Lemba Archaeological Project marks 50 years with tributes to its founder, Edgar Peltenburg

Colleagues, friends and villagers met at the Edgar Peltenburg Archaeological Research Centre in Lemba on Saturday 17 October for the 50th anniversary of the Lemba Archaeological Project and in memory of its founder, who died in 2016. The book series Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology (SIMA) described the afternoon three days later and thanked Diane Bolger and the others who organised it.

Dr Giorgos Georgiou, director of the Department of Antiquities, paid tribute, as did Dr Sophocles Hadjisavvas, Professor George Papasavvas, Dr Lindy Crewe, Alison South and members of the Peltenburg family. Two members of SIMA's editorial board, Dr Despo Pilides and Professor Maria Iacovou, also spoke. Peltenburg wrote five books for the series, which Paul Åströms Förlag published; they include the project's reports on Lemba-Lakkous, on Kissonerga-Mosphilia and its ceremonial area, and on the first settlers at Kissonerga-Mylouthkia.

The project opened in 1976 with the first of seven seasons at Lemba-Lakkous, a Chalcolithic village of round houses about 4 km north of Paphos that Hadjisavvas had found while exploring the area for the Department. The limestone figure known as the Lemba Lady was found in that first season. From 1979 the team also dug at Kissonerga-Mosphilia, one of the prehistoric sites around Kissonerga, and from 1988 it built full-size round houses beside the excavated village at Lemba to study how such houses were made and how they fell down.