Introduction and welcome to the second Empire and Excavation conference

Lindy Crewe, director of the Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute, opens the second instalment of the online conference Empire and Excavation: Critical Perspectives on Archaeology in British-Period Cyprus, 1878-1960, held on 29 and 30 January 2021 and jointly organised with the British Museum. Following the first session held in November, she outlines the work of CAARI on Cyprus, its library and hostel for visiting and local scholars, and its transition to online lectures and workshops during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Thomas Kiely, A.G. Leventis Curator for Ancient Cyprus at the British Museum, introduces the background to the conference, which was originally planned to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the Republic of Cyprus. He notes that the November session was opened by the British High Commissioner in Cyprus, Stephen Lillie, and acknowledges the support given to Cypriot archaeology in Britain by the A.G. Leventis Foundation, the wider Cypriot community in the United Kingdom and the Cyprus High Commission in London.

Andreas Kakouris, High Commissioner of the Republic of Cyprus to the United Kingdom, delivers the welcome address. He recalls his earlier diplomatic contacts with CAARI and its former director Stuart Swiny in New York in the mid-1980s, as well as collaborations with Christine Morris and George Papantoniou at Trinity College Dublin during his posting to Ireland. Turning to the history of Cypriot archaeology, Kakouris notes how early digging by foreign diplomats was followed under British colonial rule by the establishment of the Cyprus Museum, the Department of Antiquities and the regulation of excavations.

Drawing on his time as ambassador in Stockholm, Kakouris singles out the Swedish Cyprus Expedition of 1927 to 1931, the finds from Ayia Irini now in the Medelhavsmuseet, and the 2017 commemoration of the expedition's ninetieth anniversary. He notes that one of the twenty sites excavated by the Swedish expedition, with the participation of Crown Prince Gustaf Adolf, was his mother's village of Stylloi near Famagusta, now in the occupied north. Anna Reeve of the University of Leeds closes the session by explaining the format of the panels, questions and timekeeping for the two days of papers.