*NEW EPISODE!* 53. Fragments of Faience, Glints of Gold: Cyprus and Egypt in Contact with Louise Steel

Diving right into it, I realize in my experience in recording a number of episodes that one of the ongoing challenges in Cypriot archaeology, it seems to be addressing the legacy of colonial interpretations.

So how does this post-colonial theory help us reevaluate Cyprus' role and significance within the broader field of archaeology?

I think one of the important things is to bear in mind that Cypriot archaeology was born out of colonial excavation activity, which is quite uncomfortable to look back on as a British archaeologist.

But in the 19th and certainly up to the mid-20th century, it was foreign archaeologists who were excavating, who were creating the narrative, and they were doing it through their own perceptions of what Cyprus was in relation to the rest of the East Mediterranean, and it didn't quite fit a Hellenic ideal, and it didn't quite fit the Near Eastern ideal.

So it's an interesting thing, and I think a post-colonial narrative, I think it's taking account of the fact that Cyprus is different to the surrounding regions and that, you know, there are other narratives which don't have to fit in with the narratives of, you know, 20th century archaeology.

So how has Cypriot archaeology shifted in the past decades then? Like, how can we sort of qualify this?

Okay, I think there's been a real recognition that Cypriot archaeology is Cypriot archaeology.

Certainly when I started as an undergraduate, so many years ago, people studied the Near East, the Levant or the Aegean and Cyprus is seen as sort of an extension of those.

Whereas I think there's a real strength in Cypriot archaeology, which has really developed over the last 40 years or so.

and a real understanding of how unique the, sorry, how unique the culture of ancient Cyprus was.

So I think that's one of the key things.

And I think also a multiplicity of voices sort of coming in, you know, there was sort of a, just a sort of a single narrative of what Cyprus was and now sort of people are really engaging in lots of different aspects of the Cypriot past.

And one of the things I'm really happy to see over the last 20 years is an increasing sort of engagement with theoretical archaeology and rather than just creating typologies and writing metanarratives about things like state formation and trade and exchange and really focusing in on the daily life of Cypriots and how they lived experience and how they worked with material culture and how they created their social spaces their domestic places and places of worship.

And I think that's really changed, it's really put people into the Cypriot past, which is lovely to see.

It's a very, very different archaeology to the one I learnt as an undergraduate.

Right.

And one other thing I noticed is just also the surprising amount of local agency that see Cypriot history as independent actors.

Oh, absolutely.

I think, you know, again, this sort of, there was this sort of sense of Cypriots learned things from the surrounding cultures, that their innovations were coming from Anatolia, from Mycenaean Greece, and that Cyprus was just sitting there waiting for these things to happen.

Whereas I think there's a far more dynamic response to that and this sort of recognition that Cyprus that there might be foreign influences, but how people respond to those is very much in relationship to their own agency, their own needs, what they want to do.

And there's a sort of a very much personal choice in a lot of the adaptations that are made throughout Cypriot prehistory.

I see that a lot in the late Bronze Age.

You see things coming in from the Near East or from the Aegean, but they're reinvented, they're renegotiated in a Cypriot context and they take the bits that they want and they rework them and they make them thoroughly Cypriot.

So you use the third space as a lens or reflection of this post-colonial thought.