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This vivid bird belongs to CAARI's rare collection of traditional Cypriot laces. Over its 40 years, CAARI has gathered many precious traditional artifacts. The laces will soon be installed in their own custom-built display case, kindly donated by the US Embassy.
First in our news-flash are CAARI fellowships. Check out this year's fellowship opportunities on our Web site, and apply: the reports from current Fellows show how rewarding such awards can be. Second, for our 40th Birthday festivities in June, 2018, we summon memories of CAARI from everyone, especially from "CAARI kids," people who came to CAARI as children. And third, we announce the publication of two major new books by Professor Birgitta Lindros Wohl, distinguished scholar and the Secretary of CAARI's Board. Both books are on ancient lamps and lighting devices. But they are fascinatingly different in almost every way, and one is readily accessible online.
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Research Fellowships at CAARI
Descriptions and application forms for CAARI's fellowships are posted now on the Web site: www.caari.org/fellowships. Research fellows are a vital part of CAARI's life.
- Three CAARI graduate student fellowships of $2000 each, to cover transport and residence at CAARI.
- Two CAARI/CAORC postdoctoral fellowships with stipends of $5500.
- The 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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Research Reports by CAARI Fellows
CAARI Graduate Student Fellows
Sam Crooks
La Trobe University
Anita Cecil O'Donovan Fellowship
The Archaeology of Value: Materiality and Identity in Chalcolithic Cyprus
The generous support provided by CAARI through the Anita Cecil O'Donovan Fellowship enabled me to spend a period of several weeks in Cyprus, during which time I stayed as resident at CAARI, benefiting from the unparalleled resources of the CAARI library and community of scholars regularly passing through its doors. I was able to study first hand picrolite cruciforms held in four of the museums of Cyprus, making important observations regarding production, utility, re-use and consumption of these objects, as well as assessing aesthetic and stylistic qualities. Finally, I was able to participate in the Environment, Landscape and Society conference held at CAARI during my stay.
Catherine Olien
Northwestern University
Helena W. Swiny & Stuart Swiny Fellowship
The Reception of Ancient Cypriot Sculpture, 1850-1900: A European Perspective
Thanks to the Swiny fellowship and CAARI's hospitality, I traveled to Cyprus for the first time this summer to visit sites and objects central to my dissertation, "Between Classicism and Orientalism: The Reception of Ancient Cypriot Sculpture in the Nineteenth Century." I am grateful to Prof. Counts and Prof. Toumazou (Athienou Archaeological Project) and Prof. Gaber (Lycoming College Expedition to Idalion), who generously guided me around their sites and associated museums, greatly enhancing my appreciation for Cypriot votive sculpture in context-both in the ancient world and on Cyprus today. Because my research deals with displaced Cypriot collections in Europe and America that were formed under troubling circumstances, it was refreshing to witness the cooperation and rich mutual exchange that now drives research and defines relationships between foreign excavation teams, local institutions, and their publics.
Craig Harvey
,
of the University of Michigan, will use his Danielle Parks Memorial Fellowship during the fall-we'll hear from him in the spring.
CAARI Postdoctoral Fellows
Professor Nicholas P. Herrmann
Texas State University, Department of Anthropology
CAARI Senior Scholar In Residence
Ayioi Omoloyites Bioarchaeological Project 2017
The primary goal of the Ayioi Omoloyites Bioarchaeological Project is to document and assess the commingled human skeletal remains recovered in 2006 by the Department of Antiquities from three Hellenistic to Early Christian rock tombs (Tombs 47-50) located in Nicosia. The CAARI Senior Scholar In Residence Fellowship allowed me to reside in Nicosia during the months of July and August of 2017 and continue work on the collection. The Department of Antiquities generously provided an excellent research space for the analysis near CAARI. In addition to myself, seven Biological Anthropology/ Archaeology graduate students
also stayed at CAARI and
assisted with the analysis. These students included one Cypriot student at the University of Leiden and six from Texas State University. They resided at the newly remodeled CAARI Scholar's Residence throughout the 2017 study season. For the 2017 study season, our goals were multifaceted including the documentation of all dental remains, assessment of subadult skeletal elements, and the complete analysis of Tomb 47 and 48 (which contained fewer human remains as compared to Tomb 49). With the dedicated efforts of the students and with the support of CAARI and the Department of Antiquities, we nearly complete all three goals. In total, we examined over 3,600 individual skeletal elements representing 4375 bone fragments weighing over 45 kilograms. We are currently processing these data and compiling information on the number of individuals represented (preliminary results are presented Table 1), pathologies including trauma, oral health and infections, and the spatial distribution of these remains within the tombs. The analysis of the subadult remains will be the focus of a growth and development study which will be presented at the American Association of Physical Anthropology meeting in the Spring of 2018 with Christopher Wolfe and Krysten Cruz, Texas State University Graduate students.
