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The following slide show details the
exhibition, Settlement and Sanctuary Views from
the Columbia University Excavations at
Phlamoudhi, Cyprus, which was held in the Miriam
and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia
University from January 20-March 19, 2005.
Curated by Joanna S. Smith, it featured
discoveries made from 1970-1973 by a team led by
the late Professor Edith Porada in the village of
Phlamoudhi in northern Cyprus. The
visitor read about the history of the project and
details of the teams survey and excavations in
the exhibit captions and the Guide to Phlamoudhi
(by Joanna Smith, 2005), designed to lead the
visitor as if that person were visiting the sites
themselves. The guide is modeled on the standard
series of guidebooks to archaeological sites on
Cyprus. At the opening of the exhibition,
there was a symposium about the significance of
the Phlamoudhi excavations for Cyprus and the
eastern Mediterranean from the second millennium
BC to the modern day. Those papers have now been
submitted to the American Schools of Oriental
Research for publication. The exhibit will reopen
in Cyprus in the summer of 2007, featuring the
newly repatriated objects that are now in New
York. This slide show takes you through the
gallery as if you were on a tour of the exhibit,
which itself was intended as a tour of the sites.
Melissa, the larger of the two sites was a large
urban settlement of the Late Bronze Age with a
central administrative building. Vounari was a
trading outpost that was within Melissas
administrative sphere. Both places were
rediscovered in the Iron Age and rebuilt as cult
places. Settlement continued in the region to the
modern day.
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Entrance to Settlement and Sanctuary Views from
the Columbia University Excavations at
Phlamoudhi, Cyprus
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Upon entering, the visitor sees a view of the
Kyrenia Mountain range on the right and proceeds
up, over, and down to the village of
Phlamoudhi, seen in the photo in the next room.
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Kyrenia Mountains, looking west.
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Phlamoudhi village, looking down from the
mountains toward the north. Case featuring Edith
Porada to the left. Case featuring the projects
survey from 1972 to the right.
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The view of the first main room of the gallery
upon entering the exhibition. View of Vounari in
the distance with a floor map of the site. Cases
featuring the survey, the original excavation
team, and the Vounari excavation appear from left
to right.
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The visitor enters Phlamoudhi and can find the
locations investigated by the Columbia University
Expedition to Phlamoudhi on the floor map of the
region. This floor plan is oriented with north to
the south side of the gallery. All floor plans in
the exhibit have the same orientation.
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Also in the first room, just on the left as the
visitor enters the gallery, are cases featuring
the history of the Columbia University Expedition
to Phlamoudhi to the left and Edith Porada to the
right. The map of Cyprus in the center was used
by the original team during their travels on the
island.
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Closer view of the expedition history and Edith
Porada cases.
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Contents of the history of the expedition case.
The documents detail the project from its
inception and implementation to its end due to
the war of 1974. The documents are permits,
personal correspondence, and a list of artifacts
borrowed for study in New York City.
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This case highlights Edith Poradas career,
focusing on her intensive interest in cylinder
seals. The books are her first publication of
seals in the Pierpont Morgan library, her first
article on Cypriot seals, and an article in which
she mentions the one cylinder seal found by the
Columbia expedition. There is a photograph of the
Phlamoudhi seal that is now in the Cyprus Museum
and three borrowed seals from the Morgan library
that are similar in subject matter and
iconography. Personal correspondence, tools used
by Edith Porada, and a photograph of her at work
accompany the publications.
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View of the survey area investigated in 1972 with
the survey case to the right.
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View of the survey area with the display of
Vounari in the distance. The map on the wall to
the right is the original of the map reproduced
and enlarged on the floor.
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View of the survey area and part of the team
conducting survey in the foothills of the Kyrenia
Mountains.
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View of the survey area and the entrance to the
exhibition.
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View of the first main room with the survey case
to the far left. The second main room detailing
the Melissa excavation is to the right. To the
right in the back is the entrance to the three
smaller gallery rooms featuring artistic and
cultural interconnections represented at
Phlamoudhi by time period.
