Louise Steel

Louise Steel re-examined the Maroni-Tsaroukkas cemetery that the British Museum had dug in 1897-98, then went on to direct a team at the Late Bronze Age settlement of Arediou-Vouppes. She did her doctoral research at University College London under J. Nicolas Coldstream, on the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age, and later held a post-doctoral position at the University of Edinburgh¹.

In 1992 and 1993 she was one of the authors of the preliminary report on the Maroni Valley Archaeological Survey Project, alongside Sturt W. Manning and others⁵. In 1993 she was a member of the team of the "Tsaroukkas, Mycenaeans and Trade" project, which re-examined the cemetery at Maroni-Tsaroukkas that Henry Beauchamp Walters had dug for the British Museum in 1897-98^4,7. She wrote the section of the report on the history of archaeological research in the Maroni valley before 1990⁸.

While at Edinburgh she wrote the survey "Archaeology in Cyprus 1987-1997" for Archaeological Reports⁶. She also translated Pierre Le Brun's guide to Khirokitia into English¹³.

Her chapter in the 2001 volume Cyprus in the 19th Century AD treated the British Museum's Turner Bequest excavations (Amathus in 1894, Kourion in 1895, Enkomi in 1896 and Maroni-Tsaroukkas in 1897) as the source of a view of the Late Cypriot period centred on its links with the Mycenaean world. One third of the finds from these excavations went to the Cyprus Museum⁷.

From 2004 she led a team from the University of Wales, Lampeter (later University of Wales Trinity Saint David) at Arediou-Vouppes, also called Lithosouros. The survey of that year, written up with Sarah Janes, was meant to establish the size, date and nature of the settlement^2,3. The Sydney Cyprus Survey Project had first noted the site¹. Excavation followed in 2005 and 2006, and the main occupation uncovered dates to the 13th century BCE². The preliminary analysis of the material culture, written with Carole McCartney, appeared in the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research in 2008². Kiely lists her as the author of the textbook Cyprus before History¹.