

Constantinopolitan capitals at Basilica Campanopetra in Salamis
Alexandrian capitals, Kourion

I am extremely grateful to CAARI for its support of my research in its Library, as well as in other scientific libraries in Nicosia; for giving me the opportunity to exchange views with young colleagues at CAARI; and above all for enabling me-thanks to research trips in Cyprus-to see and photograph many capitals in situ at Kourion, Pegeia, Salamis, and Kyrenia.


Matthias Metzger
Danielle Parks Memorial Fellowship

Aix-Marseille Université and University of Cyprus

My PhD research began in November 2018 under the joint supervision of Aix-Marseille Université (AMU) and the University of Cyprus (UCY) and under the direction of Andréas Nicolaïdès (Associate Professor) at AMU and Maria Parani (Associate Professor) at UCY. My study deals with the environment of relics inside the Christian basilicas of Cyprus from the end of the fourth century, when the first such buildings are attested on the island, to the reconquest of the island by the Byzantines in AD 965. In view of the lack of work on this topic, the research is intended to be an approach incorporating both material data (the architecture of the basilicas where relics were kept, and the archaeological artifacts such as reliquaries and pilgrims' eulogiae) and textual evidence (e.g. Lives of Saints, pilgrimage accounts, etc.).
  
The purpose is to provide a comprehensive and multidisciplinary study on the topic of relics in Cyprus, and to contextualize these results within a broader Mediterranean perspective. It was a pleasure and honor to have my research supported by the award of the Danielle Parks Memorial Fellowship from the CAARI for the year 2019. This fellowship enabled me to carry out research in Cyprus, facilitating travel and accommodation.

During my time at CAARI I visited this handful of historically significant structures (many of which are government-owned), and I explored the city itself quite extensively despite the rather extreme heat that lasted throughout most of my five-week stay. A "behind the scenes" visit to the Cyprus Museum was also very informative.

I was a resident of CAARI for one and a half months, beginning September 1, 2019. The principal aim of my stay in Cyprus was the consultation of the archives of the Department of Antiquities, located in Nicosia, a short distance from CAARI.  There, I was able to consult the archives concerning the excavations of several early Christian basilicas. Indeed, some of them have been published only slightly or not at all. This is the case, for instance, with the Basilica A in Pegeia, excavated under the aegis of the Department of Antiquities in the 1950s by A.H.S. Megaw, where a reliquary, also unpublished, has been uncovered. I had the opportunity to consult the excavation plan of the church as well as the inventory of the finds. Following this consultation, which was essential to my study, I was given access to the archaeological museum of Paphos and thus was able to observe and study the reliquary in question.

Another achievement was the visit of the archaeological sites integrated into my corpus. Based in Nicosia, I traveled around the whole island, visiting, for instance, the basilicas of Pegeia (in the photo below) as well as the extraordinary site of Katalymata Tôn Plakotôn near Akrotiri, the latter together with the archaeologist in charge of the excavation, Dr. Eleni Procopiou.

Matthias Metzger at the site of the basilicas of Pegeia

This residency at CAARI gave me access to an optimal working environment with unlimited access to the very extensive library, from which I have benefited greatly, and the opportunity to interact with many scholars leading to stimulating discussions. I was thus able to complete my knowledge on aspects and issues of Cypriot archaeology beyond my area of investigation.

This travel has significantly contributed to the progress of my thesis and enabled me to lay the groundwork for future necessary field work on the island. Therefore, I would like to thank most sincerely the CAARI Fellowships Committee , the whole management team of the CAARI, the Parks family and the CAARI staff in Nicosia for making this experience possible.