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View of the survey case. The photographs feature
sites and finds from the survey. On the left in
particular are views of the remarkable rock cut
Hellenistic tombs at Spilios tou Tsali. To the
right are images of vessels from the Archaic and
Classical period tomb at Pallouri, the only part
of the Phlamoudhi area excavated by Edith Porada
in person.
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View of the survey case contents. The article
about the survey appears in the upper left,
accompanied by original notebooks, photographs,
and objects from surveys in the area.
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View of the site of Vounari. A case featuring the
members of the original Columbia expedition is in
the background. The map is oriented with north
pointing toward the south side of the gallery, at
the same orientation and scale of the floor map
of Melissa in the next room.
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Case featuring the members of the original
expedition. To the left are group photographs and
photographs of people working at Vounari. To the
right are images of people working at Melissa.
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The case that accompanies photographs of the
original team members contains notebooks and
documents about the excavation methods used by
the team. Ceramic collection and documentation,
the registry book, pay sheets, and images of
where people worked fill out the picture.
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View of the map of Vounari with a large-scale
photograph of Vounari in the back ground.
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View of the Vounari site with a case about its
excavation in the background.
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Case featuring the Vounari excavations. The
photographs detail the sites architecture from
its original building in the Middle Cypriot III
period through its abandonment in the Late
Cypriot IIA period three hundred years later in
the fifteenth century BC. Images of the sites
reuse in the Iron Age, from the sixth century BC
into the Hellenistic period follow to the far
right.
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The Vounari excavation case features original
notebooks, ceramics representative of the periods
of the sites use, and the 1983 publication about
the site by Selma M. S. Al-Radi.
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From the Vounari excavation area the visitor
could enter three small rooms organized
chronologically. The rooms feature cultural
interconnections in the second millennium BC
(Bronze Age), first millennium BC (Iron
Age-Hellenistic), and first through second
millennia AD (Roman-Ottoman). To the right is a
view from Vounari to the site of Melissa.
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View of Vounari with a photo showing a view from
Vounari to Melissa.
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View from Vounari west to Melissa. During the
excavation, team members communicated by means of
flashing light off of a mirror. Possibly
something similar occurred in the past.
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From the first main room featuring the survey and
the Vounari site, the visitor can enter the
second main room featuring the excavation at
Melissa and thematic cases linking the two main
excavation areas.
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View upon entering the Melissa room. A view of
the Melissa site is in the back to the left and a
map of the same scale and orientation as the
Vounari one is on the floor. To the left is a
case featuring the Melissa excavation. To the
right is a case about ceramics made at Melissa
and the red-slipped ceramic tradition. In the
center is a case featuring vessels, both locally
made and of foreign inspiration, used for
feasting at Melissa. To the back are cases
featuring the large-scale storage of food and
drink at Melissa and Vounari.
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View of the Melissa excavation case with a view
from Melissa to Vounari on the left. Even from
this view, the white conical mound of Vounari is
visible in the center of the photograph,
emphasizing its prominence in the landscape.
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The Melissa excavation case features photographs
above it with details of the sites habitation
and architecture from the Middle Cypriot III
period to its destruction by earthquake and fire
over 500 years later in the Late Cypriot IIC
period of the thirteenth century BC. To the far
right are images of parts of the site reused for
buildings in the Cypro-Archaic, Classical, and
possibly the Hellenistic period.
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The Melissa excavation case features original
notebooks, photographs, and objects from the main
phases of the sites habitation.
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A view of the Melissa room with the case about
ceramic manufacture to the left and a case about
the long-term red-slipped ceramic tradition to
the right.
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A reproduction of a Red-on-Black bowl is the
centerpiece of the case about ceramic
manufacture. Ceramics of this type particularly
open shapes that could not have served as
shipping containers were exchanged widely for
their aesthetic value. Examples of the great
variety of experiments and mistakes in making
these vessels at Melissa contrast with the
consistent successful products for export from
Vounari.
