Einar Nilson Gjerstad

Einar Nilson Gjerstad was born on 30 October 1897 in Örebro, where his father, Erik Nilson, was a merchant and local politician⁶⁹. The title of Styrenius's obituary of him in the Medelhavsmuseet Bulletin gives his dates as 30/10 1897 to 8/1 1988⁶¹. During the First World War the family moved to Stockholm, and in 1917 Gjerstad enrolled at Uppsala University⁶⁹. Carl-Gustaf Styrenius dates the start of his studies there to the autumn of 1917⁶¹. At Uppsala he studied classical archaeology and ancient history⁶². His teacher was Axel W. Persson, and when Persson began the Swedish excavations at Asine in Greece in 1922, Gjerstad became his assistant^61,69.

The consul on the train

The invitation to Cyprus began with a meeting between Persson and Luke Zenon Pierides, Swedish consul in Cyprus, and the sources disagree on when and where it happened². Gjerstad, in Ages and Days in Cyprus (1980), puts it in March 1922 at a railway station in Serbia¹. Kristian Göransson also gives a railway station in Serbia in 1922². Persson's own account, in his popular book on Asine of 1931 as translated by Styrenius, sets it in August 1922 at the frontier between Hungary and Yugoslavia, with Persson travelling with a young assistant⁷⁰. The Getty finding aid speaks of a chance encounter on a train in the Balkans in the summer of 1922⁶⁹. Sanne Houby-Nielsen tells the story with the Orient Express⁶².

The sources give the loan in different sums: in Persson's telling, Pierides, who had lost his money at the German border for not declaring it, borrowed ten pounds and then five more, having no visa for the transit through Bulgaria⁷⁰. Gjerstad has two loans of five pounds, after the Serbian customs had taken all of Pierides's money¹. Houby-Nielsen gives ten pounds for a transit visa through Bulgaria⁶². Pierides asked whether the Crown Prince might be interested in an excavation in Cyprus, and whether Persson had a young assistant to send instead of himself⁷⁰. The money came back to Athens with a letter again urging a Swedish "archaeological invasion" of Cyprus¹. Persson writes that an official invitation then arrived from the Archaeological Council of Cyprus, for him or for someone he chose to send⁷⁰. He asked Gjerstad, whom he had thought of from the start, and Gjerstad at once said yes⁷⁰. Gjerstad recalled that Persson recommended the invitation to him one summer night at Asine: "I really did not know anything about Cyprus and so said, yes, without too much deliberation. The unknown beckoned."¹. Persson ended his story with the words "High interest on the small loan."⁷⁰.

Houby-Nielsen notes that scholars have tended to see the turn to Cyprus as a young man's impulsiveness or pure coincidence⁶². She finds the story, "entertaining and funny as the story may be", hardly enough to explain Gjerstad's break with Swedish work in the Argolid and the founding of an institute in Rome, both with a more promising academic future than unknown Cyprus, or the project's scientific approach from 1923 on⁶².

Cyprus, 1923-1924

In October 1923 Gjerstad and his wife landed at Larnaca, where Pierides received them "with open arms"¹. The sources differ on how long he stayed: Persson says sixteen months, with Pierides supporting him throughout "in the most generous way"⁷⁰. The Getty finding aid also gives sixteen months, spent studying excavated material and making limited excavations⁶⁹. Houby-Nielsen writes that he went for several months to plan a larger expedition⁶². The preface to the first volume of the Swedish Cyprus Expedition says that he had visited Cyprus "on two occasions" before 1927³.

Menelaos Markides, curator of the Cyprus Museum, had shortly before excavated numerous Bronze Age tombs¹. Gjerstad wrote that Markides fell ill with Parkinson's disease, could not do scientific work, and generously left all his excavated material to him to study¹. According to Karin Nys, Gjerstad also explored the entire island by bicycle and made several small excavations to understand its habitation history⁷¹. In 1923 he visited Ayios Iakovos and came to know the Melia necropolis, whose tombs had been looted but never scientifically excavated².

Gjerstad wrote that he made stratigraphic excavations of three settlements to complete the evidence of the tombs¹. Styrenius lists four places: an Early Cypriote house at Alambra, a Middle Cypriote one at Kalopsidha, a Late Cypriote fortification at Nikolidhes, and Phrenaros⁷⁰. Near Alambra, south of Nicosia, he dug in 1924 a house of two rooms with an enclosed court, which he dated to Early Cypriote III^1,14. No one dug at Alambra again until Cornell University in 1976¹. He excavated the fort at Nikolidhes, near Dali, in 1924 and concluded that it was built and abandoned within Late Cypriot I^1,72. Lindy Crewe, who lists the fort under Ayios Sozomenos-Glyka Vrysis, notes that its pottery has not been published⁷². His dissertation thanks Ewert Wrangel of Lund, whose interest made the Nikolidhes excavation possible¹⁴.

At Taoudi Chiftlik near Kalopsidha, about 15 km west of Famagusta, Gjerstad excavated a house which he describes as having ten rooms, with inner and outer courtyards and cut a stratigraphic sounding below it down to the rock, which established three periods in the Middle Bronze Age¹. He dated the house to Middle Cypriot III and read it as the house of a merchant who traded in goods imported from Syria, against the farmhouse at Alambra¹. Jennifer Webb explains that he based this on the quantity of wheel-made vessels thought to be Syrian imports⁷³. She adds that later analyses by Paul Åström and Crewe suggest a date in Late Cypriot I, at least for its final abandonment⁷³. The year of the dig is also given differently: Gjerstad and Webb say 1924, and Marie-Louise Winbladh writes 1923-5^1,11,73.

Near Phrenaros in the Famagusta district, worked flints on the surface drew Gjerstad to a place called Vounistiri, 1.5 km north of the village, where a small excavation found a house floor of stones, gravel and lime only 0.20 m below the surface²⁷. No pottery was found there¹. Gjerstad wrote in 1926 that there had until then been no evidence of a Stone Age in Cyprus²⁷. The sources differ on the year: Åström says Gjerstad found the settlement in 1923, while Gjerstad dates his partial excavation to 1924^1,74.

Studies on Prehistoric Cyprus

Gjerstad published the results in February 1926 as his dissertation, Studies on Prehistoric Cyprus, on the Bronze Age of the island^1,14. It was dedicated to the memory of his father, and its preface is dated Stockholm, February 1926¹⁴. The preface thanks Markides for leave to study and publish the Cyprus Museum's collection and to use his manuscript excavation reports, and Pierides, thanks only to whose ἀρχαιοφιλία he was able to carry out some of the excavations¹⁴. It also thanks Professor Myres of Oxford for leave to publish Dudley Buxton's notes on burial customs from the Lapithos excavations of 1913, Persson for the suggestion that he go to Cyprus, and his wife for much valuable assistance¹⁴. For the book he studied material in museums from the Ashmolean and the Louvre to Cairo, Jerusalem and Beirut¹⁴. Gjerstad named fixing the chronology as one task of the prehistorian¹⁴.

He defended the dissertation at Uppsala in 1926, at the age of 29^2,61. Styrenius called it "a masterly account of the outlines of the island's prehistory", and in 1994 wrote that only with it were the real scientific foundations of the Cypriote Bronze Age laid^61,70. The Medelhavsmuseet catalogue of 1977 called it still the fundamental work on the Cypriote Bronze Age, "although later studies have given a much more detailed picture"⁶³. Styrenius recalled Vassos Karageorghis telling him that an unproven statement in the thesis had been proved correct nearly 40 years later⁶¹.

In 1926 Gjerstad gave the Museum of National Antiquities a group of Middle Cypriote vases and 60 boxes of sherds from Kalopsidha, now MM 1956:328¹¹. From 1926 to 1935 he was Docent in Classical Archaeology and Ancient History at Uppsala, styled "Lecturer" in the English preface of the expedition's first volume^3,69. After his first visit he concluded that a Swedish expedition could make a meaningful contribution if the money could be raised, and after the defence he began seeking scientific and financial support for it^1,2.

In his recollection the plan began as a continuation of his own earlier excavations and was gradually widened until the whole cultural history of the island, from the Stone Age to the Roman period, fell within it¹. He called it a moving, "ambulating" expedition whose excavation site was the entire island¹. Earlier excavations on Cyprus had, with a few exceptions, served a commercial rather than a scientific purpose, in his words, and the expedition aimed to explore the ancient culture on a large scale¹. Joanna S. Smith writes that the expedition at first planned to investigate prehistoric sites, one cemetery, one settlement and one sanctuary, and that acquiring objects for museum collections in Sweden was also a priority⁹.

