Time for a change

I started this blog at the very beginning of my exploration of ancient Cypriot collections in Leeds. That research has now come to a conclusion, with the completion of my doctoral dissertation Ancient Cyprus in Leeds: Objects, networks and museums from 1870 to 1947 – a big moment for me! While this blog has always ranged beyond Leeds – as far as Leiden and Lemba, in fact – it seems like a good moment to mark the change as I broaden my research beyond Leeds to the history of Cypriot archaeology, collection and display across the UK.

This blog will remain exactly where it is, but in future I’ll be posting at ancientcyprusuk.wordpress.com, where you can expect much the same blend of work in progress, exhibitions and travel – I already have my next research visit to Cyprus lined up for April, all being well. Hope to see you on the new blog!

Cypro-Archaic figurine setting out on a journey
© Allard Pierson Museum

On the trail of a censer

One of the most intriguing objects in the North Lanarkshire Council Museums collection of antiquities is this two-part censer. Designed to hold sweet-smelling incense, it’s cleverly made with the lid permanently attached to the handle, so that the two can’t become separated. It’s evidently relatively modern, not ancient, and doesn’t appear to have ever been used – there are no smoke marks on the interior. I hadn’t seen anything just like this before, and couldn’t immediately find a close parallel. But, as is often the case, once I started looking, they began to crop up everywhere!

Terracotta censer  
© North Lanarkshire Council Museums

Terracotta censer  
© North Lanarkshire Council Museums

The base part is of a common Mediterranean design which can readily be spotted out and about, like this one outside a shop in Nicosia.

Terracotta incense burner, Nicosia

An earlier but very similar version of the same thing appears in the Leventis Municipal Museum, dated to the late 19th – early 20th century

Terracotta censer  
© Leventis Municipal Museum, Nicosia

The joined-up design seems less common, though I did find one illustrated in Magda Ohnefalsch-Richter’s 1913 work Griechische sitten und gebräuche auf Cypern (= Greek customs and mores in Cyprus). She talks about wafting smoke to banish the evil eye, and says that censers are everyday household appliances, ‘just like the frying pan’. She includes an illustration of a two-part censer – evidently quite tricky to draw – alongside some beautiful koukoumares, anthropomorphic vessels from Varosha.

Everyday clay vessels. Magda Ohnefalsch-Richter, Griechische sitten und gebräuche auf Cypern, p.251

Purely by chance, I also came across another censer in a write-up in The Queen of Cyprus’ participation in the 1886 Indian and Colonial Exhibition in London, a precursor to the 1924-25 British Empire Exhibition which is the current focus of my research. The 1886 display included a wide range of crafts, especially pottery, lace and embroidery. The magazine account mentions the ‘quaint, almost archaic-looking peasant pottery’, including ‘a censer… a novelty of its kind, particularly in the attachment of the handle to the lid.’ This looks remarkable similar to the North Lanarkshire example.

Illustration of a Cypriot censer, from Queen magazine, 2 October 1886

Establishing the form and date of objects in this collection is important in trying to trace its origins beyond its first known collector, Dr Hunter Selkirk. One likely source is Esmé Scott-Stevenson, who spent time in Cyprus and lived for a while at Braidwood House, just under a mile from Hunter Selkirk’s ‘Daleville’ residence.

Braidwood House and Daleville House in Lanarkshire

Esmé is known to have been interested in modern as well as ancient ceramics, and so the presence of this decorative, unused, probably late 19th century censer among a group of Cypriot antiquities therefore strengthens the case for her links to this collection – as well as being a great object to share with museum visitors.

Embodied encounters in museums and archives

I had a fantastic time in Coatbridge at Summerlee Museum, looking at the collections of antiquities and also visiting the museum’s archives at the North Lanarkshire Heritage Centre. There are some really interesting objects, in addition to the ones I’ve already highlighted, and some clues as to provenance in successive approaches to labelling, and in the composition of the ancient Cypriot collection. There are also several more pages to the ‘vernal equinox’ interpretation of the White Painted jug – more on that another time!