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A second view of the ceramic manufacture case
with the excavation of Melissa case in the
background.
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View of the Melissa site. This plan is only a
partial representation of the excavations because
the original team did not complete the plan. The
plan has since been completed using the many
notebooks and photographs that document the
sites excavation. In the background are the
ceramic manufacture case to the right and the
case about the long-term red-slipped ceramic
tradition to the left.
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A view of the case about the long-term
red-slipped ceramic tradition. Red-colored
vessels remained prominent in northern Cyprus and
along the Karpass Peninsula throughout the Bronze
Age. Melissa was a place of their manufacture,
both the Red-on-Black ceramics and the later
so-called Base Ring vessels featured here to
the left. These later mass produced, yet handmade
vessels, became a product at the same time that
the Melissa site and its monumental building
expanded. Social and economic change there led to
the abandonment of Vounari and resulted in an
expansion of Melissas territory and
international contacts.
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View of the case about feasting to the left with
cases about ceramic manufacture, their aesthetic
value, and their economic importance in the
background.
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The feasting case features cooking vessels (in
the center at the top), pouring vessels (to
either side of the top piece), serving platters
(to the right), and a variety of mixing (back
left), and drinking vessels including a chalice.
With the expansion of the Melissa site into a
larger international world of trade in the
fourteenth century, inhabitants obtained prized
vessels from the Mycenaean world, which they
added to an already rich repertoire of local and
Levantine ceramics. They were important in part
for feasting rituals, common by this time
throughout the Mediterranean, which were
important for those wanting to be recognized as
parts of the international elite. The local
manufacture of vessels with shapes and
decorations like those imported from the
Mycenaean Greek world emphasize the specific
importance of those designs and how, for the
first time, inhabitants of Melissa incorporated
foreign objects and designs into their local
repertoire. Prior to this time, Melissa, through
the outlet of Vounari, had been a common
exporter, but a rare importer of objects, images,
and ideas from afar.
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Second view of the feasting case with a closer
view of Mycenaean-style vessels, including a
crater, bowl, cup, and chalice. The hemispherical
White Slip bowl is characteristic of vessels from
the southern part of Cyprus, demonstrating the
increased importance of on-island contacts for
inhabitants of Melissa as well.
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View from the feasting case showing the Melissa
excavation case and full-size images of pithoi,
or large storage vessels, of the types found at
Melissa. The sandbox contains a range of ceramics
of the types found at Melissa and gives the
visitor a sense of their archaeological source.
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View of the pithoi with two cases containing
fragments of pithoi from Melissa and Vounari in
the background. View of Melissa above the pithos
cases.
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Cases featuring pithoi with a view of Melissa
that shows its position on a low rise in the
foothills of the mountains, contrasting with
Vounaris stark prominence as a conical mound on
a flat plain.
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Middle Cypriot III through early Late Cypriot II
(ca. eighteenth through fifteenth century BC)
pithos fragments from Melissa (left) and Vounari
(right). Large storage vessels or pithoi were
used to contain liquids, dry foods, and even
other ceramics. Of particular importance are
vessels bearing labels, seen here in the form of
raised bands of decoration, incised patterns, and
impressions made by fingers and carved stamp
seals. These markings signified the maker and
most likely the owner of the contents of the
vessels on Cyprus, although studies of similar
vessels in Syria also suggest that they symbolize
the quality of the contents, such as olive oil,
stored in the vessels. An administrative
connection between Melissa, the larger
settlement, and Vounari, a trading depot is clear
from many of the ceramics. Here, the use of the
same stamp seal (see center row of pithos
fragments) on vessels at both sites provides the
earliest evidence for a regional administration
on Cyprus. Similar stamp seals used at Enkomi, a
site to the south of the Kyrenia Mountains may be
evidence for an even broader regional
administrative authority.
