The Archaeology of the Mediterranean World

Teaching in the Sun: A Scavenger Hunt in Cyprus

(Crossposted to Pyla-Koutsopetria Staff Blog and Teaching Thursday)

Classroom teaching hardly prepares you for the adventures and eventualities of teaching (in the broadest sense) while on site in a foreign country.  My colleagues, R. Scott Moore (IUP) and David K. Pettegrew (Messiah College, Pa.), conduct archaeological research each summer in Cyprus and over the past few years have gradually increased the pedagogical and student components to this work.  This has forced us to balance our research goals -- extracting good quality archaeological data from a site called Pyla-Koutsopetria -- with teaching goals -- giving the students not only an education in the history and culture of Cyprus but also in archaeological method and practice.  At the same time, we have to deal with the very real challenges of managing a group of students through the various stages of travel and culture shock.  Since many of our students come from Indiana University of Pennsylvania and the University of North Dakota, schools that tend to produce students who do not have extensive experience outside the country, this can be as big a challenge as actually teaching historical, archaeological, or cultural content. 

Many of our students have a tendency to be nervous about venturing out into the city of Larnaka where we live.  Some of this comes from the somewhat disorienting local street "grid" where everything seems slightly off parallel so streets are ever converging and diverging, and some comes from the words in the Greek alphabet (even though most important signs are translated into English).  Scott Moore proposed that we encourage the students to engage their surroundings through a scavenger hunt.  The students will take their digital cameras and crisscross the city taking photos of both practical features (like banks, pharmacies, and mailboxes) and various historical monuments and places across the city.  The goal of the latter is to form the foundation for discussion of religious and cultural pluralism on the island as well as make the students familiar with significant the local monuments and how history is inscribed in the local landscape.

PKAP 2009 Scavenger Hunt

Practical
1) ___ 1 point each, and worth up to 5 points – find a pharmacy
2) ___ 1 point each, and worth up to 5 points – find a ATM machine
3) ___ 1 point each, and worth up to 5 points – find a public mail box
4) ___ 1 point each, and worth up to 5 points – find a periptero or mini-market
5) ___ 1 point each, and worth up to 5 points – find an American restaurant
6) ___ 1 point each, and worth up to 3 points – find a bookstore
7) ___ 1 point each, and worth up to 3 points – find a Greek Orthodox church
8) ___ 1 point each up to 3 points – find a bakery
9) ___ 2 points – find a Swiss restaurant
10) ___ 2 points – find an Irish restaurant
11) ___ 2 points – find a Chinese restaurant
12) ___ 2 points – find a Cypriot restaurant
13) ___ 2 points – find a Lebanese restaurant
14) ___ 3 points – find the post office
15) ___ 3 points – find the police station

Cultural
16) ___ 2 points – find Ayios Lazarus
17) ___ 2 points – find a mosque
18) ___ 2 points – find the castle/fort
19) ___ 2 points – find the statue of Cimon/Kimon
20) ___ 2 points – find the image of a chalcolithic figurine
21) ___ 2 points – find a coppersmith/metalworking shop
22) ___ 2 points – find the municipal market
23) ___ 1 point each up to 3 points – find a street without a Cypriot Greek name
24) ___ 1 point each up to 3 points – find a non Greek Orthodox church
25) ___ 1 point each up to 2 points – find a mudbrick building
26) ___ 2 points – find a shark fishing boat
27) ___ 2 points – find a large airplane
28) ___ 1 point each up to 2 points – find a sign in Russian
29) ___ 2 points – find a store selling Lefkara lace
30) ___ 2 points – find the Black Turtle restaurant
31) ___ 2 points – find a school
32) ___ 2 points – find an example of Gothic architecture
33) ___ 2 points – find an example of Ottoman architecture
34) ___ 2 points – find an example of Byzantine architecture
35) ___ 2 points – find an example of British Colonial architecture
36) ___ 2 points – find an ancient ship-shed
37) ___ 2 points – find a Greek flag
38) ___ 2 points – find a Cypriot flag
39) ___ 2 points – find an EU flag

Bonuses
40) ___ 5 points – find a Cypriot wedding or procession
41) ___ 5 points – find an American car make and model

The Pyla-Koustopetria Archaeological Project Season Countdown begins...

Scott Moore usually posts a pre-season countdown for various PKAP preparations (and has a handy countdown timer on his blog).  As this year's season is shaping up to be more hectic than usual, there is a strange calm-before-the-storm feeling right now.  Despite the lull, there are some interesting and exciting PKAP wrinkles this year:

1. A big group.  This will be our biggest PKAP team ever.  By all counts, it will number over 30 for most of the four week season.  We'll not only have a while gaggle of undergraduate and graduate student volunteers from Messiah College, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and the University of North Dakota, but also a whole group mid-level staff from Ohio State, Penn State, and various other places.  We'll also have a cook, a great group of area supervisors who will keep an eye on the trench supervisors, and several experts in ceramics, wall-painting, et c.