Arriving at Summerlee Museum

It got me thinking about the research I do, and to what extent it depends on physical access to objects and archives. This is a topic which has come into sharp relief over the last couple of years, when libraries and museums had to reduce their access in ways we couldn’t previously have imagined. Archivists, in particular, have gone to extraordinary lengths to overcome these challenges. This has mainly involved translating paper-based systems into online ones – not just the documents themselves, but also the regimes of authorisation usually required for access; scanning a form, uploading it, emailing it, having me receive it, download it, complete it by hand, scan it again, and email it back. Archives have also been digitised on my request, and one heroic librarian took dozens of mobile phone photos of reports as working copies for me. When I look back on this very strange time, one of the things I will remember most is the way archivists rose to the challenge.

Museum objects, though, are a different matter. Since nothing can replace the encounter between researcher and object, the same digital approaches don’t really apply. Online databases with photographs – and better yet, 3D scans – go a long way to fill the gap, but we are far from having this level of information for all collections. I was reminded of this while filling in object record sheets in Lanark – so many details require direct physical observation, and quite often you don’t know what’s interesting about the object until you see it. This is also true to some extent of archives, of course. I’ve written before about Miss F. L. Stott, on whose behalf antiquities were donated to the Leeds collection, and the lengths she went to in trying to secure the credit for her friend Charles Hoelen. There is a material trace of this approach of hers in the archives of the V&A, to which she donated two glass bottles on Hoelen’s behalf after his death; her name has begun to be written on the gift file, then is scratched through and replaced with his. I can almost see her sharply correcting the clerk.

Detail of gift form, V&A Archives

Scholars increasingly emphasise that the meanings of the archive are less inherent than continually created through the encounter of researcher and documents, and that any interpretation inevitably involves ordering, selecting and shaping archival material. This is especially true when dealing with fragmentary records, when there is a great temptation to fill in unrecoverable details (as I have done above). The mediated archival encounter – based on records selected from finding lists, and accessed in digital form – necessarily leads to a less immediate, more partial view of the subject.

All this to say – I’m especially pleased that travel is becoming possible again, along with physical access to museums and archives. Not least because I’ve been able to come to Cyprus to stay at CAARI for a fortnight, in pursuit of several projects, in particular the edited volume arising from the online workshops on Empire and excavation: critical perspectives on archaeology in British-period Cyprus, 1878-1960 and my chapter on Cyprus at the British Empire Exhibition, along with further work on objects from Lanark and Leeds. Tomorrow I have another in-person archival encounter at the Cyprus State Archives, who have again been fantastic in providing scans; but I’m greatly looking forward to some systematic reading, and hopefully some serendipitous encounters.

Exploring the collection: White Painted jug

Next week I’ll be heading to Coatbridge to see the North Lanarkshire Council Museums ancient Cypriot collection in person, and I really can’t wait. In the meantime, here’s another preview of an object from the collection – this time, a White Painted jug or oenochoe.

White Painted jug © North Lanarkshire Council Museums

Jugs such as this date from the late Cypro-Geometric – early Cypro-Archaic periods, maybe around 900-700 BC. I’ve always liked them because of their expressive decoration, including the ‘eyes’ below the rim, which turns them halfway into birds. This one also has some painted decoration on the shoulder opposite the handle. Sometimes they have a painted stripe down the handle which turns into a curly ‘tail’, though this one doesn’t. There are a couple in the Leeds Museums collection, similar in shape and decoration.

White Painted jug © North Lanarkshire Council Museums

What’s even more special about this jug is an accompanying handwritten note in the museum’s archives – either about this jug, or one extremely similar. This kind of document is a provenance researcher’s dream, as it gives all kinds of fascinating clues about the jug’s origins and previous owners, but also how they obtained it and what they thought about it. As well as a pretty accurate sketch of the jug’s shape and decoration – suggesting that the writer was familiar with archaeological artefacts – it includes some intriguing information about the jug’s provenance.

