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Happy Holidays from Cyprus!
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Our winter news-flash brings season's greetings from all at CAARI, beginning with a message from Director Lindy Crewe and a glimpse of CAARI in Christmas attire. We follow with reports on a newly awarded grant for a rescue archaeology project, and on a newly acquired work of art. Then we'll catch you up with the latest plans for the celebration of CAARI's birthday this spring and summer.
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Message From the Director
Dear Friends and Supporters of CAARI:
It has now been almost six months since I took up the post of CAARI Director and the time has certainly flown by. Although I have known CAARI well as a long-term resident and researcher for many years, experiencing operations from the inside has been a revelation. I feel so inspired by the hard work and commitment to the Institute that Vathoulla Moustoukki, Photoulla Christodoulou and Katerina Mavromichalou-the staff in Nicosia-put in behind the scenes. Many of us over the years have enjoyed attending the convivial receptions following CAARI lectures, not to mention the annual workshop party, but the flurry of activity that goes on to make these events seamless and hospitable is impressive.
I've spent some time these last months catching up with old friends and colleagues in the archaeological and cultural community and getting to know those I had not yet met. As always, Cyprus remains a warm and welcoming place for researchers and there is a very positive attitude here towards collaborations amongst the heritage institutions. I've enjoyed visiting excavations and discussing research projects with colleagues and students, as well as attending my first ASOR meetings in Boston as part of CAARI.
Our own autumn lecture program has been vibrant and the library has been filled to capacity. In addition to students and researchers, we've been really pleased to welcome members of the public with a connection to the research projects of our speakers. People from the communities of Kornos and Lazanias came to Dr Gloria London's talk on traditional potters; representatives from the village of Lapithos attended Dr Jennifer Webb's lecture on the important Bronze Age cemeteries at Vrysi tou Barba; and Prof. Lina Kassianidou's family, as well as students and colleagues from the ARU, came to hear her present on copper in the Bronze and Iron Ages!
We are very close to the end of the long process of library expansion and refurbishment of our listed building begun by my predecessor Dr Andrew McCarthy. This has been an enormous undertaking, and all here are delighted that the project is nearing completion. We are now winding up the small remaining jobs, such as getting the laundry rewired and ensuring that our fire escape complies with regulations. Guests who have stayed at the hostel since works were completed upstairs have all commented on how wonderful the building looks, how fresh the facilities feel, and especially what a difference it makes to have air conditioning in the summer months.
As readers of the Newsflash are aware, we are now on the cusp of CAARI's 40th anniversary and in Nicosia we will be working hard to ensure the success of our celebrations. In some exciting breaking news, we will be returning to our old stomping ground of the Bank of Cyprus Cultural Foundation at Phaneromeni for the workshop on June 16, thanks to the support of the Director, Dr Ioanna Hadjicosti. Our aim is also to highlight research beyond fieldwork at the workshop and we welcome poster submissions on topics related to any facet of Cypriot heritage studies. Please get in touch with me at [email protected] for further information if you would like to send us a poster for display at the workshop.
Above you can see us adorning CAARI for the Christmas season: Photoulla, Katerina, and Vathoulla on the left, and trustee Alison South and I on the right. From all of us here in Nicosia, we wish everyone
Καλά Χριστούγεννα and
Ευτυχισμένο το Νέο Έτος! We look forward to welcoming many of you here for our 40th celebrations in 2018.
Lindy Crewe, PhD
Director, CAARI
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Cyprus Amongst Only Three Recipients of a New Grant from CAORC
The Council of American Overseas Research Institutes (CAORC) has awarded a team led by Drs Kathryn Grossman, Tate Paulette, former CAARI Director Andrew McCarthy, and Lisa Graham, one of the first three awards from its newly instituted Responsive Preservation Initiative (RPI) for Cultural Heritage Resources. The RPI program is designed to fund projects for urgent, emergent, or priority issues that need to be addressed quickly. Small grants are available for rapid emergency projects in Algeria, Cyprus, Egypt, Greece, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Libya, Morocco, The Palestinian Territories, Tunisia, Turkey, and Yemen. The Cyprus team investigated and documented an endangered site in western Cyprus between the cities of Paphos and Polis. The site,
Stroumpi Pigi Agios Andronikos, is a prehistoric settlement located in the picturesque hillsides of the Paphos District along the route of a proposed new road. The project aims to collect as much information as possible in order to document this important site. The site has been investigated from four different angles: geophysical prospection, surface collection, coring, and test excavations. Following our season, we will be presenting the results of our work to the Department of Antiquities, the people of Stroumpi, and the broader archaeological community in Cyprus.
