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The baton is passed: Dr. Andrew McCarthy, CAARI's Director since June, 2011, displays his farewell gift of a silver Cypriot bowl, as Dr. Lindy Crewe (at left) takes her place as CAARI's new, eighth Director and CAARI-trustee Professor Pamela Gaber cheers the transition. It was one vivid moment in a summer full of vivid events: the news-flash will take you through them all. Then we'll offer a glimpse into the action-packed research term of CAARI Fellow Dr. Charles Stewart, introduce you to a powerful new on-line research tool on the history of Cyprus designed and built by CAARI trustee William Andreas, and look ahead to the plans for CAARI's immediate future: its 40th Birthday celebration and anticipated U.S. federal funding cuts. We'll close with a tribute to Dr. McCarthy's eventful six years at CAARI.
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CAARI's 36th Summer Archaeology Workshop
by CAARI Trustee Alison South
Since its very beginning, CAARI has held a summer Archaeological Workshop to highlight the results of recent fieldwork. The temperature in Nicosia on the day is usually around 40C (104F) and this year did not disappoint: it was at least 43.5C (110F) and felt like being in a blast furnace with the hot wind from the east roaring in across the central plain. Excavation and survey teams from all over the island joined Cypriot colleagues and interested non-archaeologists in an air-conditioned hall at the Cyprus University for the event, which is jointly sponsored by CAARI, the Department of Antiquities and the University of Cyprus.
This year's Workshop took place on 1st July, the very day when a new CAARI Director took over. Outgoing Director Andrew McCarthy appeared at the lectern to introduce Dr Lindy Crewe to an audience of around 130 people, who then chaired the remainder of the meeting and announced
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Dr. Lindy Crewe
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plans to celebrate CAARI's 40th birthday in June 2018. First on the agenda, CAARI trustee Prof.
Pamela Gaber
offered thanks to Andrew for all his achievements during the last six years, and presented him with a silver plate engraved with the famous CAARI bird and his years in office: CAARI 2011-2017. Dr.
George Georgiou
then presented remarks and appreciation of CAARI on behalf of the Director of the Department of Antiquities, Dr.
Marina Solomidou-Ieronymidou
. Prof.
Lina Kassianidou
, head of the Archaeological Research Unit of the University of Cyprus, mentioned good relations and joint projects between CAARI and the University, and gave the exciting news of plans for a Center of Excellence in Archaeology to be set up in collaboration with various institutions (University of Cyprus, Cyprus University of Technology and others).
In two sessions making a long morning's program, 12 project directors presented the results of their recent fieldwork from Neolithic to Mediaeval, mainly excavation and survey but also touching on dating methods. Some gave updates on very long-running projects, such as
Alan Simmons (University of Nevada) on developments in the early Neolithic,
Pamela Gaber (Lycoming College) on Idalion and
Joan Connell
y (NYU) on Yeronisos Island. There was news of an interesting new venture in the far west, Polis Region Archaeological Project (PRAP), from
Dr. Kate Grossman (MIT). Work by the University of Cyprus was presented by Profs
Athanasios Vionis (detailed survey of an inland, rural area around Kophinou) and
Lina Kassianidou (Iron Age and later mining at Skouriotissa). Other speakers were
Andrew McCarthy,
Lisa Graham,
Harry Paraskeva (for Bleda Düring),
Lindy Crewe,
Sturt Manning and
Thierry Petit.
After a hot afternoon break in Nicosia, participants gathered again in the CAARI garden for the traditional party, featuring brandy sours (ably mixed by librarian Katerina), pizza and much exchange of news and views.
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Jacqueline and Vassos Karageorghis have two seats on the aisle at the CAARI Summer Archaeology Workshop
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CAARI staff and friends were especially honored to have at the Workshop the fabled archaeologists Dr. Vassos Karageorghis and Dr. Jacqueline Karageorghis.
As you'll see below, the next CAARI Workshop will take place on June 16th 2018, as part of the not-to-be-missed 40th Birthday celebration. Stay tuned for updates on the exciting plans for our celebrations: we hope to see you there!
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"MELUSINE OF CYPRUS"
Joyous Conference Honors CAARI Trustee
Exceptionally, after Dr. McCarthy's outstanding conference on environment and settlement in February, CAARI hosted a second international conference this spring, in May. "Melusine of Cyprus" was organized by Dr. Ioanna Christoforaki of the Academy in Athens and CAARI-trustee Professor Justine Andrews of the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, along with Dr. McCarthy. Honoring the pioneering scholarship of art historian (and long-time CAARI-trustee) Professor Annemarie Weyl Carr, the conference examined the flourishing art of Cyprus' four centuries under Western European rule, first as an independent kingdom under the French crusading family of the Lusignans (1191-1474)-whose mythical mermaid ancestress, Melusine, gave the conference its name-and then as a province of the Venetian Stato da Mar (1474-1571).