Note from archives © North Lanarkshire Council Museums

As far as I can make out, the first section reads: ‘Fd [?found] at Famagasti Cyprus & bt [?bought] there as a duplicate by Mr Robertson of Airdrie & shown to me June 1923’. Famagasti is clearly Famagusta, on the east coast of Cyprus. The reference to a ‘duplicate’ is interesting; during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, museums (and sometimes collectors) aimed at achieving representative, typological collections with a single example of each type of object. Those which were closely similar to ones already in their collection were designated as ‘duplicates’ and unwanted, so they could be freely exchanged or sold. This ‘duplicate’ status may have made it easier for the jug to be exported from the country.

Then the note says: ‘Has dark painted work on it […] 3 swastika representing … square + circle 24 days = 21 March Equinox.’ This is some very creative reading of the decoration! I’m not sure I quite follow the reasoning of how three sets of 24 days bring us to 21st March, which is the spring or vernal equinox, but it’s an intriguing idea that the decoration could signify a particular date, which in turn might have meaning for the function or significance of the jug. I’m also not convinced that the shapes are swastika – a symbol often used on ancient ceramics, with no particular signification – they just look like crosses to me. I haven’t seen this symbolic reading of this kind of decoration before, and it’s quite revealing of how this jug was being interpreted by the writer of the note.

So: who was Mr Robertson of Airdrie, and who wrote the note? Does ‘there’ mean that Robertson acquired it at Famagusta, or just in Cyprus? What happened in June 1923; was this when the jug was donated to the museum? As ever, there are more questions than answers, and I’m looking forward to finding out more.

Exploring the collection: Serapis

As part of my project on the ancient Cypriot collection belonging to North Lanarkshire Council Museums, I’ll be visiting Summerlee Museum later in September to see the objects in person, and start exploring the archives. I can’t wait! In the meantime, I’ve been able to make a start on some initial research based on photographs of some of the objects, including a rather intriguing lamp.

Lamp with moulded decoration © North Lanarkshire Council Museums

It’s a Roman oil lamp made of terracotta, with a ring handle and moulded decoration including a decorative border on the shoulder and around the discus which contains the central image. This shows a bearded figure in left profile, robed and with a headdress, with a staff appearing behind his left shoulder. There is a filling-hole just below, neatly placed so as not to detract from the image.

Due to the ubiquitous need for lighting, lamps from the ancient Mediterranean survive in large numbers, and are a great source of evidence for ancient lives. Not all of them are decorated by any means, but those which are provide rich evidence of customs, beliefs, and aesthetic preferences. Fortunately there are many scholarly studies of ancient lamps, which make it possible to put individual, unprovenanced examples such as this one into some kind of context.

Thanks to these, the lamp can be dated to the late 2nd – early 3rd century A.D., and the individual depicted can be identified as Serapis, a deity whose cult was promoted by the Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt from the 3rd century B.C. and who was worshipped widely throughout the Roman empire. He is a syncretic deity, combining aspects of many other Greek and Egyptian gods and is particularly associated with agricultural fertility, healing, and life after death. On this lamp he is wearing either a kalathos, a basket-shaped headdress associated with fertility and abundance, or a modius, a shorter cylindrical headdress with a similar range of connotations – more likely the latter. The object over his shoulder is his sceptre. As can be seen from this statue from the World Museum, Liverpool, these attributes – the robes, the flowing locks, the headdress, the sceptre – are all commonly associated with Serapis.

Statue of Serapis with Cerberus © World Museum Liverpool

I can’t be sure from the photograph, but I think what looks like a handle at the top of the sceptre may perhaps be a crescent moon, often associated with Serapis, as on this intaglio from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. I look forward to having a closer look!

Carnelian intaglio showing bust of Serapis and a griffin, with crescent moon and star/sun.
© Museum of Fine Arts, Boston www.mfa.org

One interesting question about this lamp is its likely place of origin – both its place of manufacture and its findspot. It’s highly possible that the collection isn’t exclusively from Cyprus, but also includes objects from elsewhere in the ancient Mediterranean. Lamps like this one but with better provenience are known to come from workshops in North Africa; this doesn’t rule out a Cypriot find-spot, but suggests it might not be of Cypriot manufacture. Serapis was certainly worshipped in Cyprus, as witnessed by epigraphic evidence and by objects such as a Roman statue of Serapis with Cerberus from Salamis (in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge), recognisable by the iconography. However, lamps from Cyprus featuring Serapis don’t appear to be very common.