Brigid Clark
Anita Cecil O'Donovan Fellow

University of Haifa

Brigid Clark
My forthcoming PhD dissertation, 'Social, Economic and Political Aspects of Maritime Connectivity in Cyprus and the Southern Levant in the Middle and Late Bronze Ages', aims to expand the current body of knowledge regarding Bronze Age chronological horizons of Cypriot ceramics within Israel.  As originally proposed by M. Artzy, while written sources suggest Egyptian control of the region, the independent and dynamic trade networks (specifically Tel Nami, Tell Akko, and Tel Abu Hawam) of the Carmel ridge demonstrate active participation as transshipment centers, making Israel one of the prime locations to study the export patterns of Cypriot wares. The basis of this study will be the creation of a database of the Southern Levantine sites from which Cypriot pottery is documented.  It will include non-ceramic objects, as well, a novelty among existing catalogues for the Middle and Late Bronze Age and crucial for clarifying the Cypriot role. I am a strong believer that in order to understand the stratigraphic, chronological, and geographic contexts of Cypriot wares in the Levant, it is first necessary to understand these processes in Cyprus.  Studying maritime trade in the Middle to Late Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean cannot be done without investigating the role of Cyprus, and Cypriot goods abroad are best understood within a larger comparative framework.
  
Much of my time at CAARI was spent in the library accessing its valuable excavation reports.  These publications are not widely available abroad, as many of us know, and are essential in understanding the stratigraphy and the earliest appearances of certain ware types within Cyprus.

As always, I am very grateful to the Department of Antiquities for granting access to the Enkomi material produced by the Dikaios excavations and their help in all associated matters.  My recent research has investigated the substantial amount of Cypriot material arriving in the Levant, particularly Northern Israel, during the MB II.  The Enkomi material provides one of clearest insights into this time period and its associated transitions and has striking similarities (and differences!) to the material of Northern Israel. Going forward, I hope to provenance a selection of the Levantine material in order to better understand the connectivity between different regions of Cyprus and the Levant.

My time in Cyprus also gave me the ability to visit new-to-me Bronze Age sites, primarily Marki Alonia and Alambra Mouttes, as well as some of the MC III-LC I 'fortresses'.  This provided new insight to the landscape and lifestyle of the inland Bronze Age Cypriots.  These sites are particularly interesting given the early periods of the Middle Cypriot state formation and the foundation of maritime trade in Israel.  

Finally, perhaps the most valuable part of my time at CAARI was connecting with fellow Cypriot academics. CAARI represents one of the warmest and most supportive academic communities I have experienced, and I am grateful for my time there.  The archaeologists and staff involved at CAARI are some of the most knowledgeable scholars on Bronze Age Cyprus, and their generous insights suggested new pathways for my research. I would also like to thank my colleagues who shared the CAARI hostel with me during my residence for their enjoyable camaraderie and the provision of endless resources, advice, and support.


Limestone Sculpture on Cyprus

Professor Pamela Gaber
Lycoming College

Professor Pamela Gaber
Since 1982, when I completed my doctoral dissertation on the Regional Styles in Cypriote Limestone Sculpture, I've had numerous opportunities to delve into more detailed studies of the limestone sculpture.
  
The work that has followed was inspired by the handsome fellow whom you see below-it's all his fault, really!  He is known as "the Idalion Colossus," and he resides in the Leventis Gallery of Cypriot Art in the British Museum. When I first undertook to study the 150+ limestone sculptures uncovered during the 19th century at Idalion in Cyprus, I was struck by the universal tendency among scholars and museum personnel to treat Cypriot sculpture as somehow "debased Greek."

When he was complete the Colossus would have stood over 7 feet tall. He is definitely not debased-anything! In fact, it struck me that he was a masterwork.

Idalion Colossus, London, British Museum
Soon I began to notice that some of his facial features were similar to those of other figures. As you can see in the faces below, the cheekbones were all clearly defined, although not necessarily "sharp," (with the exception of the female head). The foreheads were all vertical and the eyes of figures from Idalion were universally twice as long as they were high. These similarities were clear whether the figure was male or female, clean shaven or bearded, bore a Greek-style fillet or a Mesopotamian turban. Most telling of all were the straight, "beveled," upper lip on every figure, whether they were smiling or not. These features (and a number of others) were what led me to form the hypothesis that it was possible to recognize the style of a region that produced limestone sculpture by meticulously examining, measuring, and comparing individual features.



