Ancient CyprusAncient Cyprus

Archaeologist · Scholar

Athanasios K. Vionis

fl. 2011–2024

Byzantine archaeologist at the University of Cyprus who runs, with Giorgos Papantoniou, the SeSaLaC field survey of the Xeros valley in Larnaca district.

Biography

Athanasios K. Vionis is a Byzantine and post-Roman archaeologist at the University of Cyprus, where a conference programme lists him as Associate Professor in Byzantine Archaeology and Art and Director of the Archaeological Research Unit2. He was also assistant director of the Ancient Cities of Boeotia Project in Greece under J. L. Bintliff, and he has supervised a doctoral thesis on medieval Cyprus of the 12th to 15th centuries2.

With Giorgos Papantoniou he runs the Settled and Sacred Landscapes of Cyprus project (SeSaLaC), a systematic survey by the University of Cyprus in the Xeros river valley, Larnaca district. An abstract by Papantoniou, Vionis and Doria Nicolaou records that the project held an Excellence Hubs award from the Cyprus Research Promotion Foundation, to collaborate with the UnSaLa network1. The survey recorded Iron Age assemblages in a valley lying between Amathus, Idalion and Kition3. Papantoniou and Vionis published papers on it in the journal Land in 2017 and 20184,5, and with Christine Morris they edited Unlocking Sacred Landscapes (SIMA 151, 2019)11.

His work on pottery includes a 2016 study of Bronze Age cooking pots from Cyprus, written with Maria Dikomitou-Eliadou for Ancient Cyprus Today8.

Life and work

  1. 2011–2015
    Assistant director of the Ancient Cities of Boeotia Project (director J.L. Bintliff) in the years in which a Cypriot doctoral student, later supervised by Vionis, studied its post-Roman pottery. Also supervised a PhD on Medieval Cyprus (12th-15th c.) at the University of Cyprus.

    Boeotia, GreecePoCA conference programme /…, p. 4

  2. 2015–2018
    Co-directs with G. Papantoniou the Settled and Sacred Landscapes of Cyprus project (SeSaLaC), a University of Cyprus systematic survey in the Xeros River valley, Larnaca district; the project received an EXCELLENCE HUBS award from the Cyprus Research Promotion Foundation to collaborate with the UnSaLa network (Unlocking the Sacred Landscapes, strand UnSaLa-CY). Iron Age assemblages were found in the valley, which lies between the polities of Amathus, Idalion and Kition.

    Xeros valleyPapantoniou et al., p. 16Kearns 2022, p. 162

  3. 2016
    With M. Dikomitou-Eliadou, contributed 'Silent artefacts revealing their story: the analytical paradigm of Bronze Age cooking pots from Cyprus' to Ancient Cyprus Today (SIMA PB 184), pp. 167-175.

    Menelaou & Kouka 2020, p. 13

  4. 2017–2018
    With Papantoniou publishes the survey's results in two Land papers: sacred landscapes (2017, vol. 6, no. 40) and 'The river as an economic asset: settlement and society in the Xeros valley in Cyprus' (2018, vol. 7, 157). A separate Vionis 2018 title, 'Settled and sacred landscapes of Cyprus: church and landscape in the Xeros valley during the Early Byzantine period', is cited in a reference list.

    Detection of Archaeological Surface…, p. 14The origins and evolution…, p. 22

  5. 2019
    Co-editor with C. Morris and G. Papantoniou of Unlocking Sacred Landscapes: Spatial Analysis of Ritual and Cult in the Mediterranean (SIMA 151, Åströms Förlag), published in Nicosia; seen in the reference lists as 'Papantoniou, Morris and Vionis (eds.)'.

    Given 2025, p. 69

Connections

6 people
Giorgos PapantoniouMaria Dikomitou-EliadouSabine SturmannChara TheotokatouTheodoros K. VasileiouDoria NicolaouAthanasios K. Vionis
FieldworkScholarshipColleagues

Fieldwork & employment

Scholarship

Colleagues & contacts

Sources

  1. 1.G. Papantoniou, A. K. Vionis, D. Nicolaou. “Unlocking the Sacred Landscapes of Cyprus (UnSaLa-CY) - Settled and Sacred Landscapes of Cyprus (SeSaLaC): Two interconnected Cyprus-based Projects”. PoCA (Postgraduate Cypriot Archaeology) meeting abstract volume, 16.
  2. 2.“PoCA conference programme / committee list (Vionis as keynote speaker and ARU Director)”. 2, 4, 12, 15.
  3. 3.Catherine Kearns (2022). The Rural Landscapes of Archaic Cyprus: An Archaeology of Environmental and Social Change. Cambridge University Press.
  4. 4.G. Papantoniou, A. K. Vionis (2017). “Landscape archaeology and sacred space in the Eastern Mediterranean: A glimpse from Cyprus”. Land 6, 40.
  5. 5.G. Papantoniou, A. K. Vionis (2018). “The river as an economic asset: Settlement and society in the Xeros valley in Cyprus”. Land 7, 157.
  6. 6.“Detection of Archaeological Surface Cera...”. 14.
  7. 7.“The origins and evolution of Cypriot gla...”. 22.
  8. 8.M. Dikomitou-Eliadou, A. K. Vionis (2016). “Silent artefacts revealing their story: the analytical paradigm of Bronze Age cooking pots from Cyprus”. Ancient Cyprus Today: Museum Collections and New Research, 167-175. Uppsala, Åström Editions.
  9. 9.Sergios Menelaou, Ourania Kouka (2020). ““Cooking up” pottery recipes: a diachronic technological and provenance analysis of cooking ware ceramics from prehistoric Heraion on Samos, Greece (ca. 4500–1700 BCE)”. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports. Online
  10. 10.A. K. Vionis, G. Papantoniou (2019). “Economic landscapes and transformed mindscapes in Cyprus from Roman times to the Early Middle Ages”. Change and Resilience: The Occupation of Mediterranean Islands in Late Antiquity.
  11. 11.Michael Given (2025). “Over the landscape, in the landscape? Knowledge and agency in Cypriot archaeology, 1870-1910”. Empire & Excavation: Critical perspectives on archaeology in British-period Cyprus, 1878-1960. Leiden, Sidestone Press.