The sources disagree on when the expedition was first proposed: the preface to the first volume of its results says that Gjerstad, then Lecturer in Classical Archaeology and Ancient History at Uppsala, "suggested in the year 1927" that more extensive research be started in Cyprus³. Smith dates to 1926 the request by Sigurd Curman, the King's Custodian of Antiquities in Sweden, for permission for a Swedish expedition, aimed at "scientific exploration of its prehistory and history"⁹. In his address opening the Legislative Council, printed on 18 January 1927, the Governor already said that two learned societies had asked permission to excavate and that their requests had the Government's favourable attention⁷⁵.

The committee and the money

The Swedish Cyprus Committee was formed at Gjerstad's instigation to support his work in the field³. The Crown Prince Gustaf Adolf, later King Gustaf VI Adolf, chaired it¹⁹. Its members, as they signed the preface in 1934, were Gustaf Adolf, Johannes Hellner, Curman, Martin P. Nilsson and Axel W. Persson³. Gjerstad recalled that everyone he tried to interest was willing to support the project, and that the Crown Prince was its active patron from the outset¹. Göransson calls the Crown Prince's support crucial and says funds from many private donors let the expedition launch in 1927².

The sources differ on the State's part in the money: Gjerstad says private donors funded the expedition from the beginning and that the Swedish Government contributed in the later years¹. The 1934 preface records State grants of 35,000 kronor towards excavation expenses and 50,000 kronor for preparing the material for publication, beside considerable private support³. Its list of donors, omitting those who wished to stay anonymous, includes A. Ax:son Johnson, Harry Ax:son Johnson, Aug. Nachmanson, J. Sachs and O. Wallenberg, and the Committee says the programme would have been impossible without them³. Frederick Whitling has said in a lecture that there was "essentially" no state funding and that all the money came from private donors⁷⁶.

The law of 1927

Gjerstad wrote that before the change all finds belonged automatically to the Cyprus Museum¹. Thomas Kiely says the 1905 law's ban on exporting most antiquities proved a serious disincentive to foreign missions, and that official protection of antiquities in Cyprus had evolved from among the most lax in the Eastern Mediterranean to "possibly the most stringent"⁸.

The sources disagree on who began the change: Gjerstad says Luke Zenon Pierides, as a member of the Legislative Council, introduced the law that let the Museum cede part of the finds to the expedition¹. In Persson's account Gjerstad had told Pierides during his stay in Cyprus that Swedish excavations could hardly happen before the law was changed so that the excavator received part of the finds, and Pierides "immediately took up the problem"¹⁹. Kiely writes that the change was "initially prompted" by Pierides's request on behalf of Gjerstad and his colleagues, but also reflects practice elsewhere in the British Empire, especially Palestine and Transjordan⁸. The Gazette shows a Government measure: the Governor's opening address listed a Bill to amend the law on ancient monuments and antiquities, and the Bill was printed over the name of the Attorney-General, C. C. Gerahty, in a supplement to the Gazette of 21 January 1927⁷⁵.

As printed, the Bill let the Governor, advised by the Museum Committee, stipulate in a permit the "retention" by the excavator of antiquities found⁷⁵. The Legislative Council passed it on 26 January, and Law No. 6 of 1927, the Antiquities (Amendment) Law, is dated 29 January 1927 over the name of Ronald Storrs⁷⁵. As enacted it spoke of granting the excavator a share, "to be fixed by the Museum Committee with the approval of the Governor after the conclusion of the excavation"⁷⁵. The Gazette of 4 February 1927 notified it among the laws assented to⁷⁵. Kiely judges that without this share the work would probably not have been carried out on such a large scale⁸.

Landowners and the permit

Gjerstad recalled that the expedition had "approval in principle" from the High Commissioner, Storrs, and that the Museum's committee, foremost Pierides, had been active on its behalf¹. The formal permit required first the consent of each landowner, and with land split into small lots a site might have up to a hundred owners¹. Antonios Papapetrou, assistant land registrar, went with him, and so did Pierides, whose standing as consul and legislator lent weight in the villages¹. In Gjerstad's account the Lapithos landowners signed by sunset after the mayor, Kaplanis, spoke for the dig, while at Karavostassi (Soli) about 150 farmers from several villages held out for days¹. The High Commissioner's permit followed shortly after¹.

Departure

The expedition left for Cyprus in the autumn of 1927^1,19. Marie-Louise Winbladh gives September⁷⁷. Gjerstad named the party: his wife Livia Gjerstad, their sons Martin and Stefan, aged 5 and 2, Gudrun Atterman, the architect John Lindros and his wife Rosa, Erik Sjöqvist and Alfred Westholm¹. Winbladh, naming Gjerstad, Westholm, Sjöqvist and Lindros, writes that none of them was more than 30 years old⁷⁷.

Arrival and organisation

In his memoir Ages and Days in Cyprus Gjerstad gives his stay on the island as lasting almost four years, from August 1927 to March 1931¹. The sources disagree on the year of arrival^1,78. Houby-Nielsen says the expedition arrived in the autumn of 1926, at about the same time as Governor Ronald Storrs, while Gjerstad and Winbladh both give 1927^1,64,78. Winbladh dates the digging from September 1927 to the spring of 1931⁶⁴.

Then the workers had to be hired¹. At Lapithos he offered 12 piastres a day "to leave some room for bargaining"; the villagers, in his telling, held out for "18 shillings", so he took men from neighbouring Karavas at 14 piastres¹. At Karavostassi an American copper-mining company paid such wages that nobody would work for less than 22 piastres, until a truckload of Karavas men arrived and the local men accepted 14¹.

Winbladh describes Gjerstad as Director, who "organized and directed the entire excavation programme", with Westholm and Sjöqvist as assistants in charge of the work on the sites⁶⁴. Göransson puts it the same way: Gjerstad directed, while Sjöqvist or Westholm ran each dig with a separate team of Cypriot workers, so that two sites in different parts of the island could be worked at once². Lindros travelled between them to draw and photograph, and Gjerstad oversaw the work on his visits². The sources count the sites differently: Göransson gives 21 sites excavated in all, with the stated aim of a chronology for the prehistory and early history of Cyprus, Giorgos Bourogiannis counts 22 dug in the four years, and the call for the expedition's centenary conference counts 25, including Gjerstad's own work of 1923 and 1924^2,65,79.

Lapithos and the Greek colonists

The expedition began at Lapithos and Karavostassi, the ancient Soli¹. Gjerstad writes that "we" started at the end of September 1927 at Vrysi tou Barba, a burial ground by the shore used in the Early and Middle Bronze Ages, and stayed at Lapithos until the spring of 1928, lodging with the mayor, Kyrios Kaplanis¹. Göransson and Winbladh name Sjöqvist as the excavator; Göransson writes that he dug 23 tombs at Vrysi tou Barba in September and October 1927, dated 2075-1050 BC^2,64. The second cemetery, below the plateau of Kastros in the village, was a necropolis of the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages¹. Sjöqvist dug it too, but the two accounts of the dates differ^2,64. Göransson gives November 1927 to the end of April 1928 and 30 tombs; Winbladh gives November-December 1927 and March-April 1928^2,64. Storrs, Houby-Nielsen writes, allowed the Swedes to dig at "no less than three" places at Lapithos and brought prominent British visitors to see the work⁷⁸.

Gjerstad reported the first season in Antiquity in 1928³⁴. At Lapithos, he wrote, 23 tombs of the early and middle "Copper Age" and 20 of the early Iron Age had been opened; the gold rings of Early Cypriot III were "the first gold found in Cyprus of the early Copper Age", and the plank-shaped idols included a mother holding a baby and a man and a woman in a bed³⁴. He hoped the skulls would help to settle "the origin of the Cypriote metal culture and of the people who developed it"³⁴.

The same article set out a hypothesis³⁴. Gjerstad placed the Greek colonisation of Cyprus in Late Cypriot III (1200-1000 BC) and called the Early Iron Age graves "the tombs of the first Greek colonists in Cyprus", identical in type with Mycenaean chamber tombs though smaller³⁴. In one of them a woman had been buried with a head-dress covered in gold, with rondels, Mycenaean rosettes and plaques showing a naked goddess³⁴. He did not treat the matter as closed: "The excavation of the late Bronze Age necropolis of Lapithos will give the final answer"³⁴.