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Pithos fragments from the fourteenth and
thirteenth centuries BC as well as possible
fragments from the Iron Age. One, shown in a
photograph is now lost, but it preserves an
inscription in Cypro-Minoan, the undeciphered
script of Cyprus in the Late Bronze Age. Notebook
drawings and photographs detail the contexts and
contents of the pithoi. Notice that the bands of
decoration are uniformly finger-impressed bands,
either wavy or horizontal. The vessels in the now
enlarged building at Melissa are also more
uniform in fabric, suggesting a more limited
range of makers and owners of the vessels and, by
extension, their contents. The vessels are also
now at least twice and large as they were during
the period when Melissa and Vounari formed parts
of a regional administration. From the
architecture, ceramics, imports, and changes in
industry, we can tell that the Melissa settlement
changed in its social structure from one
emphasizing a wider-community run central
building to one with greater emphasis on a
narrower focus of control by a single individual
or family. Whether the settlement developed other
specialized centers of activity is unknown at the
present time. Melissa is the only site on the
island to preserve detailed evidence for
architectural form and use and social change over
the more than 500 year-period that constitutes
the urban form of Bronze Age Cyprus.
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Pithos cases in the background. To the right is a
case featuring the botanical remains and animal
bones from Melissa and Vounari.
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A variety of animal and plant remains were
recovered by the Columbia expedition. Fish,
shellfish, cow, sheep, and goat were all consumed
by the inhabitants. Orchard crops, particularly
olives, but also figs and almonds, were the
staple agricultural produce. Large quantities of
olives and, to judge from a pressing area found,
also olive oil were stored in the pithos vessels
at Melissa. This oil fueled the fire following
the earthquake that destroyed the Bronze Age
Melissa settlement. Remains of burnt pine, olive,
and other hardwood timbers were uncovered in the
excavations. Landscape photographs, permits, and
a section drawing accompany animal bones and
botanical remains from the excavations.
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View of Melissa with case featuring technologies
in the background.
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Case about technologies at Melissa and Vounari.
With the abandonment of Vounari came several
changes at Melissa. Among them was the
introduction of metallurgy. No smelting took
place instead residents melted existing bronze
objects to recycle them into new shapes.
Fragments of bronze tools, a bellows, and slag
appear to the left. Most bronze at Vounari is
from the Iron Age, including arrows, possibly
votive objects. Weights and bronze styli for
writing on waxed tablets were found in the
storage area of Melissa, providing additional
evidence for administration in that building.
Potmarks from various time periods, at the top in
the middle of the case, represent the pre-firing
labels of potters working at Melissa. Spindle
whorls appropriate for making woolen threads come
from all period at Melissa. The only loom weights
are Hellenistic in date and may be votives placed
at Vounari. Possible stands for slow pottery
turntables, grinding stones, and stone axes
attest to a range of possible industries.
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View of the Melissa room with the technology case
to the left. In the far distance on the left is a
case featuring the publication team.
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Case featuring the Phlamoudhi Archaeological
Project team, first active in 2000. On the left
is the manual for studying ceramics used by the
team in 2002. On the wall are photogrqphs of team
members working in New York and on Cyprus.
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Case featuring the Phlamoudhi Archaeological
Project. Correspondence and a budget for the
project appear on the left. Tools and the
procedure for working with the ceramics fill the
middle and right side of the case.
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View from the Melissa room to the middle of the
three small galleries spaces. The gallery space
in the back features Iron Age artistic and
cultural interconnections.
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The first of three smaller gallery spaces. This
room features Middle and Late Bronze Age
connections among Phlamoudhi, Cyprus and the
Levantine and Aegean worlds.
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A case of Cypriot and Levantine ceramics that are
similar in shape and decoration demonstrate the
long-term close artistic connections between the
two places throughout the Bronze Age history of
Phlamoudhi.
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Ceramics from the Mycenaean world, including
Mycenaean Crete, come only from Melissa, Vounari
having been abandoned by the time of their first
import in the fourteenth century BC. A large
stirrup jar from Crete in the back left held oil.
A smaller stirrup jar to the middle left and a
beaked juglet in the middle second from right
from the region of Mycenae held perfumed oil.
