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Welcome to CAARI...
" This is CAARI's foyer - for CAARI's fellowship recipients, it is their first glimpse of a space laden with expectation. Our news focuses on CAARI's fellowships and their recipients. Fulfilling these researchers' expectations is at the very heart of CAARI's mission.
Our news also covers CAARI's engagement in the hearings to renew the US government's Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Republic of Cyprus. And it introduces you to a very important person for CAARI: F. Bryan Wilkins, who took office as the President of CAARI's Board of Trustees in June, 2015.
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First Thing About Fellowships: Apply!
Application forms and deadlines for CAARI's 2017-2018 fellowships are ready for you on our Web site, along with links to further grants. Check out www.caari.org/fellowships, and apply.
- The big news: stipends for CAARI's graduate student fellowships have been doubled to $2000. They will now cover transport and residence at CAARI.
- CAARI/CAORC postdoctoral fellowships offer stipends of $5500.
- CAARI Senior Scholar Residency offers reduced summer residence fees in return for availability to younger scholars at CAARI on evenings and weekends.
- CAARI is also the Cypriot liaison for Fulbright, CAORC, and ASOR research grants, and its Web site gives links to these and to other government and foundation grants.
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Reports on This Year's Fellowships at CAARI
Previously, we proudly announced three 2016-17 graduate student fellows and two CAARI/CAORC postdoctoral fellows. Here is a summary of their work.
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Liza Anderson, Yale University
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Liza Anderson, recipient of the Helena Wylde Swiny and Stuart Swiny Fellowship, writes of her time at CAARI that "Thanks to the generosity of this fellowship, I was able to spend much of this summer working on the first English translation of the writings of the seventh-century Syriac Christian writer Gregory of Cyprus. With the exception of one section of his work that has been edited with a Latin translation, Gregory's corpus remains in unedited manuscripts, and thus it is little known both to scholars of Syriac and to those of early medieval Cyprus. Having just submitted my doctoral dissertation, on the interpretation of Pseudo-Dionysius in the early medieval Syrian Orthodox Church, I now hope to devote my attention to completing and polishing my translation of Gregory of Cyprus so that his work will be available to scholars in English. I am very grateful to CAARI and to the donors for their support of emerging scholars that made this work possible."
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Zusana Chovanec, Tulsa Community College & State University of New York at Albany
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Zuzana Chovanec's CAARI/CAORC Post-Doctoral Fellowship, "Art as the child of nat
ure: Examining the aesthetics of the natural world in ancient Cypriot art" examined how characteristics of the natural world were incorporated into Cypriot art. "During summer 2016," she writes, "I conducted a literature review, created a detailed objects database, and studied a total of 120 objects in person. Housed in five museums on the island, these objects spanned the Early Bronze to Late Iron Ages, and depicted plants or animals as painted motifs on ceramics, modeled scenes on the shoulders of ceramic vessels, freestanding terracotta models, and figurines of stone, ceramic and metal. Study involved visual examination, measurement of figural dimensions, investigation of artistic techniques, documentation of defining characteristics of plants and animals, and the drawing and photographing of objects."
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Caterina Sciré-Calabrisotto, Ca'Foscari University of Venice
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Caterina Sciré-Calabriosso writes of her O'Donovan Graduate Fellowship
: "Being the third year of my PhD, the timing of my fellowship could not have been better for spending four weeks at CAARI and having the opportunity to do some background research for my thesis. The core of my study is represented by a new set of isotopic measure-ments conducted on prehistoric human and faunal remains with the aim at reconstructing the palaeodiet of the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age communities of Cyprus. While at CAARI, I reviewed the relevant publications I needed to substantiate my hypotheses, identifying some major lacunae in the environmental, archaeological and anthropological records of the island that would need further investiga-tion. Also, I visited several archaeological museums in order to evaluate the preservation state of some osteological collections and collect further samples that could allow a more accurate interpretation of the results."
Two of the 2016/17 fellowship recipients will travel to Cyprus to pursue their research during the current, fall semester.