2. We will be joined this summer by a team from IUP who will conduct some subsurface prospecting using Ground Penetrating Radar.  They'll arrive for about a week worth of work and will likely concentrate their efforts on the Koutsopetria plain.  Over the past three years we've used electrical resistivity to map subsurface features.  And we based our excavation strategy on the results of this technique.  The advantage of resistivity is that it was relatively inexpensive and required relatively little post-processing work to produce results.  GPR is a more expensive technique as the gear is more complex and larger and has to be brought onto the island from the US, but GPR will allow us to cover more area more quickly than resistivity.  We still hope that a larger sample of the subsurface features from Pyla-Koutsopetria will help us understand the organization of space in the Late Roman settlement.  If there was some formal organization -- say a grid pattern -- this would suggest that the coastal community had some form of urban planning and central organization.  If it was less formally organized, it would suggest that we have basically a large, well-developed village.

3. Three excavation areas.  One of the challenges that PKAP faces is that our excavations are designed primarily to ground truth our intensive pedestrian survey.  Consequently, this season, we will have three distinct excavation areas.  These areas are spread out over close to 2 sq kms.  The topography of the site compounds the distance and makes it even more difficult to communicate between the areas being excavated.  Fortunately each area will have an experienced area supervisor to coordinate the efforts of the trench supervisors and ensure that the data collected is consistent, robust, and high quality.

4. With more areas under excavation, more pottery being analyzed, and additional spatial data -- like our GPR results -- coming in from the field, we are going to have to streamline our data collection, storage, and verification methods.  For one more year, I will likely be the only coordinator of digital data collection, and I think that this will be manageable.  But the next step with the project is a more decentralized digital data collection process.  The challenge with this, of course, it bringing all the data together, having multiple copies of (or server based) software applications, and making sure that teams have the training and understanding to enter data consistently and well.

5. An improved field school.  We've always claimed to be a hybrid project -- part research excavation/survey and part field school.  This year this will even be more true.  We'll have our biggest group of students yet, but also our most well defined research goals.  So we've put considerable effort into creating a cohesive student experience for our volunteers so that they'll learn both in the field, but also at the museum and at various sites across the island.

So, stay tuned for more PKAP news and notes here. We'll get the various PKAP blogs up and running in the next few weeks and try to capture some of the growing excitement around the 2009 PKAP season!

The Archaeological Institute of America Annual Meeting: Four Conversations

The AIA Annual meeting was as exciting and interesting as usual (I'll leave it to my more regular readers to determine whether there is sarcasm intended).  It was good to see old friends and hear about new ideas, projects, and, well, news.  Four conversations stuck out in my head as I traveled back to Grand Forks, and here they are:

1. Jobs.  While most of my graduate school buddies landed tenure-track positions over the last 5 years, I still know enough folks on the job market to hear about the good (2-2 teaching loads, good support for research), bad (4-4 teaching loads, budget cuts), and ugly (fractured departments, battles in interviews, little chance for tenure) jobs available.  The reports from the AHA and the MLA appear to resonate with things at the AIA/ APA (American Philological Association) Joint Meeting.  Almost everyone with whom I talked had some story about a job search being canceled or words of warning about "upcoming cuts" during the interview.  One interesting phenomenon is that several folks told stories about job searches being accelerated to get the hiring done before the position was suspended.  A few people told stories the entire job search -- phone interview, on-campus interview, and job offer -- taking place over a mere two weeks.  Our department is searching right now and we were surprised when one candidate accepted a position before Christmas.  Traditionally job offers are made in the late winter or spring.  It may be that our lost opportunity was the product of an accelerated search.

