David Frankel

David Frankel dug in Cyprus from Marki-Alonia in 1990 to the Psematismenos-Trelloukkas cemetery in 2008, with Jennifer Webb. The two excavated four sites, and Frankel published most of his Cypriot work in Åström's series SIMA. He taught in the Archaeology Program at La Trobe University in Melbourne and retired in 2013 after 35 years, with the title of Emeritus Professor¹.

Göteborg and the Åström series

In 1973 Frankel came to Göteborg with his wife and infant son, and Paul Åström lent the family a small flat near the Classical Institute. Frankel calls Åström "my mentor" and says he never imagined that he would publish many books in Åström's series, Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology (SIMA), or become an editor for it¹. His first SIMA volume, Middle Cypriot White Painted Pottery: An Analytical Study of the Decoration, is dated 1974¹³. In the same year the Report of the Department of Antiquities, Cyprus carried his paper on a Middle Cypriot vessel with modelled figures from Politiko-Lambertis⁸. Knapp reports that Frankel argued the Politiko-Lambertis vessel is not a boat model²⁹. With Angela Tamvaki he published in 1973 a reading of the Vounous sanctuary model as a burial scene²⁷, and in 1976, with R. Hedges and H. Hatcher, a chemical analysis of Middle Cypriot White Painted sherds in the Ashmolean²⁶.

In 1983 he catalogued the Early and Middle Cypriot Bronze Age material in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, as Corpus of Cypriote Antiquities 7 (SIMA XX:7)^7,14.

Marki-Alonia

With Webb, Frankel led the La Trobe excavations at Marki-Alonia, a Bronze Age settlement. Webb dates the work to 1990 to 2000, in November and December of each year, with student teams and funding from the Australian Research Council². The survey of Cypriot archaeology in the American Journal of Archaeology places the first excavation season in the winter of 1991-92 and describes the Australian Cyprus Expedition as under Frankel's direction, assisted by Webb³. About 2,000 square metres were exposed, with nine architectural phases running from about 2400 to about 1850 BC². Frankel and Webb published the first five seasons as Marki Alonia: An Early and Middle Bronze Age Town in Cyprus, Excavations 1990-1994 (SIMA 123:1, 1996) and the later seasons in volume 2 in 2006^15,16. Andrew Sneddon records that Frankel's team read the settlement as a simple egalitarian community of small-scale household production, a reading his study of the looted Marki cemeteries tests³⁰.

Cemeteries and a Chalcolithic site

At Deneia in 2003 and 2004 the team surveyed and sampled two Bronze Age cemeteries, Kafkalla and Mali, that tomb robbers had already worked. They recorded 1,356 tomb shafts over about 6 hectares, in an approach that differed from that of archaeologists who thought looting had left little of value; the second stage was cut short². The results appeared as The Bronze Age Cemeteries at Deneia in Cyprus (SIMA 135, 2007)¹⁷.

In 2006 and 2007 Frankel and Webb made test excavations at the Chalcolithic site of Politiko-Kokkinorotsos². In 2008 the Department of Antiquities rescue-excavated 47 Early Bronze Age tombs at Psematismenos-Trelloukkas, and Giorgos Georgiou of the Department gave La Trobe responsibility for their conservation, documentation and publication². Georgiou, Webb and Frankel published the cemetery in 2011¹⁸.

Syntheses, legacy digs and retirement

Beyond their own digs, Frankel and Webb published two Early and Middle Bronze Age legacy excavations: James Stewart's 1961 tombs at Karmi Palealona and Lapatsa, and Porphyrios Dikaios's 1942 excavation at Ambelikou-Aletri, the latter as SIMA 138 in 2013^1,12. With Webb he introduced the term Philia facies for the phase between the Chalcolithic and the Early Cypriot period^23,25. Their 1999 article in the American Journal of Archaeology set out the material culture and chronology of the Philia facies¹⁹, and in 2012 they applied portable X-ray fluorescence to Bronze Age Cypriot pottery to study its production and distribution²⁰. Frankel's own papers include a 2000 study of migration and ethnicity in prehistoric Cyprus²¹ and a 2019 survey of diversity in Bronze Age Cyprus²². He also excavated Indigenous sites in Australia and Papua New Guinea¹.

In 2010 Vassos Karageorghis thanked Frankel and Webb for discussing Early and Middle Bronze Age ceramics while he prepared the catalogue of the Phylactou Collection⁵. A seminar in Melbourne on 8 November 2013 marked Frankel's retirement, and Webb edited a festschrift for him, Structure, Measurement and Meaning (SIMA 143, 2014)¹.