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Charles Stewart, St. Thomas University, Houston TX
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Charles Stewart, CAARI/ CAORC Postgraduate Fellow, will use the fall semester to complete his book on the development of art (frescos, mosaics, and sculpture) and architecture from the Roman to Early Medieval period of Cyprus. "One unique aspect of my approach," he writes, "is the analysis of topography and climate history in relation to the naturalistic aspects of the visual arts and monuments. All the fieldwork is finished; what I require is the specialized libraries and archives located in Cyprus." Charles is well known to the CAARI community as the editor, along with Tom Davis, of CAARI Monograph 5,
Cyprus in the Balance of Empires
, recently reviewed as "a strikingly well-produced conference publication with... important new materials and surveys, and an underlying attempt to change the paradigms of the archaeology and art history of Cyprus"
(R. Cormack,
Speculum
91 (2016): 1167.)
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Roxanne Radpour, University of California, Los Angeles |
Roxanne Radpour, Danielle Parks Memorial Fellowship recipient, writes that "In mid-October I will begin my research project in Cyprus to study wall paintings within ancient rock-cut tombs from the town of Paphos. My dissertation research investigates completely non-invasive imaging and chemical sensing technologies to understand the materials, condition, and structure of painted objects. I eagerly look forward to applying my studies of state-of-the-art portable technologies to explore the ancient wall paintings, and provide new information that will complement previous analytical data and art historical knowledge. I am extremely grateful for the support of CAARI and the Danielle Parks Memorial Fellowship to pursue this research, and I look forward to my stay at CAARI so I may engage with other Cypriot scholars and discuss the results of my research."
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Keep CAARI's Fellowships Growing
CAARI's fellowships are its pledge to its own future-its way of sustaining and supporting the ongoing vitality of the community of Mediterranean scholars. We need you to help us grow and strengthen the fellowships. This year, we increased the graduate student stipends for the first time: ever! This is great-but it's just a beginning. By contributing to support a Fellow you help to increase the stature of CAARI!
Respond to our solicitation letter or go to www.caari.org/support with an extra gift for fellowships.
If you are a young professional, please support the fellowship funds. If each young professional who used CAARI contributed $35 a year to the fellowships fund, it would be SO MUCH STRONGER!
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CAARI and the Renewal of the Cyprus M.O.U.
On October 25-27, the Government of the Republic of Cyprus will seek renewal of its
Memorandum of Understanding
(MOU) with the Government of United States. The MOU is intended to reduce looting of sites in Cyprus and to restrict illegal movement of cultural property. Under the MOU, archaeological and religious objects that leave Cyprus without an export permit cannot be legally imported into the United States. The MOU must be renewed every five years. The protection it provides will cease if its renewal fails.
It is of vital importance to CAARI and its supporters that the MOU be successfully renewed.
It is especially important that coins be included in the renewal. Coins are among the most precious and informative of archaeological materials.
CAARI's Facebook page shows how vigorous and engaged the discussion about the MOU has been among our community. It also shows how intense the resistance to the MOU has been from coin collectors.
A number of CAARI's Trustees will make written or oral testimonies at the hearings on the MOU in Washington on October 25-27. CAARI has secured the participation of coin experts to contribute testimonials. CAARI will also join with the Embassy of Cyprus in hosting a reception for members of the Cypriot delegation who have come to Washington for the hearings. Dr. Marina Ieronymidou-Solomidou, the Director of the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus, will speak at the reception about the renewal effort.
MOUs respond to Article 9 of the 1970
UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property, which states that:
Any State Party to this Convention whose cultural patrimony is in jeopardy from pillage of archaeological or ethnological materials may call upon other States Parties...to participate in a concerted international effort to determine and to carry out the necessary concrete measures, including the control of exports and imports and international commerce in the specific materials concerned
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Cyprus has played an historic role in MOU history. It was the first State to request an MOU, in 1999. Implemented in 2002, Cyprus' MOU was renewed in 2007 and again in 2012. Cyprus made history again in its 2007 renewal, when it became the first State to include coins in its "Designated List" of items protected by the agreement. Deeply significant for the establishment of archaeological context, coins have also been the most incendiary element in MOU history, drawing fierce resistance from coin collectors. Nonetheless, coins were included in the US's historic MOU with China in 2009, and again in Cyprus' 2012 renewal. The text of Cyprus' MOU is available at https://eca.state.gov/cultural-heritage-center/cultural-property-protection/bilateral-agreements/cyprus.
