CAARI 2018 Summer Youth Program

The Ancient Kourion Theatre comes alive with Euripides’ Alcestis— an ancient greek tragic comedy! The theatre is as majestic as it was almost 2000 years ago.

Whereas the original CAARI pot is made of clay, this do-it-yourself replica that can be found at the Cyprus Museum of Archaeology’s gift shop is made of paper!

Wholly by chance I found myself in Athienou village and couldn’t resist following the brown sign leading towards Petrofani-Malloura— the origin of the CAARI pot!

Visit to Kourion Urban Space Project

The earthquake hit without warning, stopping time for the residents of ancient Kourion. This year’s excavations at the site—led by Dr. Tom Davis former CAARI Director and now professor at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in the USA—are uncovering all kinds of artifacts that shed light on life at the time and filling in the narrative of what was happening at those last moments of the Kourion civilization. We visited the team at the site on July 6 and got a tour from Bill Weir of the University of Cincinnati. He was excited to tell us about the floor mosaic and the marble coverings on the walls. Clearly, he explained, this was the dwelling of a well-off family—in contrast to the more modest structure known as ‘Earthquake House’ just down the ancient street.

This season the Kourion Urban Space Project has unearthed countless artifacts including four crushed skeletons, amphora and a mortar with a stone in it. The position of many of these prove that an earthquake devastated the site, which was left untouched for centuries. Besides cataloguing their finds, the archaeologists are busy studying how the walls collapsed and recreating what once was. The site seems not to have been bothered—perhaps, Weir suggested, out of respect for the dead known to have been buried inside.

What is the CAARI logo? Is it a bird? Is it a plane?

The CAARI logo is rather profound. Not only is it historical, but it is exceptional in how it encapsulates the art of ancient Cyprus. It was taken from a jug (one of many) found in Petrofani-Malloura (Larnaca district) dating back to 750-600 BCE (the Cypriot Archaic period). Then like now, Cyprus was a crossroads that had been conquered by the Egyptians, Assyrians and Persians. But, despite this, the Cypriot leaders managed to maintain their autonomy in exchange for very high taxes! This of course, benefitted the locals including because they were able to excel in areas such as the arts, producing pieces such as this jug. Today, this ancient vessel and many others just as interesting are on display at the Cyprus Archaeological Museum.
Most interesting is the free-style field of art used to paint this pot. At a time when many artists tried to capture reality in their artwork, this piece differentiates greatly. As we can see, the bird and the fish are drawn in a way that is almost surrealistic, lacking details and thus making it modern-like. It is both old and new, making it a great logo for an organization like CAARI!

Profile: Annemarie Weyl Carr, Vice President of Board of Trustees at CAARI

What do you find the most fascinating about Cyprus?
I am fascinated by the Troodos—its painted churches, its haunting icons, its songs, its legends, its Akretic ballads, its intensely pragmatic village communities.

Of all of your scholarly work, what have you found the most interesting and unique, and why?
The thing which most immediately engaged me was the question of the relationship between different ethnicities on the Island in the wake of its Crusader conquest. Art remains a very powerful witness to the interplay of cultural values among Cypriots, Latins, Syrians, Armenians in the medieval period. But of course the question of ethnic interplay is one that 1) remains intense throughout Cypriot history and 2) is intense and acute in our lives throughout a shrinking globe today. My research right now is tackling other issues, but ethnic interplay never vanishes, and is the one that addicted me to studying Cyprus.