Students and Swiny Make Excellent Team in Uncovering Ancient Cyprus

Eleven undergraduate and two graduate students from the University got to explore the archeology of ancient Cyprus first-hand over the summer, thanks to Stuart Swiny, director of the Institute of Cypriot Studies in the Department of Classics.

The group was searching for undiscovered sites and artifacts in a region adjacent to the early Bronze Age settlement of Sotira, near the southern coast of Cyprus. Over a six-week period, they surveyed an area of 13 square kilometers, walking hundreds of miles in hot weather. The terrain featured hills and gorges and was covered with olive trees, carob trees, pine and gorse.

The survey team worked five days a week and spent the sixth day touring the island in land rovers, visiting a total of six museums and 24 archaeological sites.

“On the seventh day,” as Swiny put it, “we retired to the beach.”

“It was physically and intellectually demanding,” Swiny said, “and the students rose to the occasion. I couldn’t have wanted a better team.” The students, none of whom had previous field experience, had to “gain skill in identifying and dating the pottery and flint artifacts which sometimes littered the ground — to become knowledgeable in the cultural assemblages of the island for all periods.

“We got good material,” said Swiny, who joined the Albany faculty in 1996, “I’ve been excavating Sotira for 15 years, and I wanted to get a better understanding of human exploitation of the region over an eight- or nine-thousand-year period.”

Using a laptop computer and Geographical Information System software purchased by the University, the survey team was able to overlay data from their field notes onto maps that had been electronically scanned by team member Tom Reynolds.

“The main contribution of the survey to Cypriot studies,” Swiny said, “was a discovery of about ten early Byzantine farmsteads” dating from the 7th and 8th Centuries A.D. The sites were found near the ancient city of Kourion, which was continuously occupied from around 1000 BC through the 8th Century AD.

Chris Mavromatis, an MA student in the classics department, said, “I would like to do my thesis on Byzantine Cyprus based on some of the material we recovered during the survey.” Of the trip as a whole, Mavromatis said, “The group got along well. We worked hard and definitely had a good time.”

Mavromatis added that the trip was valuable culturally as well as archaeologically, since the group stayed in a rural village and got to know the local people. A woman in the neighborhood where they stayed often invited team members for coffee and cake. “Every morning around 4:30, a husband and wife would pass by on their tractor, and an old man on the way to his fields on a donkey” said Mavromatis.

One of the team’s more dramatic finds was a late Roman sarcophagus lid found near Sotira (photo). Sarah Kozyra, a senior majoring in anthropology, said “That was a particularly good day. We’d split up and about seven of us found a series of late Roman tombs — a nice little cluster, but they had all been looted. There was this sarcophagus lid outside one of them. We flipped it over and there was a raised line going down the center for decoration. When you go out in the morning, you never know if you’re going to find anything, and it’s exciting when you do.”

Kozyra said she “would absolutely love to go back.”

Another team member, an environmental studies major at Barnard College and the only non-Albany student, was responsible for a sub-project; she conducted a study within the survey area of plant life, erosion and other indicators of human impact on the environment. Her purpose was to establish a record of current environmental conditions for future comparison.

Not all of the Albany team members were students in fields related to antiquities. Daniel Holdren, a computer science major, said he went on the trip because “it sounded interesting,” and said he wasn’t disappointed. Holdren said he learned a lot and found the environment drier and “generally more pleasant” than here. Holdren stated that after his experience in Cyprus, he thought he could explain the survey sites to a newcomer. “But not as well as Stuart,” he added.

The students paid a small overhead plus plane fare to join the survey. They attended preparatory lectures in Albany and a symposium in Cyprus. Mavromatis, the M.A. student, said “We got to visit all the sites we had studied in class.”