Despina Pilides

She studied archaeology in London, but two accounts of her training disagree on where: the introduction to a 2020 lecture says she studied at University College London and wrote her doctorate at the Institute of Archaeology¹⁹. A Fitzwilliam Museum profile reverses the two: she studied at the Institute of Archaeology and wrote the doctorate at University College London²⁴. The thesis itself, Handmade Burnished Wares of the Late Bronze Age in Cyprus, was submitted for the PhD of the University of London in 1991²⁵.

In its acknowledgements she wrote that Vassos Karageorghis gave her the impetus and the subject, and she thanked J. N. Coldstream, her advisor and earlier her undergraduate tutor²⁵. Paul Åström let her go through all the sherds from the excavations at Hala Sultan Tekke²⁵. Her first aim was to identify this ware on Late Bronze Age sites and to tell it apart from the traditional Cypriot wares that were also handmade and burnished²⁵. Neutron-activation analysis, she wrote, seemed "to tentatively suggest a possible importation of a few of these samples"²⁵. She thought its association with locally made painted pottery comparable to LH IIIC Middle in Greece perhaps important for explaining its presence in Cyprus²⁵. The thesis appeared in 1994 as volume 105 of Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology²⁶.

Valerie Cook writes that although Pilides "insists" the ware appearing in LC IIIA is of a distinct tradition foreign to the island, "there are no convincing arguments", and she reports that Pilides suggests the Mycenaeans brought it to Cyprus with them²⁷.

Her second book, Pithoi of the Late Bronze Age in Cyprus: Types from the Major Sites of the Period, was published by the Department of Antiquities in 2000, with appendices by C. Xenophontos, D. Pilides and J. G. Malpas and by H.-G. Buchholz²⁸. She says the subject grew from her earlier work on the utilitarian pottery of the period, and that one main aim was to find when the pithos first appeared and how long it lasted²⁸. She called the book "a catalogue, not a corpus by any means", meant as a manual for comparing pithoi found in Cyprus with those found abroad²⁸. A fellowship of the Athens Archaeological Society in summer 1997 gave her eight weeks in the libraries of the British School at Athens and the American Institute of Classical Studies to prepare it²⁸.

The Gazette records her appointment on probation as Archaeological Officer from 17 July 1995²¹. A notice of 2003 appointed her and two colleagues, whose earlier appointment the Supreme Court had annulled, to the same post retroactively from 17 July 1995²⁹. She was promoted Archaeological Officer A' from 15 November 2000³⁰.

In 1996 the decision to build the new House of Representatives on the hill of Agios Georgios at once required a rescue excavation, which she directed²². Two campaigns followed in 1998, and the seventh campaign came in 2000, after the decision to build the Parliament on the southernmost part of the hill^23,31. The 2005 season followed the demolition of a large building on Skyrou Street³². The 2020 lecture introduction describes the site as an extensive settlement documenting several periods of the city's history, and says she secured funding for a visitors' centre on the hill¹⁹. The same introduction says she also excavated at the Podocataro Bastion on the Venetian walls of Nicosia¹⁹.

In a 2009 paper on Hellenistic Nicosia she weighed the hill against Ledroi, the city-kingdom named on the prism of Esarhaddon, "if this assumption can be permitted for the sake of the argument"³³. Apart from a few sherds, she wrote, there was little evidence for a settlement before the 7th century, as that identification would require, and no civic centre had been found³³. An article in the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research cites a 2008 publication by Pilides and Olivier of a fourth-century Attic cup from Nicosia-Ayios Georgios incised in the syllabic script with "wanax Timas"³⁴. In 2025 she and Anna Georgiadou received a White-Levy publication grant for a monograph on the hill²⁰.

While researching the site in the archives of the Cyprus Museum, she found the six diaries of George Jeffery, as Philippe Trélat reports from her preface¹². Her edition, published by the Department in 2009 in two volumes, prints the diaries of 1898 to 1935 with part of his correspondence from archives in Nicosia and London¹². Trélat finds her portrait of Jeffery nuanced; he regrets that the plates lack references for finding the documents in the archives and notes misidentifications on a plan of Nicosia, but says these remarks do not lessen the quality of what he calls a meticulous edition¹².

She led the Department's Enkomi Project, which brought to light and published the recorded finds of the 1896 British excavations at Enkomi that remained in the Cyprus Museum³⁵. Angelos Papadopoulos dates the project 2010-2011 in one sentence and 2009-2010 in another, and calls Pilides 2012 a persuasive interpretation of the scarce bronzes of the Enkomi tombs³⁵. In 2021 he said that her introduction to the volume on the tombs of Enkomi states that the tomb groups were in fact separated³⁶. She has also written on Menelaos Markides as the first Curator of the Cyprus Museum, and on imperial policy towards the antiquities of Cyprus from 1869 to 1935¹⁸.

The 2020 introduction says she was Acting Director of the Department in 2012-2013¹⁹. Two authors of that period name her and Marina Solomidou-Ieronymidou as acting directors^37,38. With Nikolas Papadimitriou she edited Ancient Cyprus: Cultures in Dialogue (2012), the Department's catalogue for an exhibition in Brussels⁵.

From 2012 to 2021 she ran a survey and excavation project at Agios Sozomenos on the socio-economic organisation of inland Cyprus in the Late Bronze Age²⁰. With Maria Mina she edited the proceedings of a workshop held in Nicosia on 24 September 2016, Four Decades of Hiatus in Archaeological Research in Cyprus (Vienna, 2017)³⁹.

As Curator she promoted new museums, the new Cyprus Museum among them, and on 5 March 2019 she presented its designs in a lecture at the Cyprus High Commission in London^20,40. Under her supervision the Department ran the Cyprus Coastal Assessment Project, funded by the Honor Frost Foundation, to map coastal and underwater sites⁴¹. According to the 2020 introduction, she was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 2010, presided over the Association of Cypriot Archaeologists from 2009 to 2018, and in 2020 was president of the ICOM National Committee and of the Committee on the Export of Cultural Goods¹⁹. Later writers thank her as the former Curator of Antiquities^42,43.