The team returned at the end of October 1928, Gjerstad recalls, "when the winter rains were already threatening", to dig the Chalcolithic settlements¹. This dig, at Plakes, was his own^2,64. Göransson and Winbladh credit it to him for October and November 1928, and the label of the field notebook gives 20 October to 8 November^2,64,80. He found several hut foundations, three sacrificial pits cut in the rock and hearths². Writing in 2016, Jennifer M. Webb counted 163 Bronze Age tombs excavated at Lapithos, of which only the 25 dug by the Swedes and one chamber dug by Hill, 15% in all, had been formally published⁸¹.

Soli

At Soli the work began in October 1927, and Göransson writes that Westholm began that month on the Roman theatre cut in the rock^1,2. Winbladh dates the theatre dig to October-December 1927⁶⁴. In Antiquity Gjerstad dated the theatre to the Hellenistic period, used and rebuilt in late Roman times, and argued from architectural fragments in it that an Archaic Doric temple had been pulled down for its stone³⁴. A trial trench west of the theatre found the foundations of an Archaic Greek temple, and he wrote: "so far our hope of finding Greek cultural monuments in Soli has been realized"³⁴. In his memoir he calls the temple of the end of the sixth century BC on the acropolis "the oldest Greek temple which has been found in Cyprus hitherto", and says Soli gave "for the first time" the typical Cypriot city plan of acropolis, city temple, palace, theatre, square and harbour¹.

Vouni

Vouni was found from Soli¹. One of the workers, a young goatherd named Prodromos, remembered a stone statue built into a dry-stone wall on a mountain some five kilometres north-west, and the following Sunday he led them up¹. Gjerstad writes that they could not help feeling there was an Archaic stronghold on the summit, and after the Greek Easter they went up to dig¹. For two weeks they found nothing¹. During an attack of malaria, he writes, "my thoughts drifted"; then came a woman's head from a life-size statue, crowned, "Archaic and the most beautiful head in Cyprus", and many kore figures followed¹.

As the digging went on they uncovered massive walls of hewn blocks over more than 10,000 square metres, "all belonging to the same building, a palace!", with a colonnaded central court, a broad stair to the reception rooms, kitchens to the south and storerooms to the north¹. Gjerstad read the temple and its treasure houses as "the king's own temple"¹. He calls the palace "the greatest excavatory success of the expedition"¹. Antiquity, relaying The Times of 30 May 1928, reported his royal palace at "Voumi", 100 metres square, with statues dated 700 to 450 BC⁸². The third volume of the expedition's results says the work found nothing older than the fifth century BC, and so disproved the theory that Vouni was Aipeia³³.

The sources differ on who dug Vouni and when^1,33,64,83. Gjerstad writes of "we", and names the "Vounites" as his wife, their sons, Atterman and Westholm, with Lazaros as foreman; Winbladh lists the site under Westholm^1,64. The third volume gives the spring of 1928 to the autumn of 1929, with the summit cleared in the summer of 1928; Zournatzi gives 1928-1930; Winbladh dates the palace work to the spring of 1928 and the spring of 1929^33,64,83.

The treasure came one morning when the workman Kristos "swung his axe", and Gjerstad adds that Kristos did not try to steal it¹. It lay in a clay jar in a cubbyhole under a staircase, beneath charcoal and ash that showed this part of the palace had burned¹. The coin counts differ^1,2,84. Gjerstad lists three silver bowls, four gold and 15 silver bracelets, 248 silver coins and four gold darics; the American Journal of Archaeology in 1930, summarising his article in The Illustrated London News of 9 November 1929, gives four gold and 249 silver coins; Göransson gives 252 gold and silver coins and dates the palace's destruction to around 380 BC^1,2,84. The same summary says tombs at Marion were dug largely to illuminate the Vouni finds; Winbladh dates Sjöqvist's Marion work to March-July 1929^64,84.

Later scholars argued over Gjerstad's reading of the palace⁸³. Zournatzi writes that he saw an "Eteo-Cypriot" style in its first layout and a more "Hellenic" spirit in the final plan, and that Valentin Müller argued as early as 1932 that the final plan was Mesopotamian in character⁸³.

Idalion, Milia and the Karpass

At Idalion, after Ohnefalsch-Richter's digging, Gjerstad says the expedition opened a few unplundered tombs and turned to Ambelleri, the work of Sjöqvist and Lindros; Lindros's drawings placed all 1,500 finds of the temple precinct¹. Göransson writes that in the summer of 1928 Sjöqvist found on the western acropolis a fortified sanctuary of Anat-Athena in use from 1200 to 470 BC, and the royal palace in trial trenches below, a site the expedition never returned to². Winbladh gives summer-autumn 1928⁶⁴.

At Milia, after police reported clandestine digging, the expedition held a permit for February-March 1928². The sources differ on the excavator^2,35,64. Göransson names Westholm, who found four tombs worth publishing; Winbladh records no excavator; Revue archéologique, citing The Times of 30 March 1928, says Gjerstad had resumed work at Lapithos, Soli and Milia, where four Bronze Age tombs held objects of Egyptian, Syrian and Mycenaean types^2,35,64. In 1928 the expedition also dug a Bronze Age necropolis and an Archaic sanctuary at Neta in the Karpass, and in April Sjöqvist explored a field near the sanctuary of Aphrodite Ourania².

Politics and the press

From 1927 Gjerstad wrote for Dagens Nyheter, then the largest Swedish newspaper, and readers followed the digs monthly under headings such as "Gold is pouring out of the tombs" (19 December 1927)⁸⁵. Houby-Nielsen writes that the Swedes were caught from the start in the enosis conflict between the Greek Cypriots who had invited them and the British government⁷⁸. By her account, in a letter to the Crown Prince of 21 August 1928 Gjerstad expressed complete mistrust of Storrs and his secretary Rupert Gunnis, and at the core lay Storrs's disapproval of his arguments for "Greek" features in the finds⁷⁸. In her translation, Gjerstad wrote that to the British "the Cypriote culture is a Phoenician culture", that "both sides want us to politicize our excavations", and that his siding politically with the English "has nothing to do with the excavations and the results"⁷⁸.

Petra tou Limniti and Ayios Iakovos, 1929

During the harvest of 1929 the expedition could not hire enough workers near Vouni, and in May the team moved to Petra tou Limniti¹. The sources differ on who led this dig: Gjerstad, in his memoir Ages and Days in Cyprus, writes that Stone Age layers on top of the rock made him decide to excavate it completely¹. Kristian Göransson writes that Westholm excavated the site during two summer weeks in 1929, and that the expedition found there the first traces of the Neolithic in Cyprus². Gjerstad notes that no pottery was found there¹.

At Ayios Iakovos, Gjerstad writes, he had found on a reconnaissance trip sherds rare in Cyprus and "probably of North-Syrian origin", which in his opinion justified a trial dig¹. The two accounts again differ on the excavator: Gjerstad writes "Erik and I started the excavation at dawn", while Göransson writes that Sjöqvist began excavating Melia in 1929 and found two looted tombs and fourteen intact^1,2. The team lodged with the priest at Mandres, and in Gjerstad's telling the first few minutes' work uncovered "the golden treasure of a sanctuary", which he dated to about 1400-1350 BC¹.

Ayia Irini, November-December 1929

In November 1929 Papa Prokopios, priest of Ayia Irini on the north-west coast, came to Nicosia with a gift for the museum: the head and upper part of a terracotta statue of the early 6th century BC¹. Sanne Houby-Nielsen places the visit in early November⁷⁸. She links the colonial government's interest in the figure to the "problematic" finds the Swedes had made at Kition a few weeks earlier and to the nearness of Lapithos⁷⁸. Two days after the priest's visit, she writes, Ronald Storrs gave the expedition a permit for "a quick investigation" of the find-spot⁷⁸. Gjerstad credits the Cyprus Museum and the British government for the permit, and writes that the priest had found an intact temple, apparently full of terracottas, and that the villagers were ready to stone him for stopping them from looting it¹.

Sjöqvist left the Karpass forts for the dig¹. Houby-Nielsen names Sjöqvist and Lindros as the two who excavated the sanctuary⁷⁸. By 2 December, she writes, the Swedes had unearthed thousands of votives despite rain that swept away houses and bridges and blocked the road for days⁷⁸. Eva Rystedt's 1994 book dates the excavation to 1930 instead¹⁹.

In Gjerstad's memoir a river in spate headed for the precinct at night; Sjöqvist and some workmen built a dam that turned it past the temple; the Panagra, Skilloura and Morphou bridges collapsed within half an hour; and Gjerstad and Lindros set out from Nicosia as a "search and rescue party"¹. Houby-Nielsen, citing Westholm, writes that Gjerstad, as organiser, was based for some time at Kyrenia with his wife and two small children and visited Ayia Irini only on a few brief occasions⁷⁸.

