John Rosser

John H. Rosser of Boston College is the archaeologist who argued that the whole of the Saranda Kolones castle at Kato Paphos was built by Crusaders, in the late twelfth century, and destroyed in the earthquake of 1222^4,6.

In 1979 he made soundings in the sanctuary of the episcopal basilica at Kourion, where A.H.S. Megaw had been excavating for Dumbarton Oaks since 1974⁷. Megaw later thanked Boston College "in the person of John Rosser", whose reinvestigation of the sanctuary at the close of the excavations led to a consensus on liturgical developments⁵.

Megaw had found Saranda Kolones in 1957-59 and returned in 1966-67 and 1970-71. When work resumed in 1981 Rosser joined him as Associate Director, bringing Boston College and Earthwatch as sponsors alongside the British School at Athens and Dumbarton Oaks¹. Boston College stayed on for the seasons of 1982, 1983 and 1984, with study seasons in 1986-87^9,10,11,13. The northern keep held two mills at the time of the 1222 earthquake, one working and one dismantled, and a room with a domed furnace thought to have heated a steam bath; conical sugar moulds were also found⁶. Rosser's 1985 abstract held that pottery from the construction levels showed the entire castle to be a Crusader building, replacing the working hypothesis that it was the Byzantine castellum Baffes altered by the Crusaders, and called the millroom the earliest evidence for the sugar industry on Cyprus⁴.