This Week in Cypriot Archaeology: 8–14 June 2026

The Department of Antiquities announced on 9 June that a Black Polished bowl of about 1900 BCE, found for sale in an online auction a year earlier, had been handed to the Cyprus High Commission in Ottawa.

Heritage crime

The handover took place on 29 May, according to the Department of Antiquities, which announced the return. Its officers who track illicit trafficking of Cypriot antiquities on the internet had seen the piece in an online auction on 6 May 2025. Getting it back took a year of joint work by the Department, the Cyprus Police, Interpol, the Ministry of Justice and Public Order and the Department of Justice of Canada, after which the holder chose to send it back to Cyprus.

The Department describes the object as a hemispherical bowl with incised decoration and dates it to the Early Cypriot III/Middle Cypriot I period. Black Polished ware is the grey-bodied, black-slipped and burnished pottery of the Early and Middle Bronze Age, made between roughly 2300 and 1800 BCE on the north coast and in the Mesaoria, mostly as small vessels with incised patterns filled with white; most surviving pieces come from tombs.

This is one of nine returns since 2024 that began with a Cypriot lot at a regional or online saleroom in Britain, the United States, France or Canada; all but one concerned a single pot or a small group. The Department watches such sales and asks for the lots it objects to, and the holder usually hands the piece to the nearest Cypriot embassy or high commission.