Stuart Swiny

The personal history that opens the 2021 volume in his honour, written by his wife Helena Wylde Swiny with Zuzana Chovanec, says he was born in Scotland and spent a couple of years at a boarding school in England, after his father, an artist, had moved the family to the south of France³⁶. Near Nice, before he was ten, he entered the village school, and he passed the Baccalauréat de Sciences at the Collège Stanislas de Nice in 1963 and the Baccalauréat de Philosophie at the Lycée de Nice in 1964³⁶. The following year he took part in his first dig, at the Palaeolithic site of Terra Amata in Nice under Professor de Lumley³⁶.

He went on to postgraduate study of Western Asiatic archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology, London University, where his professor was Seton Lloyd and where he met Laina Wylde³⁶. In the summer of 1967 the two worked for George Bass on a Late Roman wreck off Yassıada near Bodrum³⁶. In 1971 he held a fellowship at the British Institute of Persian Studies in Tehran and dug at Godin Tepe and, under David Stronach, at Nush-i Jan and Shahr-i Qumis; a survey of his in Iran recorded over a hundred unknown sites³⁶. In 1972 the British Academy and Max Mallowan asked him to set up a British Institute of Afghan Studies in Kabul, where the couple spent two years and dug at Kandahar³⁶.

Laina Swiny writes that he first came to Cyprus in 1969 to see her while she was working on the Kyrenia Ship, and the same chapter says he was on the staff of the University of Pennsylvania excavation of the ship that year³⁶. Vassos Karageorghis, in his chronicle for 1969, thanks young colleagues who had helped him dig, Helena Wylde and Stuart Swiny among them; this appears to refer to Kition³⁷. Courtois's notebook records Swiny's arrival at Enkomi on 10 November 1969³⁸. There a trench in the north sector bore his name, and he studied the stratigraphy of a tomb under the third street that Catherine Christophi was digging³⁸. At the close of the season he made a study of the stratigraphy of the town for Claude Schaeffer³⁹.

Paul Lapp had engaged him for a planned excavation at Idalion because of the Iron Age pottery he knew from digging at Kition-Kathari for Karageorghis³⁶. Lapp drowned east of Kyrenia in April 1970, the excavation was cancelled, and John Overbeck surveyed the city site and its hinterland instead, with Swiny as field director³⁶.

In the spring of 1974 the couple were digging at Kalokhorio-Khalandrikas, a Middle Bronze Age settlement near ancient copper mines, just before the coup against Makarios and the Turkish invasion of 1974³⁶. They were moved to a UN camp near Soli, taken to the British base at Akrotiri and flown out by the Royal Air Force³⁶. They came back to join the Kent State University excavations at Episkopi-Phaneromeni, directed by James Carpenter, with Swiny as field director³⁶. That expedition dug from 1975 to 1978, and Swiny writes that he first recognised Cypriot versions of the Egyptian games Mehen and Senet there in 1975⁴⁰. Carpenter wrote in 1981 that Swiny's typology for the ground stone from Phaneromeni was already in use at other Bronze Age excavations in Cyprus⁴¹. In 1978 Swiny surveyed the Episkopi region for Kent State with a group of students^5,16. Cypriot prehistory became the subject of his PhD³⁶.

His own encyclopedia entry lists the institute's directors as Anita Walker from 1978, Ian Todd from 1979 and himself from 1980 to 1995⁴². In 1984 yearly Fulbright fellowships began and the institute bought Schaeffer's research library⁴². In June 1991 the President of Cyprus inaugurated new premises bought and renovated through the trustees⁴². Laina Swiny writes that he moved the institute to the "Patrician Town House" where it still is³⁶.

The sources disagree on how long he directed CAARI and on when he left Cyprus. CAARI News and his own entry give 1980 to 1995, fifteen years, and CAARI News says the couple lived in Cyprus from 1970 to 1995^35,42. The University at Albany's notice of 2021 credits him with 18 years as director⁴³. The 2021 personal history says, "In 1996, we left Cyprus"³⁶.