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General Age
Cohort
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Tomb
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| 47 |
48 |
49 |
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Infant (0-3)
Child (3-12)
Adolescent (12-18)
Adult (18+)
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1
3
1
15
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2
4
2
11
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37
23
5
113
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| Total |
20 |
19 |
178 |
Preliminary demographic breakdown of the tombs bases on element MNI determinations.
Scientific Adviser, Museum of Traditional Pottery in Agios Demetrios (Marathasa)
CAARI/CAORC Postdoctoral Fellow
On Heritage Patrols in Cyprus: An Ethnoarchaeological Account of a Danish Peacekeeper
Dr. London has found that the traditional pottery of early modern Cyprus can often cast invaluable light on the ancient cookware that is her specialty. Her CAARI/CAORC fellowship was devoted to a precious archive of information on Cyprus' last male traditional potters. She shared the fruits of her research this September in a lecture at CAARI, "
The Pot Detective: A Danish UN Peacekeeper and his Pitharia.
"
She has worked with the traditional potters of Cyprus for over 30 years and her lecture attracted a full house - over 70 guests so we had to rush to find more seats! We were happy to welcome potters and others from the villages of Kornos and Lazania, as well as members of the archaeological and diplomatic communities and the UN. It was also a first for CAARI as we jointly hosted the event with the Royal Danish Embassy, Greece, and the Royal Danish Consulate, Nicosia. They generously supplied the delicious wine for the reception following the lecture, which was held in our pleasant and breezy courtyard.
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Dr Gloria London (at left) with potter Louiza Constantinou and Kornos host Domna Michael.
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Dr. London describes her research project as follows:
Knud Jensen, the 'Pot Detective', was a Danish police officer who joined the United Nations Peacekeeping Force. In 1971 he drew 66 large wine fermentation jars - pitharia - found along the road and in private storerooms in the Nicosia District. He collected enough evidence to match six jars with their makers - a father and son team from Lazania village. They worked as itinerant potters between 1876-1918. Names incised on the 300-gallon-jars, include potters, owners, and/or men who worked as land managers for the nearby Macheras Monastery.
To fill in gaps in Jensen's research, I visited the Decorated Bread Museum (Limassol), Lazania, Macheras Monastery, Phikardou, Fini, and Agios Demetrios (Marathasa). I studied 44 jars made by Fini potters and conclude that they incised far less decoration and text than the Lazania potters. One implication is that markings on ancient storage containers can reveal regional differences in the pottery industry.
My project provides the first full account of the jars and the men who made them.
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40th Birthday Preparations
Share your CAARI memories!
CAARI will celebrate its 40th Birthday with a fanfare of parties and festivities in the week of June 11-17, 2018. We will compile a volume on CAARI and the Archaeology of Cyprus: The First Forty Years, with notes from many scholars and archaeological teams that have used CAARI. But we also want to post an online fanfare of people, pictures, and varied memories of CAARI on our Web site. Some wonderfully evocative remembrances are there already at www.caari.org/caari-at-40. Let them inspire you to join us
, join the others whom you'll remember when you see them! Send pictures and recollections-the heat, the sweat, the sites, the friends, the talk that made it memorable:
- Digitally to [email protected]
- On paper to 11 Andreas Demitriou Street, Nicosia 1066, Cyprus
Of course, if you also feel able to support CAARI with a donation in memory of happy times, too, it will be more than welcome! Remember: a birthday bonus of $40 for 40 years can be given at
www.caari.org
.