Mycenaean style vessels made on Cyprus, in some
cases at Enkomi, a large urban center south of
the Kyrenia Mountains, mimic and adapt details of
the imports. For example the stirrup jar, second
from left, is actually a juglet with a hole
punched through the top for a spout.
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Bronze Age figurine case. Two vessels borrowed
from the Metropolitan Museum of Arts Cesnola
Collection (at top) provide complete views of
askoi similar to a fragment in the lower right
from Melissa. A small horse figure in the central
photo from Melissa may have been a figure placed
inside a storage vessel as a talisman to guard
its contents, a practice also known in the Aegean
world.
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One human figure from Vounari is similar in style
to several from the Metropolitan Museum of Arts
Cesnola Collection. Often placed in tombs, but
also used in domestic contexts, these figures are
usually considered to be fertility symbols.
Whether or not that is correct, the Vounari piece
is of particular interest because it comes from
an Iron Age context. It may well have been found
in a tomb in the area in antiquity and
rededicated in the Iron Age. This practice is
known from several sites, but normally the Bronze
Age objects dedicated in the Iron Age are ceramic
vessels rather than human figures.
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View from the Bronze Age room into the Iron Age
through Hellenistic room.
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Iron Age through Hellenistic room. View of a case
featuring the reuse of Melissa from the Archaic
period in the sixth century BC. Notebooks and
ceramics fill out the picture of a rectangular
building with a porch that might have been part
of a sanctuary at the site.
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Photographs of terracotta and stone figurines
from Melissa and now in the Cyprus Museum fill
out the picture of the reuse of Melissa from the
Archaic to the Hellenistic period as a cult
place, possibly dedicated to the female goddess
of Cyprus, who came to be known as Aphrodite.
Several of the mold-made figures are interesting
because they appear to have been made with
secondary molds. These molds may have been formed
using figures from sanctuaries south of the
Kyrenia Mountains, such as at Salamis and Ayios
Iakovos.
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Iron Age through Hellenistic room. View of a case
featuring the reuse of Vounari from the Archaic
period in the sixth century BC. A votive bell and
jugets in the center of the case, bowls, and
amphorae formed parts of the assemblage from the
cult space and later the platform built there.
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Photographs of stone statuettes and a statue as
well as a terracotta figurine from Vounari and
now in the Cyprus Museum fill out the picture of
the reuse of Vounari from the Archaic to the
Hellenistic period as a cult place.
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Photographs of figural sculpture from Melissa and
Vounari flank a case of pieces borrowed from the
Metropolitan Museum of Arts Cesnola Collection.
The figurines and statuettes in this case a
similar in style to several pieces from
Phlamoudhi and fill out the picture based on the
fragmentary remains from the excavations.
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Second view of the case of Cesnola terracottas.
One example from Columbia Universitys Art
Properties, a man riding a horse, is in the
foreground.
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View of the Roman through Ottoman period room
with a view back into the Iron Age and Bronze Age
rooms.
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Photographs of Roman through Medieval remains
from Phlamoudhi found in the survey and
excavation. When the Ayia Melissa church was
built is not known, but it stands near the
Melissa site and was part of a larger settlement
before the village moved to the present village
of Phlamoudhi.
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Case featuring samples of Roman, Byzantine,
Medieval, and Ottoman ceramics from the
excavations at Melissa. The notebook features the
remains of a Roman period structure found just
under the surface at Melissa.
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Case of Roman lamps from Melissa and Vounari.
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Case of Roman period lamps from Melissa and
Vounari. The red-slipped mold-made examples come
from Vounari. Particularly interesting is that
some were made in secondary molds, which were in
turn based on imported lamps. Further evidence
for local manufacture of lamps comes from
Melissa. Some of the examples on the right were
improperly fired and would not have been
appropriate for export beyond their place of
manufacture. One lamp, bottom fourth from the
right, features the lower torso of Venus.
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Souvenir postcards available to the visitor