The news, week by week

Week 44: 26 October – 1 November 2026

18 pieces·11 places

5 jobs & funding5 museums3 fieldwork3 events2 research

AResearch· 1 NovNew

Famagusta's Lusignan walls have lost far more stone to sea salt than its Venetian walls, study finds

A French team finds the same limestone in both phases of Famagusta's walls and credits the Venetians' thicker, earth-backed walls and broad mortar joints for their slower decay.

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Museums · 31 OctNew
Cyprus's draft 2027 budget cuts antiquities development spending by 43%, to €3.8m
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Museums · 28 OctNew
Two artists, one a plastic surgeon, show new work among the Cyprus Museum's antiquities before its move
1
Fieldwork · 27 OctNew
Excavators near Kophinou find a domed church of the 8th–10th centuries and a potters' clay tank
2
Museums · Notice · 27 OctNew
Kourion, Kalavasos-Tenta and Paphos Castle to take card payments only from 1 November

Lettered and numbered as in the list

A group in hard hats and high-visibility vests walking down a wide, unfinished white corridor with ceiling services exposed — Inside the new Archaeological Museum of Cyprus in Nicosia during a ministerial visit on 7 October 2026.Stavros Ioannides, Press and Information Office (PIO) · The story →

A lit glass display case in a dark gallery holding several stone figurines on low stands, the largest a rounded figure with a long neck and incised marks, and a small cross-shaped figure in front — Prehistoric figurines in a gallery case at the Cyprus Museum, 2018.Héctor Ochoa, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons · The story →

Aerial photograph on a 5 by 5 metre grid of an excavated church floor of large pale stone slabs, with trenches B2, C2, D2 and D3A outlined in white, a north arrow and a 10-metre scale bar — Kophinou-Agios Herakleios at the end of the 2026 season, seen from above: the gypsum-slab floor of the church in trenches B2 to D2, and Trench D3A outside it to the south-east.Department of Antiquities, Cyprus (Charalampos Louka) · The story →

In brief

Fieldwork

Works at the Paphos lighthouse uncover a Roman cistern, pebble floor and water channelNew
The Department of Antiquities has restored the old keepers' houses at the Paphos lighthouse; pottery dates the water works found round the tower to the 1st–2nd century CE.
30 Oct · Paphos
A dog's paw prints survive on a 4,000-year-old mudbrick from a burnt house at Tavşanlı HöyükNew
The brick, pressed by a dog while still soft, once stood in the wall of a Bronze Age house in western Türkiye that later burned down, Türkiye's culture minister said.
27 Oct · Kütahya

Museums

3D reconstructions and AI scenes planned for Kourion, including contests at its Roman stadiumNew
The Limassol Tourism Board, with the Deputy Ministry of Tourism, is preparing 3D reconstructions of Kourion’s monuments as they stood at their height.
29 Oct · Limassol
Relics from the History Museum of Armenia go on show at Nicosia's Byzantine Museum until AprilNew
Faith and Identity, a six-month loan exhibition from Yerevan, opened on 9 October at the Archbishop Makarios III Foundation, with Armenian heritage pieces held in Cyprus.
27 Oct · Nicosia

Research

Network study of 299,171 km of Roman roads puts Byzantium and Antioch ahead of RomeNew
Timing each road for a walker, an Aarhus-led team finds the Empire's most central overland path ran from Lepcis Magna via Antioch and Byzantium to Narbo.
29 Oct

Also announced this week:3 events and exhibitions →5 jobs, grants and calls →

In brief

Works at the Paphos lighthouse uncover a Roman cistern, pebble floor and water channelNew

A dog's paw prints survive on a 4,000-year-old mudbrick from a burnt house at Tavşanlı HöyükNew

3D reconstructions and AI scenes planned for Kourion, including contests at its Roman stadiumNew

Relics from the History Museum of Armenia go on show at Nicosia's Byzantine Museum until AprilNew

Network study of 299,171 km of Roman roads puts Byzantium and Antioch ahead of RomeNew