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Dr Maria Parani, of the University of Cyprus, speaks on the wall paintings at Ay. Chrysostomos, Koutsovendis
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Thirty-four participants from Cyprus itself and around the globe displayed both the dazzling panoply of styles, media, materials, and miraculous objects that made Cyprus a site of astonishment and wonder to medieval travelers, and the wide range of methodologies being mobilized to analyze it. The program is on the CAARI Web site (www.caari.org/news).
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Conference participants gathered in the garden at CAARI
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The excitement of the event was palpable. Rarely has such a range of art historical expertise on the art of medieval Cyprus been assembled in one room. Wall paintings, icons, heraldry, manuscript illumination, wood-carving, the sensual pleasures expressed in ceramic imagery, the production of elite textiles, techniques of conservation, and the rich evidence of Cyprus' historical documents were all explored. Architecture was irresistible, not only in papers, but in a splendid prowl amid Nicosia's
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Dr. Christoforaki, Prof. Carr, Dr. McCarthy, and Prof. Andrews
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Gothic buildings with Dr. Michalis Olympios, historian of Gothic architecture at the University of Cyprus.
Initially alarmed at the attention, Dr. Carr was exultant by the end. "It was a marvelous conference, full of freshness and energy. It's thrilling to see how vital the field is! What a paeon to Cyprus." The papers will be published by Brill.
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CAARI's GARDEN
Celebrations & Cerebrations
CAARI's friends were generous in supporting the new garden, so it's fun to show it to you in vigorous use. Here you can see
Dr. McCarthy's farewell dinner
. Administrator Vathoulla Moustoukki and Librarian Katerina Mavromichalou stand to either side of him as as he cuts the cake; Director Lindy Crewe faces them.
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In the foreground: Pamela Jacovides, trustees Prof. Sturt Manning and Prof. Nancy Serwint
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Nothing shaped Dr. McCarthy's term more emphatically than the momentous building campaign that affected every nook and cranny of CAARI's residence. Here CAARI throws a
barbecue dinner to honor the construction crew and their families, and to thank them for their many jobs well done.
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Dr. McCarthy (in green) joins the constructon team. CAARI housekeeper Photoulla Christodoulou is at the bar
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And just to show that the garden has its tranquil side, too, you can see a reader's laptop set up in a leafy corner. The trees are leafing out, the foliage in the beds is multi-colored, and flowers brighten the edges. It's rather amazing to realize that two stories of library space with new stacks, map cabinets, and shelving for rare books and archival materials are all below the ground here.
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Visual Culture in Late Antique Cyprus
Prof. Charles Stewart's Research at CAARI
My 2016-2017 CAARI/CAORC fellowship allowed me to spend part of a sabbatical year in Greece and Cyprus, working on my book, Visual Culture in Late Antique Cyprus. I spent October on the islands of Chios and Naxos, Greece, making surveys of medieval churches, castles and cities and their associated sculptures, mosaics, and frescoes. This confirmed the hypothesis that Cyprus had a close connection with the Aegean during the so-called "Byzantine Dark Ages", the mid-6th to late 9th-century period at the core of my book. From November to January, I resided at CAARI. I conducted archival and library research; I measured, photographed, drafted plans, and made stereometric analyses of 10 architectural sites; visited the archaeological excavation at Akrotiri; and examined and photographed 130 artifacts and artworks within the museums of the
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Dr. Stewart discussing excavation in Kazakhstan
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Department of Antiquities. I shared some of my preliminary findings in papers in both of CAARI's conferences: "Environment, landscape and society" in February, and "Melusine of Cyprus" in May. Both papers will be published, providing a foretaste of the ideas in my book.
My research on the church of Agios Lazaros in Larnaka was showcased on CNN's series Finding Jesus: Fact Forgery Fiction which was broadcast internationally in March. The photo at right comes from another TV broadcast, this one made in Kazakhstan, where I excavated in June with former CAARI Director Tom Davis.
I was delighted to spend several months at CAARI, where I witnessed the improvements of the residence and experienced the wonderful new library. I applaud the CAARI staff, especially Vathoulla, who assisted me with my logistical problems, and Andrew, who provoked me to think of Cyprus' material culture in new ways. Charles A. Stewart is Associate Professor and Chair of the Art History program at the University of St Thomas in Houston, TX, and main editor of CAARI Monograph 5.