Statue of Serapis and Cerberus from Salamis, Cyprus (GR.1.1891)
© Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

This fascinating lamp is a great introduction to the collection, and I’m looking forward to exploring further!

Ancient Cyprus in North Lanarkshire

There’s nothing quite like getting to grips with a new (to me) ancient Cypriot collection – the objects themselves, their institutional setting, and their histories, as revealed or concealed by the archives. Thanks to a generous grant from the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, over the next few months I’ll be exploring the collection of Cypriot antiquities belonging to North Lanarkshire Council Museums, located across several sites in North Lanarkshire.

I first came across this collection when I was researching my paper on Esmé and Andrew Scott-Stevenson and their engagement with Cyprus and its antiquities at the beginning of the British administration in 1878. The Scott-Stevenson family home was at Braidwood in Lanarkshire, and Andrew and Esmé spent some time here in the 1880s. Perhaps, as a result, some of their Cypriot antiquities changed hands and joined the collections of local antiquarians – given Esmé’s track record, probably for a price rather than as a gift. However, this is only one possible source for the collection which exists today. I’ll be attempting to join the dots and trace the collection’s history, while also working on classifying and interpreting the individual objects. This project is funded through the Gunning Jubilee Gift, established by Dr Robert Halliday Gunning to commemorate Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in 1887; it seems appropriate that it’s focused on a collection brought together around that same time.

I’m delighted to have the opportunity to work with this collection, one of many across the UK forming part of the diaspora of Cypriot antiquities which deserves more attention to make connections with museum audiences and round out the history of Cypriot archaeology, collecting and display. I’ll be posting here throughout the project, so look out for some fantastic objects and hopefully some intriguing history as well.

The last ancient Cypriot pot

Like so many others, I’m excited to get back to visiting museums and galleries, travelling by train, going to other cities, and generally picking up some of the activities that have been inaccessible for many months now. I took a welcome step in this direction yesterday with my first visit to the Leeds Museums Discovery Centre for over a year. I had no idea when I visited in February 2020 that it would be the last time until my thesis was nearly finished, so I had a lot of ground to make up. I’m really grateful to Kat, the curator of archaeology, for getting me in at the first opportunity!

It was fantastic to be back in the research room, and to have the chance to get hands on with objects again. I had previously come across records for a small group of unidentified ceramics, many of them associated with John Holmes, one of the main collectors behind the ancient Cypriot collection, so I was keen to take a look at them. Most of them looked Romano-British, in my decidedly non-expert opinion, including one labelled ‘Anglo-Roman, Colchester’, for which we can probably take Holmes’ word. However, one object, described as a ‘small red cup with flat handle’, definitely rang a few bells.

It’s a handmade Late Bronze Age Base Ring tankard, with a biconical body, a wide neck with a flat rim, a delicate ring base and a strap handle. The fabric has that distinctive metallic Base Ring ‘ting’, and it’s fired with a patchy red-brown slip.

Base Ring tankard © Leeds Museums and Galleries

Rather endearingly, the applied rings of decoration below the rim are a bit slapdash at the ends near the handle, and the whole thing is somewhat wonky.

Not entirely symmetrical. © Leeds Museums and Galleries

There’s a break across the width of the handle at the join to the rim, and it seems quite likely that there would have been a thumb grip there, which has now been lost. It can be compared to a similar tankard in the British Museum’s collection.

Base Ring tankard in the British Museum (BM 1868,0905.35) © The British Museum

It’s marked with ‘Hs’ on the base, which is John Holmes’ mark, so it can be securely identified as part of his collection. It may originally have come from T.B. Sandwith‘s collection, and perhaps from the region around Dali, where Sandwith collected and where the British Museum’s tankard is from, but this can only be speculative.