Gjerstad wrote that the terracottas stood in their original position round the altar in concentric semicircles, ranging from statuettes about 20 cm high to life size and numbering about 2,000, with 300 scarab seals among the other gifts¹. Bourogiannis calls the sanctuary "the most extraordinary find of the SCE"⁶⁵. Gjerstad dated the start of the cult to about 1200 BC and a second temenos to about 850-650 BC, and held that the site showed sculpture breaking from "idol plastic" in Cyprus about 650 BC¹.

Houby-Nielsen writes that Sjöqvist and Gjerstad believed the finds had lain through a succession of ancient floods, and that Sjöqvist saw two floods while Gjerstad saw four, which divided the figures into "scientifically proved" periods⁷⁸. She adds that Gjerstad published a sterile red stratum as an enclosure wall, an agger, going further than Sjöqvist⁷⁸. The publication fell to him, she writes, when Sjöqvist changed career, and he "was not prepared for this turn of events"⁷⁸. In her reading the surviving drafts show at least two sections, XIII and XVII, published in reverse, neither drafts nor published sections hold convincing evidence for four floods, and a new study shows the levels do not reflect the date of the objects⁷⁸. She suggests a possible influence: a few weeks before the dig, British archaeologists at Ur had announced sterile alluvial strata from the "Great Flood" of Genesis⁷⁸.

Kition-Bamboula, 1929-1930

The sources disagree on who dug Kition and for how long: Gjerstad's memoir says that in the autumn of 1929 the expedition dug at Larnaca, the site of Kition, at the place now called Bamboula¹. Göransson writes that Westholm excavated there from October 1929 to April 1930². Antoine Hermary describes the excavations of 1929-1930 as carried out by Gjerstad and Westholm, and Marguerite Yon calls the 1929 work a sounding of a few weeks by Gjerstad and the expedition^56,86.

Göransson gives the aim as a stratigraphic examination of the mound to date the Phoenician colonisation of Cyprus². Gjerstad recalled that Bamboula had been a favourite field of treasure diggers under Turkish rule, that the British had levelled much of the hill the year after the occupation, and that John Linton Myres's survey of 1914 "yielded no elucidatory results"¹. Within the first few days the Swedes struck a rich layer of stone sculptures¹.

In his summary for Syria in 1931 Gjerstad reported that some of the sculptures showed Herakles, whom the Phoenicians identified with Melkart; since the same god appears on Kition's coins, he reasoned, the temenos must have been the city's principal sanctuary, though no inscriptions were found²⁸. He later read the sculptures as sacred votives given ritual burial in a crypt, and assigned the earliest Melkart sanctuary to Cypro-Geometric III, about 850 BC, which he took as the approximate date of the Phoenician colonisation; he wrote that Vassos Karageorghis's excavations confirmed it¹.

Hermary notes that the 1937 report bears Gjerstad's signature and catalogues 452 sculptures in the round, only 105 illustrated, "without any typological grouping"⁵⁶. Joanna S. Smith writes that in his accounts of 1937, 1944, 1948 and 1979 Gjerstad held that the Kition stratigraphy gave settlement evidence for the pottery Types he had defined from tombs, but that, contrary to his conclusion, the published evidence does not conclusively support his Type II as an independent period, Cypro-Geometric II⁶⁶.

Kythrea, Amathus, Marion and Nitovikla

Göransson writes that Westholm dug a small site near the church of Ayios Phokas in September 1929, and that after lithic tools were reported at Kythrea in the winter of 1930, Westholm led a dig in the spring that found a Chalcolithic settlement². Gjerstad's memoir has the team moving "from sinful Kition" to the church of Saint Phokas in Kythrea in the spring of 1930¹. Digging at Amathus began at the end of March 1930; twenty-six tombs were examined, the oldest Early Iron Age and none Bronze Age¹.

At Marion, reached in March 1929, Sjöqvist dug 98 tombs². Gjerstad writes that one worker died there in the morning and was buried that evening, and that the expedition cared for his daughter Chrysanthou "since her father had been killed while in our service"¹. In his telling Sjöqvist became her foster-father, the expedition pledged a dowry of fifty pounds against a marriage certificate, and Sjöqvist chose a chauffeur from among the suitors¹.

Gjerstad described the fort at Nitovikla as a coastal refuge built to ward off attack from the sea, and noted that there and at Paleoskoutella the expedition worked for the first time in a purely Turkish district¹.

Enkomi, 1930

After Ayios Iakovos, Gjerstad writes, he meant to dig the Enkomi necropolis to learn about the Late Bronze Age from its tombs¹. The sources differ on who led the work. Claude Frédéric-Armand Schaeffer in 1948 and the Department of Antiquities guide of 1953 describe the 1930 dig as by an expedition directed or led by Gjerstad, and in 1931 Schaeffer wrote of "tombs dug by Mr Gjerstad"^87,88,89. Göransson credits Sjöqvist, who began investigating the necropolis in the summer of 1930².

The team lodged with the monks of St Barnabas, in the guest-room otherwise kept for the archbishop¹. Several tombs lay under ground water and a pump ran all the time¹. Göransson writes that trial trenches showed Byzantine buildings had cut many tombs, and that most date to Late Cypriote II². Lindy Crewe counts 22 tombs over two months⁷². Gjerstad recalled a woman's necklace with links shaped as Mycenaean shields and a lion signet ring that he called one of "the pearls of Cypriot" glyptic¹.

Schaeffer, visiting in June, watched "thanks to Mr Gjerstad" the opening of two tombs, and Gjerstad gave him a sample of the copper slag lying in the spoil, in a note Schaeffer appended to Gjerstad's 1931 summary⁸⁹. Gjerstad's own summary reported only that the necropolis was "again explored" and rich tombs found²⁸.

Gjerstad later wrote that he had made "the worst kind of mistake a scholar can make": assuming cemetery and settlement were separate, as elsewhere in Bronze Age Cyprus, though a British Museum foundry inside the "necropolis" "ought to have opened my eyes"¹. He credited Schaeffer with finding the settlement in 1934¹. Crewe writes that the pit digging was within the Late Cypriot settlement and that Gjerstad "later acknowledged their blunder"⁷². R. S. Merrillees cites the admission as one of three guiding principles in Gjerstad's scholarly attitude⁹⁰.

The Crown Prince and the last season, 1930-1931

The Crown Prince of Sweden, Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden, stepped ashore at Limassol in a grey lounge suit and was received by Storrs¹. The sources differ slightly on the date: Bourogiannis gives September 1930 and a stay of almost a month, Göransson the autumn of 1930^2,65. Gjerstad gives three reasons for the visit: to inspect the work, to dig himself, and to attend the division of finds¹. Bourogiannis judges supervising the division the "primary reason"⁶⁵. At Stylli the Crown Prince uncovered Archaic vases from morning to evening while his aide Major Ekeroth worked the next tomb, and lunch was taken in a widow's orchard¹. Göransson writes that he dug there with Sjöqvist, and that 17 dromos tombs were excavated there².

Westholm dug at Cholades, east of Soli, from November 1930 to the end of February 1931; Göransson writes that Gjerstad and the others saw an excavation of the whole site was beyond the expedition's means². Westholm's 1930 diary for Soli, Cholades and Mersinaki left one dig to its fate until the Crown Prince, the Governor, the Museum Committee, "doc. Gjerstad" and "Alfiros" decided its future⁹¹.

Towards the end of the expedition, discussion began of how the finds were to be divided between Cyprus and Sweden². Kristian Göransson writes that the expedition was greatly helped by the visit of Crown Prince Gustaf Adolf to Cyprus in the autumn of 1930².

Frederick Whitling, in a 2023 lecture, said that Gjerstad had discussed the division in a letter to the Crown Prince in 1928, apologising for suggesting a tremendous sacrifice on behalf of his royal chairman⁷⁶.

The lower court and the high court

Gjerstad's memoir, Ages and Days in Cyprus (1980), says that while the Crown Prince was digging in Archaic graves and hunting for fossils, the share-out of the finds began at Nicosia¹. On the Crown Prince's advice, Menelaos Markides, head of the Cyprus Museum, Rupert Gunnis, the Governor's private secretary, both as members of the Museum Committee, and Gjerstad, as representative of the expedition, formed a "lower court" to work out a suggestion for a fair distribution^1,92. Gjerstad was therefore one of three who drafted the proposal, not its only author^1,2. Cases the lower court could not decide went to a "high court" of the Crown Prince and the Governor, Sir Ronald Storrs, and the final proposal was then to go to the Museum Committee for ratification^1,2.

