Ancient CyprusAncient Cyprus

Weekly

This Week in Cypriot Archaeology

Every Monday to Sunday in one piece: new fieldwork, research papers, books, exhibitions, returns of stolen objects and the people of Cypriot archaeology, with links to the originals and to our news pieces on the bigger stories.

October 2026

  1. Week4212–18 October 2026Nicosia's Leventis Museum opens an exhibition of 136 coins, CAARI calls for papers for the Swedish Cyprus Expedition centenary, and Malcolm Wiener dies at 91.
  2. Week415–11 October 2026Asinou icons stolen after the 1974 invasion return to Cyprus, the Ashmolean opens its Aphrodite show, and Nicosia museums put coins and Armenian church treasures on view.
  3. Week4028 September – 4 October 2026A cloth-wrapped Bronze Age hoard from the Karpas, the first Tombs of the Kings volume, a new Cyprus Museum pushed to 2028 and antiquities shown at the Presidential Palace.

September 2026

  1. Week3921–27 September 2026The Presidential Palace in Nicosia opens its art and antiquities to guided visits, and new Central Prisons at Agios Sozomenos are to be built away from the Bronze Age sites.
  2. Week3814–20 September 2026A paper argues for a lost Roman temple near Kourion, police arrest a man with a metal detector at Kouklia, and the 1989 Idalion excavation report goes free online.
  3. Week377–13 September 2026Oxford announces an Aphrodite exhibition with loans from Cyprus, a Routledge volume on Cypriot ceramics goes online, and charred plants from Hala Sultan Tekke tombs are published.
  4. Week3631 August – 6 September 2026A Bronze Age threshold at Erimi carries a senet-type game board, Kourion is to get AI-made 3D scenes, and bad weather cuts power to a Nicosia museum.

August 2026

  1. Week3524–30 August 2026The Cyprus Museum objects behind familiar logos and souvenirs, a pottery symposium at the Vounous cemetery, and an opera that closed Paphos Castle for five days.
  2. Week3417–23 August 2026Laser scans add 23 possible ships to the temple graffiti at Kition, a group plans to find Cesnola's wrecked Napried, and the odeon of Paphos gets a full-moon evening.
  3. Week323–9 August 2026Ian Todd, who led the Vasilikos Valley Project at Kalavasos from 1976, dies; conservation goes on at two Troodos painted churches; a Yale student tests Idalion figurines for Egyptian blue.
  4. Week3127 July – 2 August 2026Grape seeds, raw clay and a bull figurine at Late Bronze Age Erimi-Pitharka, a chapter on the war harbour of Kition, and the Kourion museum at Episkopi closes for an upgrade.

July 2026

  1. Week3020–26 July 2026The Kissonerga-Skalia excavation ends its season, a silver-plated coin of Salamis turns up on a beach at Ashdod, and a Kouklia sarcophagus showing Odysseus draws new attention.
  2. Week2913–19 July 2026The Department of Antiquities seeks eight archaeologists to digitise Cyprus Museum finds and rules out a contemporary art museum in its building; a Cornell student digs at Maroni.
  3. Week286–12 July 2026The Kourion museum at Episkopi will close from 1 August for upgrade works, and the Department of Antiquities mourns its former chief foreman, the stonemason Andreas Kallis.
  4. Week2729 June – 5 July 2026A Late Bronze Age juglet withdrawn from a British online sale is handed back to Cyprus, and the Department of Antiquities lists its stolen antiquities in UNESCO's Virtual Museum.

June 2026

  1. Week2622–28 June 2026A clay four-horse chariot of about 600 BCE, found in a French online sale, is returned to Cyprus, and a French mission ends its season on the walls of Nea Paphos.
  2. Week248–14 June 2026A Black Polished bowl of about 1900 BCE, spotted in an online auction in May 2025, was handed to the Cyprus High Commission in Ottawa after a year of police and justice work.
  3. Week231–7 June 2026Greece hands back 48 Cypriot antiquities from a late ambassador's collection, and Cypriot pots meet Picasso's ceramics in a Barcelona exhibition.