2. Digital Archaeology. I talked with several people about archaeological field work this summer (see below), and one thing that came up in conversations was the need for IT support.  On the one hand, this is not terribly surprising as most projects have (mostly de facto) an "IT Guy" (or person).  On the other hand, it was interesting to hear projects talk seriously a dedicated IT expert perhaps even with long term responsibilities to the project.  The coming of age of digital archaeology is when archaeologists understand that born-digital data requires the same level of curation as traditional techniques for archaeological recording (inventory cards, artifacts, notebooks, drawings, et c.).  In some ways born-digital artifacts are susceptible to the same risks as an artifact of archaeological fieldwork.  In particular, digital data requires carefully documented context to be meaningful.  Unlike "analog" artifacts -- especially notebooks -- the techniques for preserving and maintaining digital records are not nearly as refined (yet), so archaeological IT experts must remain committed to project data at least until it reaches a stable state.  Even then, projects appear to be aware that a basic level of maintenance is required for "legacy data"; after all, no one produces data with the expectation that it will become unusable or worthless.  Data becomes unusable only through neglect.  In any event, it was heartening to hear so many projects (even small ones) talking about either bringing in a dedicated IT person from the earliest planning stages and hearing more established projects designated IT "coordinator" to curate legacy data and enforce good practices in data creation.  Some projects even talked about data integration beyond the site on a regional level.  The era of the digital archaeologist has arrived.

3. A Fractured Field.  I think that I heard the phrase, "that doesn't really interest me" more times at this meeting than ever before.  I'll admit that I was guilty of this on several occasions (one might have even been documented on a digital recorder!) as I begrudged my prehistorian colleagues the abundance of panels on Aegean prehistory at the AIA!  Some of my begrudging was for show, I have to admit. After all, we have worked for the last few years on the Late Bronze Age site of Kokkinokremos on Cyprus and enjoyed the support of colleagues and funding organization in our efforts to contribute to a better understanding of the Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean.  What was vaguely more disturbing was the willingness of senior (and contemporary) colleagues to express a genuine lack of interest of work even within the more narrow disciplinary confines.  My feigned lack of interest in the Bronze Age could be seen as reasonable since my area of specialty is some 2000 years later in time!  A lack of interest in material produced 400 or 500 years earlier or later than one's specialization (or in a different sub-region of the Mediterranean) reflects the ever narrowing focus of our field and perhaps predicts the eventual demise of such august and long-lived organizations at the AIA.  Already, conferences like the Byzantine Studies Conference, Dumbarton Oaks Symposia, annual meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research Annual Meeting, the Society of American Archaeologists, and regional groups like the Classical Association of the Midwest and South offer smaller and potentially more focused environments for scholarly exchange.  As money for travel to conferences becomes more scarce (not to mention the money to put on such major events), perhaps the lack of interest among scholars who are more devoted to their narrow research fields (rather than larger disciplines) simply marks out a practical, intellectual reality of our changing times.  Stan Katz offered a similar (if more articulate) critique of the American Historical Association Annual Meeting at the Chronicle Review Blog. Despite my posturing, I'd be sad to see the AIA go.  I think that we have far more to learn from our colleagues than we sometimes realize.

4. Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project Logistics. I spent a good bit of time on Thursday and throughout the meeting talking logistics with my fellow directors of the Pyla-Kousopetria Archaeological Project.  It looks like we will have over 30 people this year on the project ranging from almost completely inexperienced undergraduates to specialists in Bronze Age pottery, Roman wall-painting, and the history of the Medieval Cyprus.  We had designed our project from the start to be "scalable".  We began with 6, 3 students and 3 faculty, and each year expanded our operation.  With over 30 slated to come for at least part of the time, we'll certainly push the limits of scalability.  This blog began as a means to make our planning and field work on Cyprus more transparent.  While it has expanded and wandered over the almost 15 months of its life, it will continue to keep our stakeholders informed of our planning and our day-to-day activities in the field.

Finally, I was approached a number of times this weekend by folks with kind words for this blog.  Apparently it was mentioned in several contexts at the Meetings, and this corresponds with a spike in hits over the weekend.  I do not do much to promote this blog (although it is listed in the various indexed blog-searches and has even appears occasionally in Google Scholar), so it was really encouraging to hear that people appreciate my musings.  Thanks!  And if you are a visitor or a new reader, I hope you find my blog entertaining (at least) or informative or just pathetic in an endearing way.  After all, it's cold out here, and blogging helps keep me warm.  Keep coming back and I'll keep posting.

Friday Varia and Quick Hits

Here some interesting and fun links for a winter Friday:

• From the Internet Archive via Nathan Harper through Scott Moore: Some important texts for the study of Cyprus.  It includes Cobham's Excerpta  Cypria, Cesnola's Cyprus: Its Cities, Tombs, and Temples, and Hogarth's Devia Cypria.
• I am not usually a big fan of "blog carnivals" but Carnivalesque 45 is pretty good.
• It alerted me that Alun Salt had begun blogging again at Archaeoastronomy.
• Ian Straughn has posted a great article called "'Trashed Out': An Archaeology Reading of the Foreclosure Mess" over at Archaeolog.  This resonates with my own interest in a suburban archaeology (here, here, here, here, and here), but in a far more timely manner.
• Antiquated Vagaries has a great post (with some great pictures) on Athenian Graffiti and street art.
• Ryan Stander's Axis of Access is a great blog.  His photographs are amazing and we hope to recruit him to visit work with us in Cyprus this summer. 
• Finally, the 2009 Graduate School Scholarly Forum Call-for-Papers has appeared.  If you are a graduate student or faculty at UND, this is a great opportunity to share your research