Gjerstad wrote, as quoted by David Symons, that the work went on in calm and good humour, "a fact which must be ascribed to the angelic mildness of Messrs Markides, Gunnis and Gjerstad"⁹². Whitling, in the same lecture, quoted Gunnis's diary: all of 10 October was spent dividing the antiquities, "a long and tiring job"⁷⁶.

The principles

The main rule, in Gjerstad's words, was that tomb groups and deposits "should not be split up but should accrue as an entity either to Cyprus or to Sweden"¹. The expedition was to receive one representative series of finds from all epochs and all kinds of objects, but unique objects were to stay in Cyprus¹. Gjerstad saw the difficulty: a sculpture worthy of the name of art "is always unique insofar as it differs in its execution from other sculptures"¹. On the other side, the indivisibility of groups would give the Cyprus Museum objects that were not unique even in the narrowest sense¹.

In a text Göransson quotes as written "elsewhere", Gjerstad wrote that "unique objects" was to be interpreted in a broad-minded way: objects that differed only in detail and artistic execution from similar ones in the Cyprus Museum did not count, and so the expedition could receive a representative series of sculptures². He called the sharing out of an expedition's finds "a delicate matter", since it splits the connected results of the work, and thought it would be hard to find a better criterion than the one used².

The Ayia Irini terracotta figures, around 2,000 of them, were an exception: they were divided between the two countries although they belong to one deposit².

Three weeks to 27 October

The finds numbered about 18,000, Gjerstad says, which gave the lower court ample room for deliberation¹. After three weeks of almost daily discussions, a few questions still went to the high court, and the final proposal was ready on 26 October 1930¹. By his account the Crown Prince and the Governor had their final discussion after the service in the English church in Nicosia, so the last points were settled "in a spirit of peace"¹. Whitling quoted Gunnis's diary to the same effect: after church at St Paul's the two settled the division of the gold objects from Enkomi and other points⁷⁶.

The sources may differ on timing: Gjerstad's memoir tells of the high court's final discussion, undated, straight after giving 26 October as the day the proposal was ready¹. Whitling, in his lecture, said the Crown Prince left the island on 20 October, Gjerstad seeing him off at Limassol⁷⁶.

On 27 October 1930 the proposal went to the Museum Committee, which in Gjerstad's words "adopted it wholeheartedly"; Göransson says it was ratified without any changes^1,2. Gunnis's diary, as Whitling quoted it, notes that when the Committee inspected the division "there was a bit of difficulty about a gold necklace, but in the end everything was settled"⁷⁶.

What went where

The sources disagree on the size of Sweden's share: Gjerstad in 1980 and Paul Åström in 1974 say more than half of the finds went to Sweden^1,74. Gjerstad's 1932 account, as Göransson quotes it, gives about two-thirds of nearly 18,000 finds². Marie-Louise Winbladh gives about 12,000 of c. 18,000, or 65 per cent, and Stylianou-Lambert and Bounia also give 65 per cent^11,93. Persson, writing in 1931 as Carl-Gustaf Styrenius quotes him, put the share at 7,500 objects⁷⁰.

The share was smaller in gold, silver and the large terracotta statues¹. The whole Vouni treasure went to Cyprus except the coins, which were divided equally; Sweden had 30 per cent of the rest of the gold and only one, "but the best one", of the large Ayia Irini statues¹. In recompense Sweden received most of the other sculptures, including the Kore from Vouni, a Mycenaean faience drinking vessel in the form of a goat's head, and large Mycenaean amphorae from Enkomi¹. All the finds from the Crown Prince's digging at Stylli went to Sweden, which Gjerstad called "a fine tribute on the part of Cyprus" to his support¹.

Judgements

Göransson calls it a "wise division", because a scholar can find a complete tomb group or deposit in either the Cyprus Museum or the Medelhavsmuseet². The expedition committee's preface to the first volume of results, in 1934, credited "the generosity of Sir Ronald Storrs and the Museum Authorities" for the considerable number of finds allotted to it³. Anastasia Leriou calls the two-thirds share "a grand exception" to the Antiquities Law of the time, and suggests that generosity could be associated with concern in the Cypriot press from March 1926 that the export ban kept foreign excavators away⁹⁴. Leriou judges that obtaining an adequate share was "such a major concern for the Swedes" that it was one of the principal reasons for the Crown Prince's visit, and that Storrs modified the law "most probably in an attempt to please the Swedish government"⁹⁴. Whitling said in his lecture that the Crown Prince's presence "certainly had an impact on the negotiations"⁷⁶. Stylianou-Lambert and Bounia set against the export that the expedition's finds enriched the Cyprus Museum and added "immeasurably to the archaeology of Cyprus"⁹³.

The 771 cases and Stockholm

Sweden's share was packed into wooden chests, "771 of them in all", and a special train took them on the Cyprus Government Railway from Nicosia to Famagusta, where they were loaded on the Swedish Orient Line's Gotland^1,2. Leriou gives 721 crates⁹⁴. The ship sailed on 5 March 1931 with the finds and the members of the expedition, by way of Beirut and Constantinople; it was, Gjerstad wrote, "our last day in Cyprus"^1,2.

In Stockholm the National Heritage Board stored the c. 12,000 objects and 5,000 boxes of sherds in Oxenstiernska Malmgården, an unheated 18th-century manor house². In a minute of 24 August 1931, quoted by Raphael Marshall in a 2020 lecture, Donnelly wrote that in Stockholm he had seen Gjerstad "at his remarkable collection"⁹⁵.

Winbladh records that the members were allowed to sell about 5 per cent of the finds to Swedish institutions and museums to pay for conservation and study, so tomb groups and sculpture went to Lund, Malmö, Uppsala and Copenhagen in the 1930s¹¹.

Alfred Westholm was in charge of the Cyprus collections from 1934 to 1945². A government commission considered their future in 1935-36, and in 1944 they moved to the basement of the new museum building². In 1954 the Medelhavsmuseet was founded by combining the Cyprus Collections, the Asine and Iranian collections and the Egyptian Museum^2,96.

The three excavation volumes, 1934-1937

The preface to the first volume says that the publication was prepared after the expedition's return to Sweden, and that the Swedish state gave a further 50,000 crowns for the scientific preparation of the material³. The publication was entrusted to Gjerstad, and the text was written by him, Erik Sjöqvist and Alfred Westholm, each part signed with its author's initials³. Göransson describes the publication as a "Herculean task" undertaken by the three men in the 1930s, with drawings of the finds by Bror Millberg².

The excavation reports appeared between 1934 and 1937 in three large volumes, each in two parts of text and plates². Göransson counts about 2,000 pages and 600 plates in them². In 1935 Charles Picard greeted the start of a publication he called "monumental in every respect", and noted that the Crown Prince himself had written the preface to the first volume⁹⁷. Picard judged that the Swedish work marked a new era, and quoted an unnamed authority who called it "the most important contribution so far to the archaeology of the island"⁹⁷. At Enkomi, however, Picard wrote that the French work of 1934 had usefully completed the Swedish exploration, because the Swedes had more or less followed A. S. Murray's incomplete indications, which made the Early Iron Age settlement remains there seem Byzantine⁹⁷.

In the preface to the third volume Gjerstad regretted a delay of about a year, because the members of the expedition had had to give much of their time to other work, and he expected the fourth volume to be somewhat delayed for the same reason³³. He thanked Joan du Plat Taylor, Kathleen M. Kenyon, Vivi Gjerstad, Margareta Sjöqvist, Millberg, Westholm and Tooulis Svidos for their help³³.

Casson, 1939, and the two papers of 1944

Reviewing Stanley Casson's Ancient Cyprus in 1939, he wrote that Casson's theories of a Mycenaean colonisation of Cyprus were not supported by archaeological and anthropological evidence, and that the discussion would have to wait for volume IV⁹⁸. Merrillees adds that in the same review Gjerstad took Casson to task for lacking first-hand knowledge of the evidence⁹⁸.

Casson replied in the Journal of Hellenic Studies that same year, and a 1940 news note in the American Journal of Archaeology summarised his reply: the Swedish expedition under Gjerstad had not fully identified the Cypriot Neolithic, which was the work of P. Dikaios of the Cyprus Museum⁹⁹. Casson also answered that his theories were "only deductions, and the archaeological evidence has increasingly proved their truth"⁹⁹.

