Formation and Transformation of Archaeological Discourse and Its Dissemination

Anastasia Leriou and Giorgos Vavouranakis trace the development of archaeological publishing in Cyprus during the British period, focusing on how texts and architectural drawings in site reports, catalogues, and guidebooks communicated methodology and historical interpretation.

The survey begins with Max Ohnefalsch-Richter, hired by the British administration in 1878, who excavated sanctuaries for twelve years. His final report consists largely of commentary on 218 plates, arranged by site and material, alongside discussions of ancient Cypriot religion drawn from classical sources. While his methodology is barely described, his separate volume of plates and technical architectural drawings with shadows, including a reconstruction of the temenos of Aphrodite at Idalion, reflect an empiricist approach compared to Luigi Palma di Cesnola.

From 1887 to the end of the nineteenth century, missions involving scholars from the British School at Athens, such as Ernest Gardner, David Hogarth, and John Linton Myres, dug tombs to acquire antiquities for the British Museum. Their diary-like reports emphasized topography and stylistic parallels, grouping finds by material while ignoring stratigraphy, though an illustration of the Ayia Kyriaki tumulus at Enkomi shows a section. Myres later produced the first historical narrative based on archaeological evidence in his catalogue of the Cyprus Museum and refined his classification in the guidebook to the Cesnola Collection. In the early twentieth century, Menelaos Markides excavated at Arsos, and Myres returned in 1912 to 1913 to dig at Lefkoniko, Lapithos, and Bamboula in Larnaca, incorporating stratigraphic sections and historical development.

A major shift occurred in 1927 with the arrival of the Swedish Cyprus Expedition, including Einar Gjerstad and John Lindros. Their four-volume report used fixed categories for architecture, stratification, and chronology, refining Myres's ceramic classification. Their drawings systematically recorded grids, in situ finds, stone-by-stone plans, and stratigraphic sections, while Elsa Sandal-Gjerstad and draftsman Bror Millberg contributed conservative reconstructions, including schematic isometric drawings of Nitovikla and the palaces at Vouni and Soli.

In the aftermath of the Swedish expedition, excavations multiplied. Claude Schaeffer's Mission à Chypre on Enkomi compiled preliminary reports with expedient drawings by Diomedes Christodoulides and Theophilus Mogabgab. Publications in the Report of the Department of Antiquities, Cyprus, such as Porphyrios Dikaios's reports on a built tomb at Pyla and on Erimi, and Joan du Plat Taylor and Eve Dray's report on the cemeteries of Tsambres and Aphendrika (with plans by Joseph Last, Ilias Markou, Margaret Collingridge, and Dray), followed the Swedish structure in text while adopting practical solutions for architectural illustration.