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DIGITAL COBHAM
CAARI Launches a New Digital Research Tool
Cobham is among the most widely-known names in Cypriot historiography. "Cobham" was Claude Delaval Cobham, a British colonial official who served in Cyprus from 1878 until his retirement in 1908, from 1879 on as the District Commissioner of Larnaca. But he was also an indefatigable, pioneering scholar of Cypriot documentary history. One of the leading antiquarians on the island, he built an extensive library of works dealing with Cyprus (now at the University of Cambridge), and acted as a nexus for scholars interested in Cypriot history. His publications are among the first modern efforts to systematize the study of the island's history.
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His most famous book is
Excerpta Cypria. Materials for a History of Cyprus
, seen her
e in the first complete imprint of 1908. The Excerpta assembles and translates documentary accounts of Cyprus by 81 authors from Strabo in about 23 CE through the last Berat issued by the Sublime Porte to an Archbishop of Cyprus in AH 1282 (1866 CE). Yet more compendious, and in its way even more important, was
An attempt at a bibliography of Cyprus
, published in 1886. This is the first effort to provide a bibliography of printed works that deal with the history of the island of Cyprus.
Cobham wasn't the only bibliographer working to provide an historigraphic overview of Cyprus. Notably Eugen Oberhummer published an extensive bibliography, Bericht über Geographie von Griechenland. III Kypros (Jahresbericht über die Fortschritte der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft Volume 77) in 1893. And Νεοκλής Κυριαζής edited Κυπριακή βιβλιογραφία, published in 1935, which included Cobham's work as well as a nearly complete list of works published in Cyprus up to that point.
Yet Cobham's remains the most fundamental.
CAARI is pleased to continue the work of these scholars by making available Digital Cobham, an online bibliography of material about Cyprus published before 1910 collated together from all published and unpublished bibliographies. Digital Cobham is available to all at:
http://caari.org/digitalcobham/
It lists over 2700 bibliographic entries, with descriptions of the works, links to holdings of the works in major libraries, and links to digital copies of a substantial number of the works. Nearly 2000 of the works can be read immediately. They start with Gabriele Capodilista's Itinerario della Terra Santa nel 1458, the first printed work to mention Cyprus (Perugia: Petrus Petri de Colonia, 1475), and close with Φίλιος Ζαννέτος' Ιστορία της νήσου Κύπρου (Larnaca, beginning in 1910). In between, you can quickly find and read over 400 years of scholarship on Cyprus.
Digital Cobham is a remarkable mating of Cobham's own prodigious bibliographic quest for evanescent paper originals with our era's mass digitization, which gives instant access to vast tracts of the rare and out-of-print material that he corralled. A useful summary of Cobham's career is given by former CAARI Director Robert Merrillees in his "Towards a fuller history of the Cyprus Museum," Cahiers/ Centre d'études cypriotes 35 (2005): 191 - 214, at 192-93.
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SAVE THE DATE!
CAARI's Birthday Bash 14-16 June 2018
In June 2018, CAARI turns 40.
Here are three ways you can join with us in celebrating CAARI's 40th birthday in the summer of 2018. Participate in as many as you can!
Parties!
Join us in Nicosia if you possibly can. A gala dinner will be held on the evening of
Thursday, June 14, 2018
. An exuberant omnium-gatherum at CAARI itself will follow the 2018 Summer Archaeological Workshop on
S
aturday, June 16
. Further festivities will gather around these.
CAARI: The First 40 Years, a history of CAARI, will look back over 40 years with narratives, images, memorabilia, and individual recollections. A printed handbook will be paralleled and augmented online at the CAARI Web site. We want
everyone to join in this project. Please do send us your own recollections:
- by e-mail to [email protected], or
- by mail to CAARI, 11 Andreas Demitriou Street, Nicosia, Cyprus 1066
Support: Everyone in the habit of giving, as CAARI's supporters are, is acutely aware of the concern being voiced by non-profit institutions of higher learning, humanistic and scientific, about predicted curtailments of U.S. federal funding. CAARI is no exception. About half of its funding comes from the State Department's budget for "soft diplomacy." Knowing about other cultures, learning other peoples' languages,
bringing a scientist's deep respect for evidence to the record of the deep and the recent past are values of critical importance not only for individuals but for states as they negotiate the challenges of our shrinking globe. Cyprus-as the eastern-most edge of Europe, a democracy known for respect for intellectual freedom, at the brink of one our most challenging regions-is an exceptionally rich site for such work. You can see how vibrant CAARI's activity has been over this spring. We call on our friends and supporters to help us assure our ongoing financial stability as government support becomes less assured.
- Consider a contribution at www.caari.org.