In 1981 Brian Pile told local archaeologists of a site at Akrotiri, and Swiny was among those who examined it⁴⁴. He collected marine shell and pygmy hippopotamus bones there and submitted three samples for radiocarbon dating⁴⁴. Alan Simmons writes that Swiny suggested he visit the site and, on a July day, led him and David Reese down the cliff to it⁴⁴. Simmons says that when no one knew whether Aetokremnos was cultural, Swiny "put his professional reputation on the line with characteristic good humor"⁴⁴. Swiny later argued that the toponym should read Atokremnos, Vulture Cliff⁴⁴.

The 1978 survey led to a return to Sotira-Kaminoudhia, to relocate the tomb Porphyrios Dikaios had dug and find the settlement nearby; the project was meant to study the beginnings of the Early Cypriot period, the Philia Phase¹⁶. It was CAARI's first excavation, under Swiny's direction, a four-week season in July and August 1981 by ten diggers, to judge whether the site justified large-scale work⁶. Private donors paid for it, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities paid for the major season of 1983¹⁶.

The sources disagree on who directed that 1983 season. Karageorghis's chronicle for 1983 calls the mission "dirigée par M. S. Swiny"⁷. Swiny's own article of 1985 says he directed in 1981 and George Rapp in 1983⁴⁰. That year eight tombs of three distinct forms were found north of the settlement⁷. A study season followed in 1984, and the chronicle calls August 1986 the third and last season, funded wholly by the Institute for Aegean Prehistory^8,45. Helena Wylde Swiny was assistant director and ran the dig when he made his weekly visits to CAARI¹⁶.

Swiny wrote in 1985 that Kaminoudhia appeared to fill the gap between the Chalcolithic of Lemba and the developed Early Cypriot of Vounous, that its people switched from round to rectilinear buildings, and that cattle made their first unequivocal appearance on Cyprus there⁴⁰. He saw its gold spiral earrings as linking the Philia Culture with Tarsus in Cilicia⁴⁰. He and Ellen Herscher write that the Kaminoudhia dates were the first radiocarbon dates for the Cypriot Early Bronze Age¹⁶. The final report, by Swiny, Rapp and Herscher, appeared in 2003 in the CAARI Monograph Series^16,46.

The sources disagree on whether Philia material was found in the settlement. The chronicle for 1986 says it seemed almost certain that Kaminoudhia was first inhabited in the Philia culture⁸. Jennifer Webb and David Frankel wrote in 1999 that Philia pottery in the settlement had yet to be demonstrated, and that Swiny's first identification of some material as WP(P) was withdrawn in later reports⁴⁷. The 2003 report says vessels from some tombs, "but not the settlement", are close to the Philia repertory¹⁶.

In 1994, invited by Paul Wallace, he became adjunct professor at Albany, two years later visiting professor in Classics, and in 2003 tenured associate professor of Anthropology; soon after arriving he succeeded Wallace as director of the Institute of Cypriot Studies³⁶. The institute held the 1998 conference The Earliest Prehistory of Cyprus, published by ASOR³⁶. Swiny edited the volume but did not contribute to it, and Bernard Knapp, reviewing it, found no support in the plant remains for the Anatolian origin of the first settlers that Swiny and others favoured⁴⁸.

In the summer of 1997 he led twelve of his students on a survey around Sotira³⁶. In 2000 he and 15 students dug for six weeks at Pyrgos⁴⁹. The two sides read the Pyrgos remains differently. The University at Albany's news report said the expedition had found evidence against the claim of Maria Rosaria Belgiorno that copper was smelted in the areas she had dug, and that Swiny held her furnaces were not used for smelting but may have served in making finished copper objects⁴⁹. He returned to Kaminoudhia, and wrote in 2008 that the work had had NEH funding since 2004^36,50.

He served several terms as a CAARI trustee, the last ending on 30 June 2013²². In 2021 ASOR published All Things Cypriot in his honour, whose editors write that he "redefined the scope and reach of the archaeology of Cyprus"^36,43. The Albany notice of that year called him emeritus, and his wife wrote that he had become curator of the town's small historical museum^36,43. They have a son, Philip, and a daughter, Alessandra³⁶.