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Inaugural Message From Bryan Wilkins
CAARI's New President
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F. Bryan Wilkins at CAARI
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It is my privilege to assume the office of CAARI president following the completion of former president Ambassador (ret.) Ray Ewing's five year tenure.
While not a former US ambassador to Cyprus, I have an association with Cyprus going back to 1960, when, as a ten year-old, I moved with my family to Cyprus. My father had been named to be first US ambassador to the new Republic of Cyprus and my brother and I luckily tagged along. As experienced children of 'foreign service' life-and with my father's enthusiasm to absorb local cultures-we quickly saw that Cyprus was a broad and stimulating panorama.
Shortly upon arrival we began regular trips and weekend jaunts into the mountains of Troodos, the coasts of Kyrenia, Famagusta, Cape Andreas (Karpas). Invariably, this involved many hours of scuba diving, and fishing amphora and anchors off the sea floor. I was hooked and even began to appreciate the subtle architectural differences of early Christian churches.
Unfortunately, this idyllic youth came to a crashing end in February 1964 when all American independents were evacuated from island following the outbreak of communal Greek-Turkish strife. Our family was wrenched apart; my brother and I were sent off to different boarding schools and life changed.
Still, Cyprus exerted a holy influence on my imagination and I went to the University of Pennsylvania and pursued course studies with the prominent archaeologists and anthropologists working in the Eastern Mediterranean. Instead of pursuing an academic career, however, I became a daily news reporter, starting in Kentucky and ending in Washington DC, where my eventual areas of interest were economics, trade and foreign issues.
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Bryan Wilkins with Kathleen Doherty, U.S. Ambassador to Cyprus
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Along the way, I kept an interest in archaeology, especially Cyprus issues, idly picking up Cypriot pottery at auctions deaccessioned from collections public and private. I discovered CAARI when I inadvertently sent in a check to support the organization and was immediately drawn into the wide-spread and devoted group of Cypriot scholars.
Fast forward. I just completed five years as Treasurer of CAARI. This came at a critical time. We completed our search for private financial help in matching 3 to 1 a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant of $370,000, earmarked for expanding CAARI's library to meet its growing need for shelf and storage space. This has been a successful project. As well, we are also in the final stages of finishing a renovation of our historic building to bring it to a state that we are all proud of.
CAARI has come far in its 38-year history. Its future is bright with choice and the never ending search for understanding of an island's past as well as its wider role in the Eastern Mediterranean. CAARI needs and will need to an even greater degree going forward the financial support of all its wide diverse family.
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| Bryan Wilkins (second from right) with CAARI stalwarts: Prof. Birgitta Wohl, CAARI's Secretary; Dr Andrew McCarthy, CAARI's Director; U.S. Ambassador Kathleen Doherty; Chris Christodoulou, CAARI Trustee; and Prof. Pam Gaber, CAARI Trustee |
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Looking Ahead
CAARI has accomplished a lot in the 38 years that Bryan Wilkins points to. In 2018 we'll celebrate our 40th anniversary. We'll welcome it not only with a gracious home but with an expanded library, newly redesigned and planted garden, and enhanced
laboratory facilities. All of this has been thanks to the loyal support of you, our friends, who have helped us every step of the way.
As so often, we send our sincere and dedicated thanks. We believe that CAARI's importance in the history and archaeology of Cyprus and
the eastern Mediterranean has just begun.
Stay with us as we grow! Help us keep the momentum strong.
With all thanks for your generosity,
Annemarie Carr
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