- Send a check made out to CAARI to CAARI 665 Beacon Street,
Suite 200 Boston, MA 02215 USA.
- Consider other options described in our summer letter to you.
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Thanks to Dr. Andrew McCarthy for a Transformational Term as CAARI Director
On June 30, Dr. Andrew McCarthy's momentous term as CAARI's seventh Director came to an end. The institute's four-year-long construction project, due to conclude on June 27, was still inching to completion. But it was nearly there, and along with CAARI's keys and responsibilities, Dr. McCarthy turned over to his successor, Dr. Lindy Crewe, a building triumphantly remade. The sense of achievement was immense. From his first months in office when CAARI's books were packed into hundreds of labeled boxes, through the astonishing excavation for and erection of the library extension, to this summer's campaign to bring the entire structure up to EU code, his term had been filled with construction. He leaves CAARI with a building-and a future-transformed.
"This structural work was not without disruption," Dr. McCarthy says. "What impressed me most was the resilience of CAARI's people: the staff-but also the researchers. They not only coped, but came back. We were tearing the place apart, but it never ceased to produce family groups, who look back on their time here fondly. Throughout it all, they found CAARI welcoming." It's a resonant affirmation that the vibrant, friendly CAARI we know and love has carried on through the building's transformation.
Certainly the construction never stemmed CAARI's vital flow of activity. Books and available reading spaces continued to be used hard; lectures continued to stimulate interest and-on occasion-controversy; the signature Summer Archaeology Workshops gathered larger audiences than ever. Three successful international conferences are yielding an unprecedented surge in CAARI publications, raising the number from five to eight. A substantial government grant enabled the creation of CAARI's petrographic laboratory, the first on the island and widely welcomed. In Nicosia, CAARI hosted glittering invitational events honoring Cyprus University Professor Demetrios Michaelides, attorney Manthos Mavromatis, and attorneys Lellos and Achilleas Demetriades, and it celebrated the inauguration of the newly expanded library in 2016. In Washington, DC, in 2012 and again in 2017, CAARI played a significant role in the negotiations to renew the U.S. government's Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Republic of Cyprus on the protection of cultural heritage.
But if CAARI remains itself, its expansion has also opened new paths into the future. "CAARI has existed on one track," Dr. McCarthy reflects. "It has offered certain types of facilities and assistance, and everyone has known what that was. Now we have our ear to the ground, and are asking 'What else?' 'What is needed?' It's more dynamic. I hope it will remain that way." Dr. Crewe agrees. The new petrographic laboratory, she says, will open new dimensions for research into materials of all kinds, strengthen relationships among institutions in Cyprus, and facilitate the work of the Department of Antiquities by making it unnecessary to send objects off-island for testing. The expanded library facility will enable CAARI to broaden its disciplinary appeal from its archaeological core into related areas of the humanities and the social and natural sciences. And CAARI's accreditation as an EU institution, secured by Dr. McCarthy in 2014, can open avenues to cooperation with other EU projects and possibly eventually to participation in EU-funded programs. In the wake of its expansion, a larger, more forceful future opens before CAARI.
CAARI owes gratitude to many people for the success of its building campaign. We could never have achieved it without the staunch vigilance of our Cypriot trustees, above all Chris Christodoulou, overseer extraordinaire of the construction effort. CAARI's long-suffering staff-Administrator Vathoulla Moustoukki, Librarian Katerina Mavromichalou, and Housekeeper Photoulla Christodoulou-triumphed over relentless upheaval to maintain the continuity that made the Institute's work move ahead so flawlessly. And our friends have given generous gifts. But Dr. McCarthy deserves resounding thanks from all of us for his steady and unflaggingly positive overseership. He leaves CAARI strongly positioned for an ever more effective future. Only sharply curtailed U.S. government funding clouds the view ahead, and that is a cloud we can ALL help dispel with our gifts.
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And Thanks to All Our Friends who Celebrate and Sustain CAARI
A year ago, CAARI was celebrating the inauguration of its library expansion. It felt like a culmination! But it was only a bright crest in an escalating wave of eventful achievements. Since then there have been two international conferences with global attendance; a distinguished new Director has arrived to widespread acclaim; Digital Cobham, a new online research tool created at CAARI, has been launched; new microscopes have significantly upgraded the petrographic laboratory; there is air conditioning in the second floor! And in just another year, CAARI will be 40.
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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 itself and the eastern Mediterranean has just begun. Stay with us as we grow!
Don't forget to send us your reminiscences at [email protected], and remember to donate $40 for our Fortieth at:
And know that ALL of us at CAARI are sending thanks to ALL of you for your generosity!
Annemarie Carr
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