The 2009 Scholarly Forum – Call for Abstracts

The Graduate School is now calling for abstracts for the 2009 Scholarly Forum. The two day campus-wide event focuses on graduate student and faculty research and creative scholarship at UND. The Scholarly Forum will be held March 11 & 12 in the Memorial Union, featuring oral presentations, panel sessions and a poster session. The deadline for abstracts is Monday 2 February, 2009. Sessions times are limited so submit your abstract early! All abstracts must be submitted on the electronic form provided on our web site. It is also important to read the submission guidelines. We look forward to receiving your abstracts. The submission form and guidelines can be found here on the web site (submission guidelines here and submission form here)

Some New Publications from the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project

Two new publications features data and analysis from the Pyla-Kousopetria Archaeological Project.  R. Scott Moore, "A Decade Later: The Chronotype System Revisited," in W. R. Caraher, R. S. Moore, L. J. Hall, Archaeology and History in Roman, Medieval and Post-Medieval Greece. (Aldershot 2008), 137-151 used PKAP data to reconsider some key features of the much-discussed Chronotype system of sampling and pottery identification. In brief, the chronotype system was developed over the course of several intensive survey projects in Greece and Cyprus.  It stipulates that each fieldwalker collects one example of every unique type of artifact in their swath or path through the unit.  When this pottery comes back to the lab, the ceramicist then batches the artifacts according to their unique chronotype which is a combination of fabric type and function.  Thus, the chronotype system provides a comprehensive sample of all unique types of artifacts present in a unit as well as some indicator of their frequency across the surface of the unit (that is to say, if a unit produces several objects of the same chronotype, this should indicate that several walkers saw similar material in their swaths).

While Moore's article includes a nice review of recent publications on the chronotype system, it also features some new analysis.  Of particular significance, is Moore's discussion of whether fieldwalkers were able to distinguish individual chronotypes successfully in the field.  Proponents of the chronotype systm have long argued that walkers could quickly be trained to distinguish similarity and different in the field and therefore were able to recognize unique types of artifacts in the field as is required by the chronotype system.  The tendency for survey pottery to be relatively cleaner than excavated pottery makes this process easier for the fieldwalker.  Moreover, most walkers were instructed to collect an artifact if they could not determine whether it was unique or not.  Moore's analysis of PKAP data, however, showed that walkers did not seem regularly to collect duplicate chronotypes as is shown in the strong correlation between overall artifact densities and the number of chronotypes in the unit.  Furthermore, he was able to argue that fieldwalkers were less selective in units with a larger number of sherds.  That is to say that walkers collected a smaller percentage of the sherds from units in which they counted a large number of artifacts.  Of course, this could simply reflect a lack of real diversity in the units from Pyla-Koutsopetria with the greatest number of sherds.  This, however, might simply be a characteristic of the site itself, where the highest density units tend to have almost overwhelming Late Roman component. Moore finds further support for his observations when he compared the number of chronotypes present in several total collection circles to the number of chronotypes found in the same unit sampled with the chronotype system.  In general, there was a much stronger correlation between the number of chronotypes present and the number of sherds in the total collection circles than in typical survey units. It may be that this shows a slight tendency for walkers to under-collect, but it may also simply reveal the difference between carefully scrutinizing the ground in a total collection circle versus walking across a unit using standard survey procedure.  Moore's conclusions offer another significant body of quantitative data for the effectiveness and limitations of the chronotype sampling system.  More significantly some of his conclusions differ from those reached by another chronotype project -- the Eastern Korinthia Archaeological Survey -- where there is good evidence that fieldwalkers over-collected certain chronotypes (an issue discussed by Pettegrew, Hesperia 76 (2007), 743-784).  Despite some variation in quality of data that the chronotype system produces, it is nevertheless produces a body of data that allows us to critique the sampling tendencies of fieldwalkers in a critical way.  More importantly, he demonstrated that PKAP fieldwalkers were "remarkably consistent in their artifact collection" (147), which may not tell us much about the artifact types that they missed, but will at least allow us to draw confident conclusions regarding the distribution of artifact types across a unit and throughout the survey area more broadly.