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Kids at CAARI: Let us hear from you, too!
Did you spend time as a kid at CAARI with your archaeologist parent? Are you an archaeologist who brought your kids to CAARI when you were here as a researcher? Do you have memories of CAARI or Cypriot archaeology from your family time here?
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Palma London at CAARI in 1999 |
For our 40th birthday celebrations we are looking for images of your time spent at CAARI and stories of how CAARI impacted on peoples' lives, both during time spent on Cyprus and any long lasting impressions you took away with you. Did your time affect your later interests? Did it play into your choices of courses in school or ideas about what kind of work you'd like to do as an adult?
Here Palma London, daughter of Dr. Gloria London, perches as an eight-year-old on the porch at CAARI. She recalls that: "I love libraries because of the CAARI library with the bay windows and the two big chairs that stood in front of them. The only place I ever used a typewriter was at the CAARI library." Today, she is a fourth-year graduate student in Computer Sciences at Caltech-probably few typewriters there!
Other parents surely took photos of their kids at the same place under the bird. Maybe they have a similar photo.
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Two Luminous Books in a Single Year
Professor Birgitta Lindros Wohl
By strange and unexpected circumstances, the year 2017 saw the publication of two books of mine. Both are on ancient lamps, but otherwise they could not be more different. One was a long-term individual project, the other a co-authored collaboration; one studies lamps from a single archaeological site, the other a very diverse museum collection; one is a weighty paper volume, the other an interactive online site. Working in such different ways has opened many interesting perspectives, both conceptual and technological.
Isthmia X: Terracotta Lamps II: 1967-2004
(Athens: American School of Classical Studies in Athens, 2017),
derives from the long-lasting excavation on the Isthmus of Corinth in Greece, which has been my summer home for many years. The volume is part of a rich and varied series on the panhellenic sanctuary of Poseidon, the seat of the Isthmian Games. It continues the lamp studies by Oscar Broneer, published in 1977 under the auspices of the University of Chicago, and it adheres to the same nomenclature and basic chronological periodization. About 1200 lamps or fragments are reported in it under more than 400 catalogue entries, preceded by chapters that discuss the issues and conclusions that arise from them. The ASCSA Press has done an excellent job of presentation, with clear, attractive layout of tables and ample black-and-white illustrations.
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A selection lamps from the Getty Museum that were studied
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The field of lychnology was much more limited when this study was begun in 1977. Its horizons have expanded over the decades. We have seen a great increase in the range of lamp studies and in their interpretive power, as witnessed by the now extensive bibliography. While the Chicago excavations focused mainly on the central areas of the Sanctuary of Poseidon on the Isthmus-two temples, a theatre, and two stadia-the UCLA and Ohio State University excavations behind this volume deal with a wide range of surrounding areas: a cemetery, a bath, a housing area, and the huge late fortification wall called the Hexamilion, and its fortress. This expansion has both enriched the history of the sanctuary's evolution, and confirmed some of its aspects. Lamps were discovered throughout. Many were-as can be expected-fragmentary, but today's lychnological knowledge can make even a small fragment tell a clear story. The importance of lamps as chronological evidence is growing in refinement with almost every excavation report. But this study also augments our understanding of the organization of lamp workshops, the use of signatures, the patterns of export and import of lamps, and the different clays and the use of glaze.
The Corinthian Isthmus was an important north-south link to the Peloponnese, but it functioned also as a dominant east-west connector, even before the gradual realization of the Corinth canal. This role as a geographical nexus is clearly manifest in the lamp material.
