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CAARI's door is open, and spring is on the doorstep. Welcome to the freshness and new beginnings. We have so much to share. We have appointed a new Director, who will succeed Dr. Andrew McCarthy at the end of his term this summer. We have just held an outstanding international symposium organized by Dr. McCarthy on landscape, environment, and settlement patterns over the millennia in Cyprus. And we're inviting you to join us in the first steps toward CAARI's 40th Birthday party.
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CAARI Appoints a New Director
With great pleasure, CAARI announces the appointment of Dr. LINDY CREWE as its new Director. A leading scholar of Bronze Age Cyprus, Dr. Crewe comes to CAARI from the University of Manchester, England, where she is a Lecturer in Archaeology. Like Dr. McCarthy, whom she has known since graduate school, Dr. Crewe studied under Professor Edgar ("Eddie") Peltenburg at the University of Edinburgh, and excavates in western Cyprus.
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Dr. Lindy Crewe
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The author of two books and 35 articles, she is currently working with Dr. Diane Bolger on the publication of the remarkable Chalcolithic cemetery and settlement at Souskiou-Laona. "It is the site Eddie was most passionate about," she says, and its publication was left unfinished at his recent death.
Dr. Crewe grew up in Sydney, Australia. Art and ancient history were her two greatest fascinations for as long as she can remember. Success as a graphic designer in Melbourne left her unsatisfied, and she enrolled instead at La Trobe University. Here she found archaeology, the perfect conjunction of her two main interests. Eight muddy, winter weeks of excavation at her Professors David Frankel and Jenny Webb's site at Marki-Alonia introduced her to Cyprus. Those who dig in Cyprus' summer heat will chuckle at her recollection of coming in to CAARI to get warm. She stayed on afterward at CAARI to pursue her undergrad Honors thesis on spindle whorls, and speaks warmly of the wonderful support she received from then-Director, Dr. Nancy Serwint.
After publishing her thesis as her first book, she went on to a Ph.D. in Europe under Professor Peltenburg. He introduced her to western Cyprus, and to summertime excavation, at Souskiou-Laona, where she served as Field Director from 2001 to 2006. In 2005-2006 she served as the Cyprus Curator in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the British Museum, and in 2007 her second book, on Enkomi, was published. This allowed her to extend onto a far larger canvas her interest in the way pottery and its changing technology reveal patterns of social interactions and trade relations.
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Experimental reconstruction of Kissonerga micro-brewery
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In 2007 Dr. Crewe assumed the directorship of the excavations of Kissonerga-Skalia, a post she still holds. A powerful Bronze Age site that also offers rich insights into the relation of Chalcolithic to Early Bronze Age developments, Kissonerga has given ample scope to her keen interest in archaeology as a record of social change, and to her expertise in the technologies and transmission of ceramic forms both within and outside of Cyprus. It also yielded a remarkably well-preserved Bronze Age brewery for producing beer, depicted here, a discovery gleefully reported all around globe. Continuing relations as a visiting academic with the British Museum also allowed her to unite her archaeological expertise with her interest in public dissemination of finds through the creation of on-line presentations on Kissonerga, and she has plans for a far larger digital project ahead.
Dr. Crewe looks forward to bringing her expertise and her many ideas for archaeology to life at CAARI. At home with information technology, she expects to make it a far stronger aspect of CAARI. She looks forward, too, to seeing vigorous use of the petrological laboratory that Dr. McCarthy developed at CAARI. In terms of CAARI's programs, she believes that a broader interdisciplinary scope can serve both CAARI itself, and archaeology as a discipline. "The 'material turn' occurring in many disciplines (e.g., history, art history, anthropology, sociology, law) provides an opportunity for them to come to us as 'material culture' people," she says. She hopes, too, to find ways to make CAARI the incubator of projects that help young professionals in the eastern Mediterranean come together, build professional relationships, and do significant work together. And she regards outreach projects, especially outreach to children, as particularly important. "It is they who will need to care for things in the future."
Dr. Crewe and her husband, Dr. Manolis Melissaris, Associate Professor in the Department of Law at the London School of Economics, will arrive in Nicosia in June. We welcome them to CAARI with warmth!
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CAARI Symposium
Environment, landscape and society: diachronic perspectives on settlement patterns in Cyprus
What was the most important thing for people in the past? Proximity to water? Strategic placement on a trade route? Safety and security from natural forces or other communities? Social or spiritual attachment to a particular place? These are some of the most important and also the most enigmatic problems that archaeology faces when investigating past cultures.
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Landscape with village near Panagia tou Sinti
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There is no single set of factors that will answer all questions about why past populations chose to settle in a place or why they chose to move. The environment is not static, physical forces change the landscape, and human societies adapt and develop. For this reason a diachronic approach is necessary to demonstrate how the environment, landscape and society interacted to generate the cultures and communities we study in archaeology.