The work of the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project is also features in the recent double issue of Near Eastern Archaeology (W. R. Caraher, R. S. Moore, D. K. Pettegew "Surveying Late Antique Cyprus" NEA 71 (2008), 82-89)  This issue is devoted to American work in Cyprus and, in part, celebrates the 30th Anniversary of the Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute (CAARI) in Nicosia as well as the important contributions of the late Danielle Parks.  CAARI serves as an import source of support for our work on Cyprus so it was particularly gratifying to be represented among the impressive list of American field projects active on the island since the founding of the Institute.  It is also exciting to note how many projects featured in this issue focus on "later" periods.  Alongside the PKAP contribution, M. Rautman's reviewed upon his important work at the Late Roman village of Kalavassos-Kopetra and Cypriot countryside in Late Antiquity, Annemarie Weyl Carr reflects on Dumbarton Oaks efforts to preserve and document the Byzantine History of the island, and Bethany Walker highlights the role of CAARI in supporting work on Ottoman Cyprus.  And, the entire issue is filled with spectacular technicolor photographs! 

Pyla-Koustopetria and Rome

Scott Moore is in Rome at the XVIIth International Congress of Classical Archaeology.  The theme of the conference this year is "Meetings Between Two Culture in the Ancient Mediterranean".  The Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project is giving paper entitled “Trade and Exchange in the Eastern Mediterranean: A Model from Cyprus”
in a session on exchange in the Eastern Mediterranean. 

We'll make the entire paper available on our web site once Scott returns, but for now, I will provide a teaser.  The most significant new analysis to appear in this paper is Scott's study of the Late Roman amphoras. Amphoras are transport vessels commonly used throughout antiquity to store and ship olive oil, wine, and some dry cargos.  As the following excerpt will explain, the most common form from Pyla-Koutsopetria (and on Cyprus in general) are classified as Late Roman 1 based on their shape.   

"Amphorae from all periods make up approximately 15% of our total quantity of pottery from Pyla-Koutsopetria with Late Roman amphorae accounting for 62% of all ancient amphorae.  LR1 Amphora was the largest category of Late Roman amphora, representing 30% of PKAP’s total amphorae from the Late Roman period and 80% of the identifiable amphora types. Late Roman 1 Amphora was, of course, one of the most widely traded amphorae of the 4th – 7th centuries AD in the eastern Mediterranean and is associated with olive oil and wine production. A number of production sites for this vessel type in the 6th and 7th centuries have been located along the southern coast of Cyprus (Zygi, Paphos and perhaps Amathous) and on the Cilician coast. We have identified 7 subclasses of LR1 Amphora Types based on fabric differences. Such variety in LR1 amphora fabric is not unusual on Cyprus—there were 4 main subclasses at Kopetra, for example—but does indicate variety in production sites and suggests that trade on the island was not merely a matter of access to materials, but was selective, in fact.

 
Density of Amphoras at Pyla-Koutsopetria

   A closer examination of the LR1 amphorae shows that at Koutsopetria, 25% of the LR1 amphora have a fabric type that has been suggested was produced in Cilicia and Syria. The largest number of LR1 amphora at Koutsopetria (58%) have a fabric whose origin is believed to have been south central Cyprus. This LR1 fabric, often identified as Rautman LR1(1), is also the most frequently found LR1 sherd at Panayia Ematousa and Maroni.  Despite the relatively high number of Cypriot produced LR1 amphora at our site, it is interesting to note that none of the brick red LRI amphora produced at Kourion were found at Koutsopetria. At Kopetra, however, this ratio is reversed with over 42% of the LR1 amphora being from Cilicia and Syria, and approximately 13% being from south central Cyprus.  The greater proportion of locally produced LR1 fabrics at Maroni and Koutsopetria might reflect their function as ports for exporting locally produced agricultural produce rather than major hubs for importing wine and olive oil from abroad in foreign made amphoras.

Distribution of LR1 Amphoras at Pyla-Koutsopetria

    Comparing PKAP’s Late Roman amphora collection with other nearby sites suggests both significant similarities and differences. In terms of similarities, LR1 Amphora sherds represent the dominant class of LR amphoras at the small villages of Maroni and Kopetra, located some 50 km west of Kition. At Maronia, LR1 accounted for 21% of Late Roman amphora by weight, while at Kopetra, LR1 Amphoras made up 2/3 of all amphora sherds.  Both sites, however, produce much greater diversity of amphora types than Koutsopetria.  Kopetra, for example, produced 13 identifiable amphora types compared to the 5 types identified at Koutsopetria.  In fact, Koutsopetria shows greater similarity to the village of Panayia Ematousa, another site in the immediate hinterland of Kition -- some 6.5 km north and inland of the city.  Panayia Ematousa, like Koutsopetria, lacks Late Roman 4 amphora, the most common imported amphora at both Maroni and Kopetra. The differences in proportions between Maroni and Kopetra, on the one hand, and Koutsopetria and Panayia Ematousa on the other, reinforces the hypothesis that Koutsopetria was more heavily engaged in exporting than importing. 