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CAARI Acquires a Glynnis Fawkes Painting!
CAARI's entrance hall is now graced with a new piece of art! For CAARI's 40th birthday, in honor of trustee Alison South and ex-Director Ian Todd, trustee Bill Andreas has donated one of Glynnis Fawkes' archaeological paintings of Kalavasos Ayios Dhimitrios from her time at CAARI as a Fulbright scholar. The painting is of Alison's South's excavations of
the pithos hall at Ayios Dhimitrios (which has also been featured
on a Cyprus postage stamp!).
Glynnis Fawkes is a cartoonist and archaeological illustrator living in Burlington, VT. She was a Fulbright Scholar in Cyprus and resident at CAARI. While in Cyprus, Fawkes produced a book of paintings of archaeological sites Archaeology Lives in Cyprus (Hellenic Bank, Nicosia 2001). Some of the drawings from Cyprus she made directly from the landscape, some in the studio, where she played with reintroducing ancient artifacts into contemporary landscapes. She also published Cartoons of Cyprus, 70 drawings about Cypriot archaeology. CAARI is grateful to Ruth Keshishian of the Moufflon Bookshop for helping us acquire one of Glynnis's works (her initial exhibition in Cyprus of her paintings sold out quickly!)
An exhibition of Glynnis' work is currently running at the Center for Hellenic Studies (link).
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Trustees Alison South and William Andreas join Director Lindy Crewe and-in the front row-CAARI staff members Vathoulla Moustoukki, Photoulla Christodoulou and Katerina Mavromichalou in front of the newly installed painting by Glynnis Fawkes.
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The Latest on CAARI's Birthday Celebration
The week of 10 - 17 June 2018 will see a glittering constellation of birthday festivities in Nicosia:
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A gala dinner on June 14 at the Presidential Palace in honor of Trustee Chris Christodoulou,
A party at CAARI itself on June 16 after the
Summer Archaeological Workshop
A reception at the U.S. Embassy
And our forthcoming birthday book, CAARI and the Archaeology of Cyprus: The First 40 Years.
A birthday is a Janus-face, poised between past and future. So, too, is our celebration. Have you looked at the memories of CAARI-Past on the Web site, www.caari.org/news? They capture so well the whole feel of CAARI-serious, but gracious. Nassos Papalexandrou's memory of bright spaces and pristine beds, Nancy Serwint's evocation of "wood and books and curtains" creating an airy, tasteful haven will trigger your own memories of coming to CAARI as if to a little Paradise, with fresh beds, fresh showers, a washing machine, and the cool expanse of the library. For so many of us, CAARI offered a world made wonderful for our use.
But we must also look to CAARI-Future. Times are changing: our traditional sources of government and university support are vanishing. Keeping CAARI wonderful is in our hands now. We who received the welcome it offered us have a debt to its future. Help us keep it strong. Upcoming news-flashes will suggest birthday gifts. But the greatest birthday gift of all is a commitment to keep CAARI on your gift list every year. Even a small gift from each of us who have been at CAARI will make a real difference. It is easy to do:
www.caari.org/support
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Our year-end solicitation letter is on its way to all. It is a brisk look back over the activities of an extremely lively year, with new leadership, new building renovations, new acquisitions, new research achievements. It is hard to over-emphasize how important each person who supports CAARI is to this vitality. CAARI has flourished because of the generosity of wonderful friends. Our thanks go out so warmly to every one of you: your impact emerges in every paragraph of our letter. It's time for ALL our readers to join in, and turn what you remember from the past into a future for those yet to come.
With thanks to all,
Annemarie Carr
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