According to Merrillees, Gjerstad did not in the end write for SCE IV:1, but because the synthesis was delayed he dealt with two of its subjects beforehand⁹⁸. These were "The initial date of the Cypriote Iron Age" and "The colonization of Cyprus in Greek legend", both published in 1944 in Opuscula Archaeologica III^63,98. Anna Cannavò sees these two articles as the preparation for the 1948 synthesis¹⁰⁰. In her account the first fixed the start of the Iron Age in Cyprus at about 1050 BC, "in a way that has remained definitive until today"¹⁰⁰. Valerie Cook still used the Late Bronze to Early Iron Age chronology established by Gjerstad in 1944 and by Arne Furumark, as revised by Paul Åström in 1972, and called it "generally accepted"¹⁰¹.

In Cannavò's account these studies set out, after Sjöqvist, a theory of two colonising waves reaching the island a century apart at the end of the Bronze Age¹⁰⁰. Gjerstad wrote that Cyprus was colonised by Anatolian tribes mixed with Achaeans in Late Cypriote IIIA, about 1200-1100 BC, when tradition placed the arrival of the Teucrians¹⁰⁰. The second stage he assigned to Late Cypriote IIIB, about 1100 BC, and tied it to the Dorian invasion of Greece and to the rest of the foundation legends⁹⁸. Merrillees reports that Åström, in his obituary of Gjerstad, wrote that there was now every indication that Gjerstad's opinion was right⁹⁸. Merrillees also writes that Gjerstad did not think the SCE a suitable vehicle for conflicting opinions⁹⁸.

SCE IV:2 and its chronology, 1948

The Iron Age synthesis appeared in 1948 as SCE IV:2, The Cypro-Geometric, Cypro-Archaic and Cypro-Classical Periods¹⁶. In its preface Gjerstad wrote that the publication of volume IV had been "much delayed", that the manuscript was begun before the war and completed in 1946, and that the break in international contacts during the war had kept him from following the literature of those years¹⁶. Volume IV was split into three: IV:1 for the Stone and Bronze Ages, IV:3 for the Hellenistic and Roman periods, and IV:2 as a survey of the Cypro-Geometric, Cypro-Archaic and Cypro-Classical epochs¹⁶.

The typology, Gjerstad wrote, was not a corpus but a selection of principal types, enough to support chronological and historical conclusions, and it treated only Cypriot types, leaving foreign ones to the chapter on foreign relations¹⁶. Following SCE I-III, he used Type I to VII for the successive stages of the pottery series, so that White Painted I and Bichrome I were both Type I¹⁶. Black-on-Red Ware did not appear in Cyprus, in his scheme, before Type III¹⁶. Cannavò describes the book as a typological and diachronic classification of architecture, pottery, sculpture and the minor arts from the start of the Iron Age to the end of the Classical period¹⁰⁰.

Olof Vessberg, Keeper of the Cyprus Collections in Stockholm, supervised the printing, read proofs and compiled the list of pottery types; Millberg made all the drawings; James Stewart of Sydney University revised a section of the manuscript¹⁶. Kenyon revised the proofs, and Gjerstad asked her to excuse his "obstinacy in keeping the name Apollon in spite of her protests"¹⁶.

Gjerstad fixed his absolute dates by foreign datable objects found in Cyprus, Cypriot objects in dated strata abroad, and in part by matching archaeological phenomena with events known from literary sources¹⁶. He put the start of Cypro-Geometric I, at the end of Late Cypriote III, at about 1050 BC¹⁶. His summary table gave Cypro-Geometric I as 1050-950 BC, II as 950-850 BC and III as 850-700 BC, with Cypro-Archaic I at 700-600 BC¹⁶. The division between Cypro-Classical I and II he placed at about 400 BC¹⁶. According to Nicola Schreiber, Gjerstad regarded Black-on-Red as a foreign import from its first appearance until the start of Cypro-Geometric III, and linked its development with an immigrating people; he read the new pottery of that phase as "indicating an immigration of Syrian tribes to Cyprus"¹⁰².

Reception

The reviewer of SCE IV:2 in the American Journal of Archaeology in 1951 called the pottery chapter, with its seventy-one plates of drawings by Millberg, probably "the first well-illustrated, detailed account of the modern classification of Cypriot Iron Age pottery"¹⁰³. Only a scholar who knew most Near Eastern excavations and excavators, the reviewer wrote, could have compiled Gjerstad's array of Cypriot and Cypriot-like pottery abroad, and the statement that a number of so-called Cypriot vases in Palestine, Syria and Asia Minor were not Cypriot was of considerable help¹⁰³. The same reviewer praised the sculpture chapter for its stylistic analysis and named as Gjerstad's great achievement that he had shown exactly when Cypriot sculpture begins and insisted on its "somewhat primitive yet essentially independent character"¹⁰³.

Gjerstad dated the rise of monumental sculpture in Cyprus to about 650 BC and credited it to Egyptian impulses under the Twenty-Sixth Dynasty, and the reviewer found it hard to believe that Cypriots had paid no heed to Syro-Hittite and Assyrian sculpture¹⁰³. The reviewer could not subscribe to Gjerstad's explanation of likenesses between Proto-Cypriot, Syro-Anatolian and early Etruscan sculpture by similar "Armenoid" racial groups, and objected that he persisted in calling a ware "Thessalian Proto-Geometric"¹⁰³.

The Black-on-Red debate

In 1951 Gus Van Beek, working in Palestine, proposed raising Gjerstad's chronology overall, putting the start of Cypro-Geometric I at 1100 BC and calling Cypro-Geometric II merely a transitional phase¹⁰². In 1953 W. F. Albright published a correspondence with Gjerstad on the gap between Black-on-Red dates in Palestine and in Cyprus, in which Gjerstad held that the challenge stood only if the early Palestinian pieces were proved Cypriot¹⁰². Swift, in 1958, allowed a slight raising of Gjerstad's dates but thought Van Beek's large change raised more difficulties than it removed¹⁰². In 1963 Judy Birmingham argued that the Swedish chronology was too low and had hidden the cultural unity of Cyprus and the Levant; Schreiber calls her article the main challenge to Gjerstad's views for the latter part of the century¹⁰². Joanna S. Smith calls it the most comprehensive revision of his system, but adds that its Levantine names have not generally replaced his Geometric and Archaic periods⁶⁶.

Schreiber, in 2002, judged Van Beek's chronology too high, yet held his point that Gjerstad's view of the origin of Black-on-Red had little supporting evidence still valid¹⁰². She doubted Gjerstad's Cypro-Geometric dates because of inconsistencies in his typology, while noting that his typology and chronology were still largely in use¹⁰². Smith observes that Gjerstad reported a Cypro-Geometric II deposit at Kition but never published drawings or photographs of its pottery⁶⁶.

Gjerstad's 1948 table ended Cypro-Geometric III at 700 BC, while Assaf Kleiman and his co-authors report that he later dated that period to about 850-750 BC^16,104. Smith writes that scholars now put the start of Type IV at 750 rather than 700 BC⁶⁶. Coldstream, as Kleiman and his co-authors report, held a century-long Cypro-Geometric II unsustainable and proposed raising the start of Cypro-Geometric III by half a century¹⁰⁴. In 2019 the same team found by analysis that 10 Black-on-Red sherds from Megiddo were made in Cyprus, so that the ware was produced on the island by about 900 BC, and judged Gjerstad's "Levantine Phase" obsolete¹⁰⁴. Kleiman and his co-authors also write that Van Beek's criticism of Gjerstad's chronology was justified but his own framework rested on an uncritical reading of the biblical text, and that many scholars had accepted Gjerstad's dates and theory of origin with some adjustments¹⁰⁴.

The remaining volumes, to 1972

Lena Söderhjelm, who attended Gjerstad's lectures at Lund in the early 1950s, when he was working on early Rome, writes that when she later looked for a thesis subject the summary volumes for the various periods were being completed by their authors, and Gjerstad suggested she take the Late Cypriote gold and silver¹⁰⁵. SCE IV:1A was written by Dikaios and Stewart, and the reviewer in the Journal of Hellenic Studies in 1966 noted a change of editorial policy, since neither was Swedish or had been on the expedition¹⁰⁶. The reviewer judged Gjerstad's generosity in inviting them "fully justified"¹⁰⁶. Merrillees writes that editing that volume strained Gjerstad's tolerance to the limit⁹⁸. Åström took over the Late Bronze Age part of IV:1 from Furumark, and by 1972 the publication of the expedition was complete^2,98.