Figures from Idalion:  1) London, British Museum; 2) Nicosia, Cyprus Museum; 3) London, British Museum 

The next thing I noticed was that the quality of the sculptures varied with their size.  The quality was extremely high-as long as they were life-size or larger.  It became less reliably expert as the size diminished. I was able to track the diminution in quality to a particular reduction in size. About half life size seems to be the transition point for most figures. As figures got smaller the variation in quality was wildly more variable. The figures at left get ever less fine, but 
Smaller figures from the Cyprus Museum in Nicosia:
1) half life-size; 2) ca. 29"tall; 3) ca. 24" tall
there are also tiny figures that are beautifully carved, like the tiny head from Vouni in Gallery 5 of the Cyprus Museum, seen below. It is barely 10 centimeters high.

Athena from Vouni, Nicosia, Cyprus Museum
Another thing to notice was how different the facial features from different regions were. Take the picture of the little Athena head from Vouni to right. Looking at the other figures from that site, and its satellite town of Mersinaki 7 km. away, it immediately becomes obvious that they share facial features quite different from the sculptures from Idalion. The life-size head from Mersinaki on the right just below might have been made by the same sculptor as the little Athena above, since they're so very similar. The bowed mouth and long, slender eyes are very different from Idalion heads, though very like each other. Similarly, the low brow and peak in the center of the hairline are different from Idalion figures, but like one another.  Even more striking is the existence of a female "colossus" from Vouni who also stood 
Head from Mersinaki, Stockholm, Medelhavsmuseet
Female colossus from Vouni, Stockholm, Medelhavsmuseet
7 feet tall. The damage to her nose and chin makes it a little difficult to seethat her mouth has the same bowed shape as the little Athena and the Mersinaki head. She clearly (in spite of the damage) has the identical hairline as the others, while the Idalion vertical brow sits beneath a relatively straight hairline.


Once I began to notice these characteristics, I began to look at more and more localities. Figures from Paphos were strikingly similar to one another, and unlike those from elsewhere. The famous life-size head in the center below is from a siege mound and now in the Kouklia Museum. It is beautifully carved, showing a vertical brow and extremely thin-lipped mouth. Her eyes are 3 times as long as they are high, and her cheeks are smoothly rounded, without any indication of cheekbones. Imagine my surprise when I began to compare less well-carved figures and figures from differing periods in Paphos, including the two on either side below, and I discovered that they all share these characteristics.

Figures from Paphos: 1) Paphos Archaeological Museum; 2) Kouklia Museum; 3) Paphos Archaeological Museum

On the other side of the island at Kition, I thought I might find more similarities to Idalion, since it's not only closer, but had commercial and political ties to Idalion in the Archaic and Classical periods. I was surprised to find how different the regional styles actually were. Whether in Hellenic or Levantine attire, limestone figures from Kition share certain facial characteristics. They include a broad, rounded jaw, depressions beside the mouth, a low brow with a curving hairline.

From Kition: 1) Heads: Stockholm, Medelhavsmuseet; 2) Figures: Nicosia, Cyprus Museum
Head from Al Mina, Damascus,
Museum
I was just coming to this realization when I came across a publication about art in Syria published in the 1960's. In it was a head they called, "Graeco-Arab."  comparing jaw shape, brow shape, and depressions beside the mouth, it was clear that this head was made in Kition. It seemed clear that Cypriotes were carrying votive sculptures abroad.

Later, in 2010, Nota Kourou from the University of Athens published a study of the limestone provenance of sculptures said to be Cypriot all over the Mediterranean. Overwhelmingly the stone was from Cyprus, with the notable exception of Naukratis in North Africa. I have no doubt that the Al Mina head would have turned out to hail from Kition, too, if it had been possible to have it tested alongside the others.

