Beyond Cyprus: Investigating Cypriot Connectivity in the Mediterranean from the Late Bronze Age to the End of the Classical Period

Lindy Crewe of the Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute and Erin Walcek Averett of Creighton University present the 41-paper volume Beyond Cyprus: Investigating Cypriot Connectivity in the Mediterranean from the Late Bronze Age to the End of the Classical Period, edited by Giorgos Bourogiannis and published in 2022 in the Athens University Review of Archaeology. Chaired by Athanasios Vionis, the book launch divides the papers into two chronological parts, followed by remarks from Bourogiannis on the December 2020 conference and research project that produced the volume.

Crewe surveys the eighteen papers on the Late Bronze Age and the transition to the Early Iron Age across five themes. Under legacy excavations, George Papasavvas examines an 18th-Dynasty Egyptian gold and inlaid broad collar from Enkomi Tomb 93 in the British Museum, and Hartmut Matthäus uses unpublished French notebooks to identify Levantine and Egyptian styles among Enkomi metalwork in the Cyprus Museum. Regional studies cover why Lapithos waned as northwestern sites near Troodos copper grew, settlement patterns in the Kouris River valley and Alassa, and anthropomorphic terracotta figurines from Early Cypriot plank types to Late Cypriot flat-head and bird-faced forms. Papers on Cypriot pottery abroad examine White Slip ware, Base Ring ware, and Bichrome Wheelmade ware at Sidon, Tell Abu Hawam, and Tel Lachish, mainland Base Ring imitations, and a Proto-White Painted vessel from Ialysos on Rhodes. Papers on foreign goods in Cyprus address Minoan and Mycenaean trade strategies, Canaanite jars, and Mycenaean drinking sets on Cyprus and Rhodes. The final Bronze Age section covers Vasiliki Kassianidou on trading copper and oxhide ingots for Egyptian gold and silver, mechanical 3D testing of bronze and iron swords from Enkomi, Idalion, and Palaepaphos-Skales, Cypro-Minoan markings at Tiryns, and Cypriot and recarved seals at Ugarit and Thebes.

Averett reviews the papers on the Iron Age through the Roman period. Artemis Karnava traces Attic black-figure vases inscribed in the Cypriot syllabary from tombs at Marion using 1916 excavation records in Nicosia and squeezes sent by Max Ohnefalsch-Richter to Strasbourg, while Gabriele Koiner surveys Cypriot collections in Austria. Ceramic studies examine pre-1974 tomb pottery from Salamis showing workshops that produced Pictorial Bichrome vases alongside terracotta statues, Attic equestrian scenes, Bourogiannis on Black-on-Red ware in the Aegean, the Rhodian Spaghetti Workshop, and Cypriot vessels in Phoenicia, the Black Sea, Knossos, and Cilicia. Further chapters cover Punic theonyms, archaeometric and epigraphic analysis of Cypriot-style limestone statuettes from Cnidia, Paphian syllabic texts and Cypriot mercenaries abroad, mobile sculptors, the coinage of Kition, Salamis, and Idalion, basket-handled transport amphorae, Hellenistic and Roman export decline after the loss of the mines, and Francisco Núñez's proposal from Tyre Al-Bass to date the start of the Cypro-Archaic period to the early ninth century BC.