Paul Croft

Paul Croft identified the animal bones from many excavated settlements of prehistoric Cyprus. He was on the 1977 and 1979 field staffs of I. A. Todd's Vasilikos Valley Project, and his study of the Tenta fauna in 1982 identified 1,081 items, with deer about half, pigs about 30 per cent and caprines about 20 per cent^1,2,3. Final reports followed in Tenta II (2005) and, as co-editor with Todd, in the Kalavasos-Ayious volume (2004)^12,13. In 1981 his analyses at Sotira-Kaminoudhia showed, in Karageorghis's account, that cattle first really appear on the island there⁶.

He is listed as faunal analyst of the American Expedition to Idalion, and in winter 1979 to 1980 he re-examined the 1972 Dhali-Agridhi fauna in the Cyprus Museum^4,5. His Cambridge doctoral thesis (1989) and a 1991 article, "Man and Beast in Chalcolithic Cyprus", gathered the Neolithic and Chalcolithic evidence^14,15.

With the University of Edinburgh mission he was directly responsible for the 10 m experimental Chalcolithic round house at Lemba-Lakkous, which Karageorghis called the first experimental archaeology in Cyprus⁷. He also excavated deep wells near Kissonerga-Mylouthkia, and later reported bones from Maa-Palaeokastro, Marki Alonia, Politiko-Kokkinorotsos and the Paphos Agora Project^{8,10,11,16,20}.