Four Cyprus papers at Boston's AIA–SCS Annual Meeting cover colonial-era looters and olive oil

Four papers on ancient Cyprus are on the programme of the 2027 Joint Annual Meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) and the Society for Classical Studies (SCS), which meets in Boston, Massachusetts, from Thursday 7 to Sunday 10 January 2027. The AIA has published a preliminary academic programme; all four Cyprus papers sit in open sessions on the last two days.

The Marriott is the official meeting hotel and houses the exhibit hall, the opening night reception on 7 January, every academic session and most other events. Sessions begin on the morning of Friday 8 January and close on Sunday afternoon. The AIA warns that the order of papers within a session may still change, and that the meeting app and the printed programme will carry the final times. Registration is open, with lower rates until 9 November 2026; a one-day ticket costs $185 and a virtual pass is also sold.

Saturday 9 January

In the morning block (8:00 to 10:30am), session 4A, "Craft and Economy in the Bronze Age Aegean and Cyprus", includes the first of two papers on the Late Bronze Age on the island, As The Wheel Turns: The Adoption of Rotative Kinetic Energy on Cyprus in the Late Bronze Age by Gregory A. Kintzele Jr. of University College London.

The afternoon block runs from 2:00 to 5:00pm. In session 6A, "Analytical Strategies and Frameworks", a team that includes three researchers from Cornell University presents Rethinking the Olive Oil Economy: Beeswax, Plant Oils, and Elite Storage Strategies in Late Bronze Age Cyprus. The authors listed are Rebecca F. Gerdes, Hanna Wiandt and Jillian L. Goldfarb of Cornell, with Alison South, an independent scholar who co-directed the excavations at Kalavasos-Ayios Dhimitrios, Kevin Fisher of the University of British Columbia, Despina Pilides of the Department of Antiquities and one further co-author.

In the same afternoon, session 6J, "Romans Caring for the Dead", includes A Tomb for Whom? Rock-Cut Tomb Reuse in Roman-Period Cyprus by Dustin Thomas of the University of Virginia, on the reuse of rock-cut tombs in the Roman period.

Sunday 10 January

Session 7J, "Collected Legacies", in the 8:00 to 11:00am block, closes the Cyprus strand with Making the Looter: Colonial Archives, Subsistence Digging, and Contested Heritage in Cyprus. Its authors are Erin Walcek Averett of Creighton University, Derek B. Counts and Rowan L. Grider of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Michael K. Toumazou of Davidson College, and Annabel O. Averett of Washington University in St. Louis. Toumazou has directed the Athienou Archaeological Project since 1990, digging the rural sanctuary at Malloura near Athienou in central Cyprus, and both Averett and Counts have excavated with the project there.

The title points to the records of British rule on the island and to tomb-digging done for a living by villagers, the long story of illicit digging under British rule, which the authorities tried to stop with police raids, fines and prosecutions. The same session hears papers on an American commodore's collection of Mediterranean antiquities, the journals of James Skene in post-Revolutionary Greece, and Alan Sorrell's reconstruction drawings for the American School of Classical Studies.