Derek B. Counts

Derek B. Counts has worked at Athienou-Malloura since the first field season of the Athienou Archaeological Project in 1990, when he was one of six members of the crew under Michael K. Toumazou¹. The project has surveyed and excavated the Malloura Valley since 1990 under the Department of Antiquities¹. By 2011 Counts was its Associate Director and an Associate Professor of Classical Art and Archaeology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, with a PhD from Brown in Old World archaeology and art¹. His Brown dissertation of 1998 was titled Contributions to the Study of Cypriote Sculpture: Limestone Votives from Athienou-Malloura⁶.

In 2001 he published "Prolegomena to the Study of Cypriote Sculpture", a history of how the island's sculpture was collected and studied. It covers R.H. Lang's work at Idalion and Pyla in 1868, Max Ohnefalsch-Richter's Idalion finds of 1883 and 1885, which went to Germany, and the Cyprus Exploration Fund excavations². In 2008 he published "Master of the Lion" in the American Journal of Archaeology⁴.

With Toumazou and P.N. Kardulias he edited the project's 2011 volume on the Malloura Valley, and wrote its chapter on earlier archaeological activity around Athienou¹. Edmond Duthoit dug at Malloura, Ayios Photios, Golgoi and Arsos in 1862 for the Mission de Phénicie, and Counts reports that Duthoit counted 150 to 200 heads. Luigi Palma di Cesnola dug near Athienou from 1870, and Counts calls the credibility of his findspot accounts long debated. Looting followed, and then Georghios Bakalakis at Golgoi in 1969-72 and the Israeli excavations of 1971-72 at Pamboulari tis Koukounninas. Counts adds that the project has itself found large caches of sculptural fragments in looters' pits¹. In 2020 he was among the authors of a study of the Malloura limestone and terracotta sculpture through 3D models⁵.