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Conference audience fills the CAARI reading room
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From 17-19 February CAARI held a conference in Nicosia, entitled
'Environment, landscape and society: diachronic perspectives on settlement patterns in Cyprus'.
The conference brought together a wide range of scholars to discuss and provide different perspectives on these questions. Importantly, this was not a conference about one time and place. Instead, scholars with interests ranging from the earliest settlers in Cyprus up to the British Colonial period were represented.
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Professor Pamela Gaber, co-organizer of the conference, speaks on the copper trade in Cyprus
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Papers on survey projects, excavations, historical sources, theoretical perspectives and environmental, topographical and other scientific subjects were brought together over the course of three days. There was a real sense amongst the participants and attendees that the papers and discussions were addressing important issues, but an important message that came across was that there can be no single way to answer these questions. The range of approaches highlighted that our methods of study must adapt to each situation and it was helpful to see how scholars of one time period had helpful suggestions for how to study other subject matter from other time periods.
The keynote lecture in particular, delivered by Prof. James Wright (Director of the American School of Classical Studies in Athens), presented the case of the Corinthia region in Greece, as seen diachronically from the Neolithic period to modern times. This provided both a contrast to the rest of the papers which were specifically about Cyprus, as well as providing an excellent example of an integrated study that considers the changing relationships between the environment, landscape and society through time.
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Keynote speaker Professor James Wright with wife, Mary K. Dabney, and conference speakers Eilis Monahan and Lina Kassianidou (at left) and Stella Diakou (at right), all of whom are alumnae of Bryn Mawr College, where he teaches
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The buzz from this conference has not worn off, and indeed CAARI and our co-organizing partner, the Cyprus Institute, are preparing to publish the proceedings as the next installment in the CAARI Monograph Series. This is possible through the generous financial support from the US Embassy in Cyprus. The publication of this collection of papers will edify, bridging scholars across time periods and across the whole of island of Cyprus and will hopefully benefit the understanding of how past peoples lived in their landscapes.
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CAARI Monographs to date. The conference will be a seventh volume.
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EVERYONE
Join Us in CAARI's 40th Birthday Plans!
In 2018, CAARI will celebrate its 40th Birthday! We want all of our friends and alums to join in the festivities. If you can't come to Nicosia-and even if you can-we invite everyone to share in assembling a great compendium of memories, stories, photos, and memorabilia: a world-wide paean of thanks, appreciation, and funny stories. Be thinking of your CAARI memories: anything you can send by snail or e-mail: messages, drawings, collages, photocopies, scanned or printed photos, letters, trinkets - anything you think will convey your enthusiasm and trigger recollections. Be thinking of the friends you made at CAARI and urge them to send us memories, too.
We look forward to your reflections, recollections, and humor. Here are the addresses to send them:
or:
CAARI
11 Andreas Demitriou Street
1505 Nicosia, Cyprus
We also urge ALL who have known CAARI, stayed at CAARI, or relied on CAARI's facilities to make a
"$40 for 40" donation to help fuel its successful future. Click Click&Pledge on the CAARI website:
or send a check made out to CAARI to:
CAARI
656 Beacon Street, 5th Floor
Boston, MA 02215
USA
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Thanks to a Special CAARI Friend
CAARI owes very special thanks to a wonderful friend. Mrs. Leslys Vedder has given CAARI the funds for two high-grade microscopes and associated petrological equipment in memory of her remarkable husband, the nuclear physicist and lover of archaeology, Dr. James F. Vedder. This equipment has raised CAARI's new petrological laboratory to a whole new level of technological efficiency. Dr. Vedder would surely have been delighted. His own archaeological discoveries, published inter alia in CAARI News, exemplify the way gifted people with wide-ranging interests can pool their skills to develop whole new areas of investigation-in this case the now thriving field of Archaeometry. Dr. Vedder was also a dedicated gardener, and Mrs. Vedder has given a new lemon tree to CAARI's garden, too. We owe Mrs. Vedder warm thanks for her generosity, and for weaving her husband's rich intellectual legacy into CAARI's life and work.
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And Special Thanks to All of CAARI's Friends
In 2018 CAARI will celebrate its 40th Birthday. We are proud to welcome this anniversary with so much that is new and vibrant. We have a fully refurbished home, a much-expanded library, a newly redesigned and planted garden, and a whole new petrological laboratory maintained in conjunction with the University of Cyprus.
All of this is because of the loyal support of you, our friends. You have helped us every step of the way. As so often, we send you 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
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Don't forget to send us your reminiscences at [email protected], and remember to donate $40 for our Fortieth at:
With all thanks for your generosity from all of us at CAARI,
Annemarie Carr
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