Gjerstad was appointed Director of the Swedish Institute in Rome in 1935⁶¹. The Institute was then still housed in small premises at Palazzo Brancaccio in the via Merulana, and Styrenius writes that Gjerstad showed there "that he also had a talent for administration"⁶¹. The Getty finding aid speaks likewise of "great skill at administration"⁶⁹. The board of the Institute, the Wallenberg Foundation and the Italian authorities agreed to his plans, and Crown Prince Gustaf Adolf gave him his constant support⁶¹. By 1940 he had inaugurated the new Institute in Via Omero near the Villa Borghese, designed by Ivar Tengbom⁶¹. From 1937 he took students on excursions to Greece as part of the Institute's annual course, and he edited its series from 1935 to 1957⁶¹. Houby-Nielsen records investigations by Gjerstad on the Forum Romanum in 1938-39⁶².

The Lund chair

The sources name the Lund chair differently: Styrenius calls it the Professorship of Classical Archaeology, which Gjerstad took over from Martin P:son Nilsson on 1 July 1940⁶¹, while the Getty finding aid gives Classical Archaeology and Ancient History⁶⁹. From 1940 to 1957 he carried the chair's teaching and administration, though from 1948 he spent long periods in Rome⁶¹. In 1946 he was secretary at the constituent meeting of the Swedish Institute in Athens, held at the Royal Palace in Stockholm under the Crown Prince, and after its founding in 1948 he was Secretary of its Board until 1957⁶¹.

Styrenius, a student in spring 1949, remembered "inspiring lectures and seminars"; six students, among them Paul Åström, studied stratigraphic excavation and the development of Cypriot pottery types, and Gjerstad took the group to Stockholm to see the Cyprus Collections, 12,000 objects in all⁶¹. Lena Söderhjelm found his lectures of the early 1950s "charming and inspiring"¹⁰⁵. A dozen of his students finished dissertations, and Styrenius names Åström and Pär Göran Gierow as his heirs on the Cypriot and Roman sides⁶¹.

Styrenius says that in 1951 Gjerstad took over a building from the Faculty of Science and founded the Classical Institute, the first building of its own for the Faculty of Humanities at Lund⁶¹. Sylvia Törnkvist writes that it was built for physics and that when the physicists left in 1950 professors were asked on what conditions they would take it over¹⁰⁷. By his own account to Törnkvist, Gjerstad offered to accept the house just as it was and got it, then raised funds for the changes, a "deception" for which, she writes, generations of Lund students had reason to be grateful¹⁰⁷.

In 1944, during the Second World War, Gjerstad was a Red Cross delegate and member of the Commission to Greece⁶¹. Styrenius writes that "it was understood" he had to use all his persuasion with German occupation officers over supplies for the starving Greek population, and that once, when his lorry was attacked, bullets pierced his coat and his driver was hurt but brought the car through⁶¹.

Early Rome

Styrenius dates the end of his 25 years of Cypriot studies to 1948, with SCE IV:2, and says the second working period, on ancient Rome, grew from his time as Director there⁶¹. In 1949 he set out his theories in Roms grundläggning och dess kungar in Historisk tidskrift⁶¹. He held that Rome was founded not in 753 BC but about 575 BC, when the first floor was laid on the Forum Romanum, and that the Republic began about 450 BC rather than 509⁶¹. Styrenius writes that this raised "a storm of indignation and criticism", especially from Italian scholars⁶¹. Early Rome I, on the Forum and Sacra Via stratigraphy, appeared in 1953 and II, on the tombs, in 1956⁶¹.

In 1957 he was given a personal professorship to finish the work, and Krister Hanell took over his chair⁶¹. He left the professorship in 1972, aged 75, with the manuscript of Early Rome VI finished, and volumes V and VI appeared in 1973⁶¹.

Styrenius's OEANE entry calls Early Rome "the fundamental work"⁵. A note in Etruscan Italy calls it "only marginally useful as a catalogue", quoting R. E. A. Palmer's charge of "violation of the Latin language, of linguistic rules, of source criticism, of archaeological interpretation, and of logical argument" and D. Ridgway's verdict that "there is nothing to be said in favour of Gjerstad's method in either field"¹⁰⁸. Styrenius notes that recent studies moved the first Forum floor from 575 to 625 BC, though some Italian scholars accept it as the sign of the city's foundation⁶¹.

Audiences and honours, 1964-1972

On 6 January 1964 Archbishop Makarios, President of the Republic, received Einar Gjerstad, then Professor of Archaeology at the University of Lund, in audience¹⁰⁹. The government's release on the visit credited him with eight volumes on Cypriot archaeology¹⁰⁹.

In 1972 he was honoured for his 75th birthday¹¹⁰. On 1 November 1972, at the site of the palace of Vouni, Makarios unveiled a monument in honour of the members of the Swedish Cyprus Expedition and their leader^67,111. The sources name the monument in two ways: the government release calls it a "memorial column", while Kyriakos Nicolaou, Carl-Gustaf Styrenius and Sylvia Törnkvist call it a stele^{61,67,111,112}.

Speaking for the government, the Minister of Communications and Works, Y. Zambarloukos, said the Swedish expedition had "laid the foundations of Cypriot archaeology"¹¹⁰. Vassos Karageorghis, Director of the Department of Antiquities, praised his "immense contribution to Cyprus Archaeology"⁶⁷. Styrenius records that high officials and diplomats came from Nicosia, among them Karageorghis, a close friend of Gjerstad for many years, and that "it seems" Gjerstad greatly appreciated the occasion, though he was generally averse to ceremonies⁶¹.

The Society of Cyprus Studies held another ceremony for him at the Old Archbishopric¹¹³. Cyprus Today reports that in his reply Gjerstad said he had been taught a lot by his excavations in Cyprus, thanked all who had helped him bring his work to a conclusion, and presented Makarios with the last volume of the expedition's publication, not yet in circulation¹¹³. The Report of the Department of Antiquities, Cyprus for 1972 was dedicated to him for the same birthday¹¹¹.

The Turkish invasion of 1974 and the refugees

Karageorghis wrote that no one suspected in 1972 that two years later the stele and the palace of Vouni would lie in occupied territory, closed to Cypriots and to those who had excavated it⁶³. After the Turkish invasion of 1974, which Styrenius calls "the tragic events in Cyprus in 1974", Gjerstad felt great sorrow, in Styrenius's words, and Karageorghis wrote that it "wounded the heart and the soul of Einar Gjerstad most profoundly"^61,63. Three sources describe his help to the refugees, and they agree. Cyprus Today reported, when he was eighty, that he took a leading part in Swedish activities on behalf of Cyprus and sold a piece of his own land for £4,000, giving the whole sum to the Cypriot refugees through the Swedish Red Cross¹¹⁴. Styrenius says he gave part of his fortune to the Red Cross for those who suffered⁶¹. Karageorghis wrote that with Mrs Gjerstad he spared no effort to send material aid to the refugees, "even by selling their own property"⁶³. Törnkvist adds that he "spent all his energy and much money on the Greek refugees"¹¹². When he could visit Cyprus again, Törnkvist writes, he asked to see his own excavations at Vouni, where the stele bore his name, and permission was refused; his bitter comment was that it was "now a military area"¹¹².

Back to Cypriot studies

Törnkvist judged that his research on early Rome "did not have the same success as his Cypriote activities", and that back in Lund in the early 1970s he longed to return to "his old hunting-grounds"¹¹². Styrenius dates the return to the last volumes of Early Rome in 1973, after an absence of 25 years from Cypriot studies⁶¹. In his own account, Gjerstad met Jean Pouilloux and Karageorghis in Athens in 1975, his work on early Rome finished, and told them he intended to publish a corpus of the Greek Geometric and Archaic pottery imported to Cyprus¹³. He wrote that his chapter on this pottery in the fourth volume of the expedition's publication, of 1948, had been "far from complete and, worse than that, without illustrations"¹³. Karageorghis promised the finds from Kition, Calvet and Marguerite Yon took Salamis, and J. P. Thalmann took Amathus¹³. Gjerstad studied in the Cyprus Museum, thanking Karageorghis and Ino and Kyriakos Nicolaou for their help, wrote the section on pottery from various parts of Cyprus himself, and signed the preface at Lund on 7 July 1977¹³.

His 80th birthday, on 30 October 1977, brought further tributes. The Medelhavsmuseet published its Memoir 2 in his honour, on Cypriot antiquities in Stockholm, illustrating some of his major discoveries; in it Karageorghis honoured "a teacher and a friend"^63,115. Karageorghis wrote there that the growth of the Swedish link with Cypriot archaeology was "due to the greatness of one man", noted a second Swedish Cyprus Expedition under Gjerstad's disciple Paul Åström, and looked for a "happy and fruitful return" to Cypriot archaeology⁶³. The volume carried a felicitation in Cypro-Minoan script, transcribed by Olivier Masson, and Karageorghis wrote that archaeologists from many lands would be sending good wishes to him and Mrs Vivi Gjerstad in Lund⁶³. Karageorghis came from Nicosia to the birthday, and the next day Gjerstad took him to see the Ale stones at Kåseberga near Ystad¹¹².