Though the lamps and fragments of this volume cover the period from archaic to late Byzantine, the flow was not at all even. When the material was laid out for work on a huge table in chronological order, you could, by the absences and presences, read with amazing accuracy the historical and political ups-and-downs of the area, in itself and in relation to the Corinthia at large. In fact the microcosm of lamps mirrors the larger picture closely. Mummius' destruction of Corinth in 146 B.C. leaves a big gap. Julius Caesar's colonization in 44 B.C. and the subsequent influx of Italians revitalize both the area and the lamp industry, and the Roman influence has a strong impact on the future. Next, the iconography of Corinthian delicate lamp disks from the 2nd and 3rd centuries A.D. illustrates the flourishing of local cults, of which Isthmia had a large number. With Athens' rise as a competitive commercial power in the 3rd and 4th centuries, lamps of a sturdy, different clay pour to the area, a witness to the economic force and commercial organization of its trade with the
Corinthia, the Peloponnese, Italy and the eastern Mediterranean. A hidden coin horde is most likely a response to the attack in A.D.395 of Alarik, the Visigothic chieftain who would sack Rome in 410. The rise of Christianity manifests itself rather late here - in the early 5th century-but the material is sufficient to contribute to new insights into Late Antiquity. In the subsequent period, focused on the Hexamilion, the lychnological findings at Isthmia intersect with Corinth itself and with the whole Peloponnese. Finally a few Byzantine remains tell of a strongly diminished, possibly squatting settlement in the 12th to 14th centuries.
2. Ancient Lamps in the J. Paul Getty Museum (Malibu, CA: J. Paul Getty Museum 2017).
This is available right at your fingertips:
Nearly everything about this publication was different from Isthmia X: the research process, the presentation, and the technology. First, it was a collaboration between two individuals of quite distinct scholarly experiences. Then, it dealt with a museum collection, with pieces derived from a wide variety of different areas, literally all around the Mediterranean. The lamps' places of manufacture cannot always be ascertained; they are all intact and of a baffling typological variety; and they present a stunning iconographical wealth, drawing from mythology, nature, and daily life. As many as 49 decors had never been seen by us, and were without parallel in the literature.
Early in the project we decided to make it part of the Getty Museum's path-breaking digital publications on ancient art. This is the largest book in the series, and the very first lamp publication ever of this kind. The volume includes many excellent zoomable color photographs of each item; there are links to maps, to bibliography, and other cross references. We enjoyed the large-scale collaboration of helpful specialists: photographers, digital technicians, conservators, web assistants, and editors, as well as colleagues. Admittedly the ambitions of the press at times made us feel overwhelmed, and the Museum setting clearly does not provide the same independence vis-à-vis structure as a regular academic press. But it has clearly been an exhilarating and endlessly interesting learning process, with a very rewarding result.
The 600+ lamps span the time from archaic to 7th century A.D., with a majority from the Roman Imperial era. We divided the collection according to our specializations and tastes, but with constant mutual consultations. Descriptive discussions of traditional format precede each catalogue section, providing vital data. Many of the lamps are highly unusual, be it in shape, in size, or in geographic derivation, and they must have served a range of original functions in a variety of settings: from simple bowls to elaborate multi-nozzle examples; lamps in form of sculpture; elaborately constructed stands combining several lighting devices with basins for fragrance containers; a substantial number of bronze lamps, many elegant and memorable, others plain; even a tiny, rare gold lamp with glass decor. Signatures or shop derivations were plentiful, primarily on the Roman lamps, many from known shops especially in North Africa. The few Greek inscriptions contained no known name. A number of fairly unusual workshop marks are recorded also in drawings. The material is rich and fascinatingly varied. Enjoy the extraordinary photographical panoply!
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A Special Message to CAARI's Friends
Over the summer, CAARI has received some wonderfully generous gifts from its friends. Thank you! We appreciate your generosity so deeply! CAARI is in vibrant condition. We are proud of the buoyant energy with which it is entering its 40th anniversary year. Feel this pride with us: it is truly yours! This is what YOU have made possible. CAARI flourishes as it does because of the responsiveness and generosity of its supporters. We believe its work is vital; we also believe its mission is ever evolving, as the needs of the research community shift. These needs will grow as vibrantly as CAARI does. Share the challenge, and share the pride of meeting them! We send our warmest thanks to all who help us grow into an ever more vibrant future.
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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