    It is clear that Koutsopetria imported LR amphora from only a few locations in the Eastern Mediterranean, primarily Cilicia and Syria and that its importation of amphora from other regions was limited or non-existent. Only 1 example of a Palestinian bag amphora (Peacock and Williams Class 46) was found at PKAP, and while the numbers are low for other Cypriot sites (Maroni <1% and Kopetra <3%) this is surprising considering the close proximity of the Levantine coast to the southern Cypriot coast. A similar situation holds true for amphorae imported from Africa with only 1 North African amphora with being found at PKAP, and no Egyptian amphorae. Also uncommon are LR2 amphorae produced in the Aegean and Black Sea region. Low numbers were reported at all nearby sites: Kopetra (1.9%), Pyla-Koutsopetria, Panayia Ematousa, and Maroni < 1%. These relatively low percentages of amphora imports, especially LR4 which is common at other sites, suggests that Koutsopetria is participating selectively in the trade along the southern Cypriot coast and that factors other than availability are determining Koutsopetria’s involvement."

Provisional Processed Pottery from Pyla-Koutsopetria

While Scott Moore, Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project's ceramicist and co-director, handles most of the pottery processing in the field, when it gets back to the U.S., I generally work with the processed pottery in its digital form.  This past few weeks we have generated a provisional database containing almost all the pottery collected from 5 years of intensive survey at Pyla-Koustopetria.  This same database will eventually house the pottery from the excavations last year and from earlier excavations conducted at the site in the 1990s.  With our ceramic data in digital form we are able to conduct queries, transfer it to our GIS (Geographic Information Systems) interface, and even produce the basic structure for our publishable catalogue.

With the inclusion of material collected during the 2007 and 2008 survey season we have produced a sufficiently robust dataset to conduct some basic quantitative analysis.  We have over 18,000 artifacts (not a particularly large number from an intensive survey) collected over the course of our standard intensive survey (with another couple thousand generated through various experimental survey procedures).  Of this group about 40% date to the Roman or Late Roman period.  Particularly prevalent in this assemblage of Late Roman material are finewares which account for over 8% of all Late Roman pottery.  Fine wares are useful because they can generally by associated with a particular production center in the Mediterranean and are distinctive enough to have relatively secure chronologies (thanks in large part to the tireless work of John Hayes whose monumental Late Roman Pottery remains the point of departure for almost any analysis of this class of material). 

One of the advantages of our significant assemblage of Late Roman finewares is that we can compare it sites elsewhere on this island.  The locally produced Cypriot Red Slip (CRS) remains the most common type of Late Roman fineware at the site accounting for about 45% of the material on the site and another type of Late Roman fine ware Phocaean Red Slip (PHW) probably produced in Asia Minor, accounted for close to 30% of the assemblage. The most notable feature of the fine ware at our site, however, is that African Red Slip (ARS), a type of Roman fineware imported from North Africa, accounted for close to 20% of the assemblage.  (The other common Late Roman fine ware, Egyptian Red Slip barely appeared at all.  John Hayes has recently suggested that this type of pottery may represent the final phase in Late Roman pottery imports to the island where Egyptian Red Slips imported in the mid-7th century replaced African Red Slip which had become increasingly difficult to procure do to disruptions in Mediterranean trade at the "end of antiquity". (see Hayes "Pottery," in Megaw, Kourion: Excavations in the Episcopal Precinct, 436).  It may be, if this is indeed the case, that our site simply went out of use prior to the period when Egyptian Red Slips were most prevalent). 

The recent publication of the finds from the site of Panayia Ematousa provide an interesting point of comparison.  Panayia-Ematousa is, like Pyla-Koutsopetria, another "ex-urban" site situated 6.5 kilometers north of Kition and probably less then 15 km from Pyla-Koutsopetria.  Unlike our site, Panayia-Ematousa produced very little African Red Slip (only 2% of the Roman Red Slips).  In contrast the most common pottery was Phocaean Ware, followed by Cypriot Red Slip.  The two sites were basically contemporary and seemingly reached their Late Roman peaks in 6th century.  The forms present at both sites (that is the shape of the vessels of the various types) are basically similar.  Panayia-Ematousa likewise produced little Egyptian Red Slip.