Styrenius lists The Phoenician Colonization and Expansion in Cyprus in 1979 and The Origin and Chronology of the Early Bronze Age in 1980⁶¹. David W. Rupp quoted the 1979 article for the view that Phoenician expansion "was to begin with of economic and industrial character above all exploitation of the Cypriote copper mines"¹¹⁶.

In 1980 Paul Åströms Förlag of Göteborg published Ages and Days in Cyprus, translated by Patricia Wetterberg, supported by the Sven and Dagmar Salén Foundation and the Society of Cypriote Studies, and dedicated to the memory of Luke Zenon Pierides¹. In it he counted himself among the scholars who held that Philia pottery was of foreign origin, brought by refugees from south-western Anatolia and Cilicia¹. He dated the end of the Anatolian Early Bronze Age II to about 3000/2900 BC on radiocarbon and dendrochronological evidence, and proposed calling the immigrant pottery at Ambelikou Ayios Georghios Red Polished IA and IB¹. E. J. Peltenburg's 1982 survey of later Cypriot prehistory called his 1980 article on the Early Bronze Age "a fundamental work", welcomed his separation of the circular building from most of the Ambelikou sounding, and had reservations about his reclassification of its pottery¹¹⁷.

The last years

On 16 September 1982 Gjerstad stood with King Carl XVI Gustaf, the education minister Jan-Erik Wikström, Alfred Westholm and Styrenius before the Ayia Irini terracottas at the opening of the new Medelhavsmuseet⁶¹. Afterwards he wrote to Styrenius proposing that the Vouni head stand close to the model of the Vouni palace, and Styrenius saw his "old dream" fulfilled⁶¹. Styrenius counts about 20 learned societies that honoured him, from the German Archaeological Institute in 1936 to Foreign Honorary Membership of the Archaeological Institute of America in 1984⁶¹. The Society of Cypriot Studies counted him among its 33 honorary members at its fiftieth anniversary¹¹⁸. Törnkvist records his last months: his wife Vivi died half a year before him, when he was in a home for old people, and he suffered from aphasia, though his mind was clear¹¹². With visitors he looked at his old photograph albums, "preferably from the happy days of the Swedish Cyprus Expedition"¹¹². He died at Lund on 8 January 1988, aged 90⁶¹.

Death and tributes

Carl-Gustaf Styrenius, his former student, closed his obituary by writing that with his death "one of the giants of Mediterranean archaeology has passed away"⁶¹. Styrenius remembered him as "an exigent but always inspiring professor" whose ties with many earlier students grew into friendship⁶¹. His wife Vivi (Livia), whom he married in 1921, had died the year before⁶¹.

His bibliography was compiled by Maj Callmer for 1924 to 1962 and by Maj and Christian Callmer for 1962 to 1977⁶¹.

A museum to show the Cyprus Collections long eluded him, and the problem was not solved until 1982, when the Museum of Mediterranean and Near Eastern Antiquities moved to Gustav Adolf Square in Stockholm⁶¹.

The father of Cypriot archaeology

In his speech Makarios said that Cyprus owed Gjerstad "the systematic unearthing of its past" and that this work made him "the founder and father of Cyprus archaeology"⁶⁸. Makarios called the expedition the first systematic excavation and study of the island's archaeology⁶⁸. The title stayed with him: Åström in 2003 and Maria Iacovou in 2013 both use it^119,120. A narrower title went elsewhere, since Stuart Swiny's 2001 volume on the earliest prehistory is dedicated to Porphyrios Dikaios as "father of Cypriot Prehistoric archaeology"¹²¹.

Styrenius called the Swedish Cyprus Expedition "the most important archaeological expedition to visit the island"⁶¹. Robert Merrillees, in a 1994 essay, called it the single most substantial contribution to a century of controlled fieldwork in Cyprus⁹⁰. Merrillees held that all Gjerstad's contributions "remain of enduring value" and that his publications would still enlighten long after "the purveyors of social complexity and elitism in Cypriote prehistory have passed into obscurity"⁹⁰. Merrillees also wrote that one may disagree with some of his conclusions, but that "the integrity of his motives and methods is beyond doubt"⁹⁰. Vassos Karageorghis, a close friend for many years according to Styrenius, wrote in 1977 that Studies on Prehistoric Cyprus (1926) could "hardly be considered out of date"^61,122. Karageorghis also told of Karpas villagers who, years later, still spoke to Gjerstad of a young Swedish archaeologist called Gjerstad who had toured the peninsula by bicycle¹²².

Typology and chronology

For the Iron Age, Anna Cannavò calls the 1948 volume "without doubt the founding act" of its study in Cyprus, and says all later work refers to it¹²³. She adds that the "Copernican revolution" set off by his work caused the writings of his predecessors, on which he had relied, to be quickly forgotten¹²³. On the date of the Phoenician settlement, she finds his chronology broadly exact up to the latest results¹²³.

Joanna S. Smith writes that archaeologists have sorted their pottery by his system since 1948, but that it frustrates users, above all when only sherds are found⁶⁶. Most of the vessels in it, 791 or 64.68%, came from expedition tombs, and Smith says funerary material is a poor basis for a typology though often the only one, and that Gjerstad knew it⁶⁶. He kept testing the system even as he laid it out confidently, she writes⁶⁶.

Nicola Schreiber reports Birmingham's charge that his Black-on-Red sequence was "compiled mostly from a series of tomb groups without absolute dating evidence", yet still defines that ware by his typology and finds his White Painted sequence satisfactory¹²⁴. Francisco J. Núñez writes that the start of Cypro-Archaic I has been disputed ever since Gjerstad set the framework, and traces his date to his "intention to turn the island into a reflection of the Aegean", his use of tombs and the foreign references then known¹²⁵. For sculpture, Andres T. Reyes says the German excavations at Samos after 1948 raised difficulties for his absolute chronology, and that Vermeule and Lewe proposed substantial changes to his groups¹²⁶.

The sources disagree on his view that Mycenaean pottery in Cyprus was imported: Merrillees reports that Åström's obituary said there was "every indication" Gjerstad was right⁹⁰. Merrillees himself calls Gjerstad's 1980 claim of proof by neutron activation "a highly debatable statement" and says there is no consensus on the issue⁹⁰.

Peoples, kings and Vouni

Cannavò calls his analysis of outside influences on Cypriot art and civilisation, part of his study of foreign relations, one of the foundations of his history of the island, "and also one of the most criticised today"¹²³. Reyes doubts that the shaft graves he gave to the so-called Eteocypriots were theirs, and thinks the differences in tomb types probably economic or geographical rather than ethnic¹²⁶.

On kingship, Iacovou writes that preconceptions misled him into describing Cypriot kingship as Oriental despotism¹²⁰. Christian Körner says his terms, "absolutism", "oriental despotism", "enlightened absolutism" and "tyranny", remained the reference points that research either adopted or tried to refute¹²⁷. Cannavò goes further: his reading of kingship imposed itself on all later research and left a marked gap in its study¹²³.

On Marion and Vouni, Josef Wiesehöfer, following Franz Georg Maier, calls his split of the kings of Marion into "medophile" and "hellenophile" rulers little more than speculation, finds no proof that Doxandros was pro-Persian, and says the evidence shows only that the first palace was built between 500 and 450/40 BC¹²⁸. His story still reached visitors: a visitor's notes summarise the guides' account of Vouni, which echoed it: "The palace was Persian, then it became Greek... Soloi against Vouni"¹²⁹.

The collections and the centenary

Kristian Göransson writes that the Medelhavsmuseet was created as the expedition's direct successor and keeps both its finds and its archives². The A.G. Leventis Gallery of Cypriote Antiquities opened there in 2009, and well over 900 of the c. 1,000 Ayia Irini terracottas of the Swedish share are on display². Göransson notes that some sites were never published, and that the 5,000 boxes of sherds hold promise, as G. Hult showed when she reconsidered Gjerstad's reading of the Nitovikla fortress².

A centenary conference, "Archaeological legacies of the Swedish Cyprus Expedition: 100 years on", is called for Nicosia on 14 to 16 October 2027⁷⁹. Its call counts four volumes in nine monographs over 38 years⁷⁹. The call judges the volumes of "inestimable value" today and notes that many of the sites lie in areas under Turkish occupation, which it calls "the occupied areas of Cyprus", where the volumes may be the only archaeological reference⁷⁹.