Scholar
Maria Dikomitou-Eliadou
fl. 2006–2025 · Cyprus
Cypriot ceramic-technology specialist trained at UCL who has applied portable XRF to Bronze Age and Chalcolithic pottery from Cyprus.
Biography
Maria Dikomitou-Eliadou has studied Cypriot pottery through its chemistry and fabric. Her doctoral research at University College London (Dikomitou 2012) was an analytical study of Early and Middle Bronze Age pottery from Cyprus, covering production, distribution and social interaction2. Thomas Kiely describes her as a Cypriot graduate student at UCL specialising in prehistoric ceramic technology and then a Marie Curie Fellow there12. A 2014 chapter in the volume for David Frankel, "Rescaling perspectives", returns to the same Bronze Age material3.
Much of her published work uses portable X-ray fluorescence. In 2013 she wrote, with Kassianidou and A. Charalambous, an appendix on Grey and Black Polished II pottery for the volume on the Xylotymbou and Phlasou tombs4. In Giampaolo Graziadio's 2017 book on the earliest Aegean-type pottery in Cyprus, she and Artemis Georgiou described their study of 30 samples, mostly three-handled jars (FS 46 and 47) from Enkomi, Klavdia, Katydhata, Akaki and Akhera, as preliminary and experimental5. She also contributed to Hellenistic and Roman Terracottas (2019) and, with A. Georgiadou, to a 2022 chapter on Iron Age pictorial pottery from Salamis7,8.
Her 2025 paper with Maria Hadjigavriel, funded under the PlaCe-ITN network, studied Late Chalcolithic ceramics from the excavations of Duering, Bolger, Webb and Frankel, with the permission of the Department of Antiquities and using the Cyprus, Larnaca and Paphos Museums10.
Life and work
- 2012PhD thesis, UCL: 'Ceramic production, distribution, and social interaction. An analytical approach to the study of Early and Middle Bronze Age pottery from Cyprus' (unpublished).
LondonAmadio 2017, p. 288
- 2013With A. Charalambous and V. Kassianidou, wrote the pXRF appendix on Grey and Black Polished II (IV) pottery in Georgiou and Karageorghis's Xylotymbou/Phlasou tomb publication.
- 2014Contributed the pXRF compositional analysis (assisting Kassianidou) of a Middle Byzantine copper-alloy dish in the A. Pitsillides collection (appendix pp. 164-66 of Cyprus and the Balance of Empires), and co-edited with Kassianidou The Narnia Project: Integrating approaches to ancient material studies (University of Cyprus, Nicosia).
- 2017With Artemis Georgiou wrote chapter 6 of Graziadio's The Earliest Production of Aegean-Type Pottery in Cyprus: a preliminary pXRF study of 30 ceramic samples (FS 46/47 three-handled jars and other LBA types, mostly Enkomi and other Cyprus Museum material) using the University of Cyprus Archaeological Research Unit's Innov-X Delta analyser.
NicosiaGraziadio, pp. 117-119
- 2019Co-edited with G. Papantoniou and D. Michaelides the volume Hellenistic and Roman Terracottas (Monumenta Graeca et Romana 23, Brill); co-authored with them the chapter on terracottas in the House of Orpheus, Nea Paphos.
LeidenPapuci-Władyka 2020
- 2025With M. Hadjigavriel published 'Tracing traditions: an analytical study of Late Chalcolithic ceramics from Cyprus' (macroscopic, petrographic and chemical analysis), within the Marie Sklodowska-Curie PlaCe-ITN project. Material from excavations of B. Duering, D. Bolger, J. Webb and D. Frankel was studied with permission of the Department of Antiquities, in the Cyprus, Larnaca and Paphos Museums; analysis at the Cyprus Institute (STARC).