The presence of a significant quantity of Phocaean Ware at Panayia-Ematousa argues against the idea that this site was less connected to Mediterranean trade -- after all, Phocaean Ware was imported to the island as well.  In fact, the fine ware from Panayia-Ematousa seems to suggest that, at least for fine table wares, the residents of the site were less interested in the locally produced Cypriot Red Slip which is by far the most common type of Late Roman fine ware on the island. In fact, at other rural and ex-urban sites on the island, Cypriot Red Slip is typically the most common type of Late Roman Pottery.

At present the Late Roman pottery from Kition remains unpublished (although we have heard that its publication is imminent), so it is impossible to compare the material from Panayia-Ematousa and Pyla-Koutsopetria to the closest urban center.  The differences between the two assemblages, at least based on our provisional analysis of our assemblage at Pyla-Koutsopetria, is striking.  It would appear that these two nearby and nearly contemporary sites had very different relationships with the pottery available in the local market.  While matters such as function, wealth, and site size (i.e. size of market) might well influence the kinds of material present, the prevalence of ARS at Pyla-Koutsopetria nevertheless appears to be one of its most striking characteristics.  In fact, we might even suggest that the difference in pottery used by residents of Panayia-Ematousa and Pyla-Koutsopetria reflected differences in how they chose to identify themselves.  This is all the more significant considering that Roman fine wares were the kind of elite, imported goods that likely contributed to opportunities for elite display like dining.

Scott Moore is working on the material from a survey conducted around Athienou some 20 km inland from Kition and our site and this material should cast even more light on the patterns of pottery in southeastern Cyprus during Late Antiquity.

AIA Annual Meeting Overview

I perused the Program for the AIA's 109th Annual Meeting yesterday and have a little bevy of observations (as one might expect). 

The first is a blatant Advertisement For Myself (and a tribute to Norman Mailer's memory):

1) In the Sunday Poster Session, PKAP will present a poster that focuses on the evolution of a project with a strong commitment to both teaching and research by bringing in voices of students who have participated on the project, namely Greg Fisher, Brandon Olson (now at Penn State), Brice Pierce, David Terry, and Jessica Freas:

Pyla-Koutsopetria: The Evolution of a Survey Project
R. Scott Moore, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, William Caraher, University of North Dakota, David Pettegrew, Messiah College, Greg Fisher, Oxford University, Brandon Olson, University of North Dakota, Brice Pierce, University of New Hampshire, David Terry, University of North Dakota, and Jessica Freas, Indiana University of Pennsylvania

2) The Medieval and Post-Medieval Archaeology in Greece Interest Group of the AIA  will have its colloquium in Sunday: The Archaeology of Xenitia: Greek Immigration and Material Culture.

3) There is a panel called: The Post Roman World.  It includes a paper by Guy Sanders and Michael Boyd entitled: "Moving Homes: A Resistivity Survey of the Late Antique City Wall East of the Forum at Corinth".

4) We would be remiss not to mention the Corinth Panel highlighting the ongoing work of graduate students at the Corinth Excavations: Corinthian Horizons: Space, Society and the Sacred in Ancient Corinth.  The panel is chaired by Amelia Brown, who presented a paper on Late Antique Corinth in our (soon to be published) AIA Colloquium last year.  This years Corinth panel reflects, in part, the ever expanding group of folks working on Late Antiquity in Corinth (a topic for a later, longer post...).  In light of this in is interesting that the title of the panel (invoking again Mailer's spirit) resonates gently (and I am sure intentionally) with a certain work on Late Antique Greece (tongue in cheek).  Jeremy J. Ott's paper on Late Roman burials in the forum should be particularly valuable contribution to our understanding the the Late Antique City.  Moreover, I've heard that Joe Rife will be the respondent at this panel, and his nearby Kenchreai Cemetery Project (now, perhaps, Kenchreai Excavations), has a serious interest in Late Antique levels.  

5) Finally, one of the key members of the PKAP team, Sarah Lepinski, will participate in this supercool workshop (I assume Sarah's contribution will center on her work at Corinth):

Session: 3H: Order and Conflict: The Agency Role of Empires in the Levant and Mediterranean
Type: Workshop

Timeslot: Saturday, January 5, 9:00 AM - 12:00 PM

Organizer(s): Gloria A. London, AIA Seattle Society and Øystein LaBianca, Andrews University

Panelists: Gloria London, AIA Seattle Society, Øystein LaBianca, Andrews University, Randall Younker, Andrews University, Derek Counts, University of Wisconsin, Andrew Smith, Dowling College, Denise Demetriou, Michigan State University, Andrew Goldman, Gonzaga University, Sarah Lepinski, Bryn Mawr College, Bethany Walker, Grand Valley State University.

Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project in Second Life

I am a novice in Second Life, but I've read enough about its potential on blogs like Electric Archaeology (Shawn Graham, the electric archaeologist himself has some interesting remarks on its potential here) and seen some impressive installations like Vassar College's Sistine Chapel to at least be intrigued.  Recently, Scott Moore, PKAP's erstwhile co-director and ceramicist at Indiana University of Pennsylvania has become involved in a project with colleagues Bev Chiarulli in Anthropology, Allen Partridge in Communications Media, and students from the very impressive Robert E. Cook Honors College at IUP part of which will explore the application of Second Life to archaeology.  In our discussions, Scott has suggested that the emphasis on spatial relationships in archaeology makes it a natural match for a 3d interface like Second Life. It would certainly be able to reproduce the radical changes in elevation present at our site better than our flat, interactive maps.  Moreover, it would seem to coincide, in a much simplified way, with the current interest in 3D scanning and imaging in Mediterranean Archaeology (like at the Thivi-Kastorion Archaeological Project or among Digital Classicists).  Both technologies seek to present ancient architecture in a way that captures the experience of the space.

So far, their efforts have received some nice attention from the local media, a short article in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review:

...Indiana University of Pennsylvania history professor R. Scott Moore and anthropology professor Beverly Chiarulli recently received an IUP new Academic Excellence and Innovation Grant for "The Creation of an IUP Second Life Island for Technology Advancement in the Classroom."

Chiarulli said her students will visit underwater sites and take tours on a Second Life island.

"A more 3-D atmosphere, while sometimes cartoonish, gives a much larger sense of what, for instance, Mayan sites would be like than through books or online," she said... (more here...)

There hasn't been too much done on archaeology in Second Life yet -- there was only one paper, for example, at the recent Immersive Worlds Conference. The scholarly discussion, somehow appropriately, seems to function just below the radar and appear mainly in blog posts like this or this.  The media has been available now for a few years (there are even hints of an archaeology of second life in some places), but it's educational potential is still being openly debated.  Scott Moore plans to talk about some about this over at his occasional blog, Ancient History Ramblings, possibly tomorrow.

In any event, PKAP already has a Second Life presence on Indiana University of Pennsylvania's Crimson Island.  Scott has built us a PKAP headquarters:

 

And a conference room for meetings (you can't properly have a headquarters without a conference room, right?):

More interesting, however, is the emerging Second Life Pyla-Koutsopetria.  The plan, if I understand it, is to build a model of the site so that we can orient students, meet, and have discussions with the student-volunteers prior to actually arriving in Cyprus.  So far, I can see a vague resemblance, but they've only just begun:

 

While, PKAP headquarters and Second Life Pyla-Koutsopetria are still in the development phases (some parts of it should be ready for inspection soon!), Indiana University of Pennsylvania's Crimson Island is up and running with a small PKAP installation.  If you have a Second Life account (they are free!) you can visit it at: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Crimson%20Island/55.5898/146.573. 

The Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project's New Website

PKAP has unveiled its new website (it's still in beta).  It should be easier to navigate and includes out 2007 final report.  It will also include soon an updated interactive survey map and the text of our most recent conference papers (AIA 2007, CAARI Workshop 2007, and BSC 2007).  There is some new news and notes -- particularly a nice article on PKAP's work with the Robert E. Cook Honor's College at IUP.  The article includes a podcast from our very own R. Scott Moore!Not to be outdone, we've also put up some podcasts (they are not linked to the main site yet!) here.  We are clearly still playing with how to integrate multimedia into our site, but it's getting there.

In other PKAP news, fall is grant writing time.  We are particularly concerned with finding money to fund our proposed, small scale excavation campaign in 2008.  We will ask permission to put in several small soundings to confirm the results of our 2007 geophysical survey particular on Vigla and the Kokkinokremos.  Since the two areas represent two different periods of occupation (Late Antiquity and the Late Bronze Age) we will request money from funding bodies with two very different periods of emphasis.  Fortunately, the more fieldwork we do at the more that our research goals for the two areas converge.  The fact that both areas now appear to be fortified further encourages parallel readings of the landscape. 

In the meantime we are completing a contribution to the Near Eastern Archaeology in a volume exploring American archaeology on Cyprus and dedicated to the late Danielle Parks.  We will also present a paper entitled "Across Larnaka Bay: Recent Investigations of a Late Antique Harbor Town in Southeast Cyprus" at the Byzantine Studies Conference in October.

We'll keep all of our interested "stake holders" appraised of these developments as they, er, develop.