Trude Dothan

Trude Dothan's Cypriot work was two seasons at Athienou, where she and Amnon Ben-Tor dug a Late Cypriot site that joined copper working to votive offerings. She was born in Vienna in 1922 and studied at the Hebrew University, took her doctorate there in 1961 on the material culture of the Philistines, and became full professor in 1977³. In 1971 and 1972 she co-directed with Amnon Ben-Tor the Hebrew University's Athienou excavation, whose stated aims were the relationship between cult and industry, the culture of the Sea Peoples and the role of Cyprus between the Aegean and the Levant^3,4.

In 1971 the team opened a small area on a low hill. A dividing wall ran north to south; to the east lay plaster platforms with ash, large pithoi set about 70 cm apart and much copper slag, and to the west piles of coarse miniature vases taken as votive offerings, one heap mixed with slag and metal debris. The date was mostly Late Cypriot II, and the finds included a cylinder seal, a scarab, a bronze ring with an Egyptian name and Mycenaean pottery. The excavators proposed that Athienou was a station on the route carrying copper from the mines to the coast⁴. The 1972 season looked for stratigraphy and for the link between the metalworking installations and the miniatures, with occupation from the 16th to the 12th century BC⁶. Counts summarises the final report as describing about 2,500 square metres dug, four strata, and a main phase with a large public building and more than 2,000 intact juglets⁸.

The results appeared as Excavations at Athienou, Cyprus, 1971-1972, Qedem 16, in 1983¹. She also led the excavation at Deir el-Balah from 1972 to 1978, and died on 28 January 2016³.