Connections
11 peopleScholarship
- Wrote with Andreas Charalambous2013
- Wrote with Vassiliki Kassianidou2013–2014
- Wrote with Athanasios K. Vionis2016
- Wrote with Artemis Georgiou2017–2024
- Wrote with Elisabetta Pezzi2017
- Published material of Giampaolo Graziadio2017
- Wrote with Giampaolo Graziadio2017
- Wrote with Zomenia Zomeni2017
- Wrote with Demetrios Michaelides2019
- Wrote with Giorgos Papantoniou2019
- Wrote with Anna P. Georgiadou2022
- Wrote with Maria Hadjigavriel2025
Colleagues & contacts
- Worked with Vassiliki Kassianidou2014
On Ancient Cyprus
13 pages- A Goat and a Composite Figure: Reading a Cypriot Free-Field JugArticle
- Ancient Cypriot Pottery: A Course from the First Pots to the Classical KingdomsArticle
- Cypriot Free-Field Art: One Bird on an Empty JugArticle
- Arrows and Chevron Arrows on Cypriot Iron Age PotteryCompendium
- Free-Field Style: Birds, Bulls and Lotus on Cypro-Archaic JugsCompendium
- Iron Age White Painted WareCompendium
- Lotus Flowers and Lotus Friezes on Cypriot Iron Age PotteryCompendium
- Mycenaean Imports and Local ImitationsCompendium
- The Maltese Cross on Cypriot PotteryCompendium
- Village Life in Early Bronze Age CyprusCompendium
- White Painted Jug with Painted Eyes, Chevron Arrow and SwastikaObject
- White Painted Juglet with a Dotted ArrowObject
- White Painted Trefoil Jug with Painted Eyes and Dotted CrossesObject
Sources
- 1.M. Dikomitou (2012). “Ceramic production, distribution, and social interaction. An analytical approach to the study of Early and Middle Bronze Age pottery from Cyprus”. University College London.
- 2.Marialucia Amadio (2017). Architecture and Urbanisation in Bronze Age Cyprus: local and regional innovations in materials, technology and social representation. University of Reading.
- 3.M. Dikomitou-Eliadou (2014). “Rescaling perspectives: local and island-wide ceramic production in Early and Middle Bronze Age Cyprus”. Structure, Measurement and Meaning: Studies on Prehistoric Cyprus in Honour of David Frankel, 199-211. Uppsala, Åström.
- 4.A. Charalambous, M. Dikomitou-Eliadou, V. Kassianidou (2013). “Appendix: A preliminary chemical study of Grey and Black Polished II (IV) pottery with the employment of pXRF”. A Cypro-Archaic tomb at Xylotymbou and three Cypro-Classical tombs at Phlasou: From Exuberance to Recession, 59-63. Uppsala.
- 5.Giampaolo Graziadio. The Earliest Production of Aegean-Type Pottery in Cyprus.
- 6.M. Dikomitou-Eliadou, A. Georgiou (2024). “Ceramics: Stylistic and Functional Analysis”. Encyclopedia of Archaeology, 2nd edition 2, 378-385. London, Academic Press.
- 7.A. Georgiadou, M. Dikomitou-Eliadou (2022). “The Iron Age pictorial pottery of Salamis within and beyond: an overview of ceramic styles, wares and fabrics”. Beyond Cyprus: investigating Cypriot connectivity in the Mediterranean from the Late Bronze Age to the end of the Classical period, 335-349. Athens, Athens University Review of Archaeology.
- 8.G. Papantoniou, D. Michaelides, M. Dikomitou-Eliadou (2019). “Terracottas in a domestic context: The case of the House of Orpheus in Nea Paphos, Cyprus”. Hellenistic and Roman Terracottas, 7-43. Leiden-Boston, Brill. Online
- 9.E. Papuci-Władyka (ed.) (2020). Interdisciplinary Research of the Jagiellonian University in Nea Paphos UNESCO World Heritage Site (2011-2015): First Results.
- 10.Maria Hadjigavriel, Maria Dikomitou Eliadou (2025). “Tracing traditions: An analytical study of Late Chalcolithic ceramics from Cyprus”. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.
- 11.C. A. Stewart (ed.), T. W. Davis (ed.), A. Weyl Carr (ed.) (2014). Cyprus and the Balance of Empires: Art and Archaeology from Justinian I to the Coeur de Lion. CAARI / ASOR.
- 12.T. Kiely (2017). “Britain and the archaeology of Cyprus II: 1914 to the present day”. Cahiers du Centre d'Études Chypriotes 47, 253-310. Online