May 2026

  1. Week2225–31 May 2026A Late Roman wall 2 m thick on the Amathus acropolis, the first volume of the final report on the Tombs of the Kings at Paphos, and a tour of the new Cyprus Museum site.
  2. Week2118–24 May 2026More than 20 statue bases found in place at the Apollo sanctuary of Frangissa, and Bronze Age pigeons at Hala Sultan Tekke that ate much like the people around them.
  3. Week2011–17 May 2026Ten rock-cut Chalcolithic tombs at Makounta near Polis, copper slag heaps and magnetometry at Pyrga, and a review of Bernard Knapp's book on Cyprus and Ugarit.
  4. Week1827 April – 3 May 2026The National Guard towed Kyrenia II, the sailing replica of the Kyrenia ship, and a play drawn from the Swedish Cyprus Expedition's archive was staged in Stockholm.

April 2026

  1. Week1613–19 April 2026The Idol of Pomos, the Chalcolithic picrolite figure on Cyprus's 1- and 2-euro coins, wears a small copy of itself at its neck. It is on show in the Cyprus Museum.
  2. Week156–12 April 2026Geologist Giorgos Konstantinou, who studied how Cyprus's copper ores were mined in antiquity, has died; volunteers photograph 25 museums in the occupied north for Wikimedia.
  3. Week1430 March – 5 April 2026A Cypro-Archaic jug withdrawn from a US online auction comes home, and the Department of Antiquities answers for the new museum's delay and sets out its display plan.

March 2026

  1. Week1323–29 March 2026The Warsaw–Kraków team at Nea Paphos reports its 2025 season: crucibles for melting metal at Maloutena and a previously unknown colonnade in the agora.
  2. Week1216–22 March 2026A Cypro-Archaic jug pulled from a UK online sale comes home, UNESCO posters at Larnaca and Paphos airports warn travellers, and MPs tour the new museum site in Nicosia.
  3. Week119–15 March 2026Eighteen Cypriot antiquities spotted in an American online sale are handed back, and a paper costs Chalcolithic travel by sea around the Akamas peninsula.
  4. Week102–8 March 2026Kourion, the sanctuary of Apollo Hylates, Kolossi Castle and the Kourion museum shut for five days after drones targeted Akrotiri; Jenny Webb's Lapithos lecture went online.
  5. Week923 February – 1 March 2026Cyprus and Italy open a 120-object exhibition at Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome, and Peter M. Fischer publishes the gold diadems from Hala Sultan Tekke's tombs.

February 2026

  1. Week79–15 February 2026Sixteen antiquities lent by Cyprus join the Louvre's Cypriot rooms, and the National Library of France opens an exhibition on Cyprus with icons from Nicosia.
  2. Week62–8 February 2026A stone-knapping floor at Drouseia-Skloinikia in the Akamas, a wall at Nea Paphos dated by a Rhodian amphora stamp, and a Bichrome kylix handed back in London.
  3. Week526 January – 1 February 2026Two 14th-century BCE chamber tombs at Hala Sultan Tekke held amber, lapis lazuli and Sardinian pottery, and the Cyprus Museum set 7 February to show its upgraded galleries.

January 2026

  1. Week419–25 January 2026A University of Graz survey round Amargeti in Paphos District found Bronze Age material and about 70 looted chamber tombs, and a show of Cypriot myths opened in Strasbourg.
  2. Week312–18 January 2026Alain Le Brun and Odile Daune-Le Brun of Khirokitia receive Cyprus's revived archaeological heritage award, and Cyprus Museum events are postponed for national mourning.
  3. Week25–11 January 2026Over 700 kg of Late Roman amphora sherds from the harbour at Pegeia, an Iron Age sanctuary near Agia Marina Xyliatou, and Nicosia's Famagusta Gate restored.
  4. Week129 December 2025 – 4 January 2026A Cypro-Geometric drinking cup comes home from a French online auction, and the bicommunal heritage committee counts over 180 sites worked on since 2008.