Well, it’s hard to believe that it’s been just over 3 weeks since I came out to Cyprus. Time has flown by here at the Lemba Archaeological Research Centre and we’ve really covered a lot of ground. Lisa and I had a great time teaching the members of the local Paphos Third Age (P3A) group the basics of human osteological analysis and ceramic analysis. It was a fun couple of days, and everyone who came was interested and engaged in the topics and getting a hands-on experience with archaeological reference material. Lisa did a fabulous job with training them up to recognise the local wares around Paphos. Following our P3A workshop, HARP’s first (but definitely not its last) Bioarchaeology Fieldschool here at LARC was a great success. My thanks to the first cohort of HARP bioarchaeologists, Molly, Kecia and Tibor, who contributed their energy and enthusiasm for human skeletal material to two full weeks of training.
We started out looking at reference
material and then, once they were comfortable with osteological terminology and
cleaning of archaeological human bones, we were hosted by the Paphos District
Museum for four days.
Their new-found bone identification skills were put to the test as
they had to layout a skeleton and begin the process of writing a report and
making inventories. It was a fun and successful few days at the Museum thanks
to our Cypriot colleagues there and I look forward to working more with them in
the future.
This past week, we’ve jumped right into our
Introduction to Archaeology Fieldschool, Cyprus with a really nice,
international group of students. We have five students from five different
countries, each bringing their own unique experiences and background to the
project to provide an interesting dynamic. So far we’ve been able to cover
quite a bit of the basics of archaeological site recording, spending time drawing and photographing different aspects of a local site. As well, we’ve begun our
experimental archaeology portion with some recording and de-construction of the
kilns from HARP’s Bronze Age Beer Making fieldschools. We’ve been very lucky to
have lots of help and insight from Lindy Crewe, from the University of
Manchester and covered topics from the earliest Neolithic to the end of the
Late Bronze Age in Cyprus.
We have a full programme of site visits and post-excavation analyses
ahead of us this week. I’m looking forward to having Lisa back to talk about
ceramic analyses and Paul will take us to some of the most impressive sites in
the Paphos District!
Cheers, Michelle |
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