All this led me to apply for a Fulbright Fellowship to CAARI in 1985. My aim in that study was to discover whether I could discern different schools of sculpture using the same methodology. I began with the 300+ limestone sculptures from the site of Lefkoniko, northeast of Nicosia. They are all in the Cyprus Museum. It didn't take long to hit pay dirt. I soon was able not only to discern two different sculptural workshops at work in Lefkoniko, but to determine that every single limestone figure, with very few exceptions, could be assigned to one or the other.  Not surprisingly, I dubbed them "Workshop 1" and "Workshop 2."

The figures from Workshop 2, seen below, were uniformly well-carved with rounded cheeks and chins, and vertical brows. Their hairlines ran smoothly across these broad foreheads. Interestingly, when more than the face was preserved, even the bodily forms were rounded.

1) Lefkoniko Colossus, Nicosia, Cyprus Museum, Gallery 5; 
2) Half life-size figure, Nicosia, Cyprus Museum, Gallery 5; 
3) Head of life-size figure, Nicosia, Cyprus Museum, Gallery 5

Workshop 1 was a complete contrast. Less meticulously carved, each figure had more or less sharp features and pointed chins and noses. When the body was preserved it was almost always flat in the back.

Heads, Nicosia, Cyprus Museum
Full Figures

The next exciting discovery yielded by this study was the fact that I could actually discern different hands at work. Utilizing the same careful measurements of features and comparison of forms and measurements, I was able
Heads from Lefkoniko: 2 by "Fred" (left); 2 by "David" (right)
to determine several different sculptors at work. I dubbed them Abel, Baker, Charlie, David, Ed, Fred, and so on. The differences were entrancingly clear.  Fred's long, pointy noses  and sharp, pointy chins contrasted neatly with David's rounder, more sloping chins and shorter, broader noses. In addition, David's faces had clear depressions on either side of the mouths, whether they seemed to be smiling or not. These sorts of characteristics were clear for each carver.

But what about the figures that didn't fit within one or the other of the "Lefkoniko schools of sculpture"? Yet more surprises were in store. The "Baal Ammon" figure from Lefkoniko on the left below fits neatly within the Workshop 1 family of sculptors. But the middle one, from the same sanctuary at Lefkoniko, definitely doesn't.  It didn't take too long, though, before I was able to find his brethren in Limassol, on the south coast.  You see one of them on the right:

1) "Baal Ammon" figure, Lefkoniko; 2) Figure from Lefkoniko; 3) Head, Limassol Archaeological Museum 
 
There are fascinating implications from these studies, of which I've only been able to share a small sample here. But even from these it should be clear that we can tell when and from where Cypriots were carrying votives not only abroad, but from place to place on Cyprus during the Archaic and Classical periods. More recently there have been studies using this methodology to determine whether a rural sanctuary was within the cultural center of one City Kingdom or another.


Start 2020 with a Gift to CAARI's Future

Are you a grad student, like Matthias and Brigid? If so , you surely recognize the thrill they have felt in pushing their research to the next level, and the difference that the time and funding that CAARI fellowships has made for them. You know how important it is to be with the real thing. So consider making a gift to CAARI to provide much needed help in maintaining these fellowships. If each young scholar who used CAARI's resources made a gift of $30 a year, we could accomplish so much more-for ALL of us!

 
And for all our wonderful donors: pause to savour the research reports you've just skimmed. Feel the thanks that radiate from them! You can see how your support for CAARI is enriching lives and building scholarship. Bear CAARI in mind as we move ahead through the new year:  

Thank you to all who help us sustain keen, vigorous research on Cyprus. 
We thank you for your participation!

Annemarie Weyl Carr
CAARI VP

Annemarie Weyl Carr
Vice President, CAARI Board
www.caari.org