Holmes’ mark. © Leeds Museums and Galleries

One thing that’s become clear while working on my thesis is how fluid the boundaries of a collection such as this are, where there is very little archaeological provenience, and the provenance history is complex with many gaps in the documentation. Some collections come straight from an archaeological dig to a museum, and so their identities are never in doubt, but the identification of a historic collection such as this inevitably involves quite a lot of subjective judgment. This relates both to the objects themselves – how plausible is it that they were made or found on Cyprus? – and their provenance or collection history – how confidently can we trace them back to Cyprus? I’ve called this ‘the last ancient Cypriot pot’ because it’s the last addition to my thesis – I do most sincerely hope – and marks the point at which I’m drawing a boundary around the ancient Cypriot collection for now. But I am quite sure that my assessment of which objects are in and out of the collection will be challenged and modified in the future, not least by me. The end of the thesis is not the end of the story!

More critical perspectives on archaeology in British-period Cyprus

Things have been a bit quiet here lately; I’ve been working very hard to get my thesis ready for submission (alongside home schooling), and there have been no visits to archives, no museums, no trips to conferences… One good thing has been all the excellent online activities, from training on Sketchfab via Zoom, to virtual tours of the Cypriot collections at the Ashmolean Museum, Fitzwilliam Museum and British Museum as part of the Cyprus High Commission’s ‘Cyprus@60‘ festival, to online conferences.

The Cyprus High Commission’s Cyprus@60 online festival

The first stage of our very own online conference, ‘Empire and Excavation: Critical perspectives on archaeology in British-period Cyprus, 1878-1960’ took place last November – the programme and abstracts are here, and several of the presentations were recorded and are accessible via CAARI’s YouTube channel. It was fantastic to have two days of papers and discussions focusing on the history of Cypriot archaeology, and how archival research can add new perspectives and help us recover overlooked contributions and seldom-heard voices.

The next event is taking place on 29th-30th January (programme and abstracts here and registration here, all welcome!). This time we have 15 papers (spread out over the two days to avoid Zoom fatigue), broadly grouped under ‘Narratives’ and ‘Collections and Interpretation’, including one from me following antiquities from Cyprus to the British Empire Exhibition in 1924-25, and then onwards to Leeds.

Cigarette card showing the Cyprus/Palestine pavilion at the British Empire Exhibition 1924

One interesting thing about the British Empire Exhibition was the way the organisers played with scale, to emphasise both the vastness of the Empire, and the completeness of its representation in miniature form in Wembley, which was at the same time very big – a huge exhibition – and very small – a microcosm of the Empire. The exhibits in the Palace of Arts centred the Royal family in this presentation by including a Royal residence in the form of the Queen’s Dolls’ House, showcasing British design and manufacture as well as imports from across the world. Within this was contained a miniature atlas, with a miniature map of the Empire.

Miniature atlas from the Queen’s Dolls’ House, British Empire Exhibition. Photo (c) Bryars & Bryars (www.bryarsandbryars.co.uk)

These recursive, nested miniature representations aim to emphasise Britain’s rule over the Empire; an Empire which could be reduced to representations of its constituent parts, and contained within a purpose-built site in London, could be ordered and controlled, though the shallowness and partiality of the representations demonstrate just how illusory this control was. I’ll be taking a critical look at the part antiquities played in the representation of Cyprus at the Exhibition, how they came to the Leeds Museum, and how they were interpreted and used in that setting. Virtual conferences can’t really compete with the real thing, but will keep me going until we’re able to meet up again!

What’s new

I should have been in Cyprus this week, staying at the Cyprus American Archaeological Research Unit, as part of my Fellowship trips this year. I had lots of archives and museum visits planned, but, like so many things in 2020, it was not to be. I’m really hoping it will be possible next year, it feels like far too long since I’ve been to Cyprus, and I’m eager to explore some new directions in my research.

In the meantime, there are other exciting things on the horizon! Together with Thomas Kiely at the British Museum and Lindy Crewe at CAARI, I’ve been organising a conference titled ‘Empire and excavation: critical perspectives on archaeology in British-period Cyprus, 1878-1960’. The original plan was for this to take place in Nicosia, but for now it’s being taken forward through a series of online events. The first is taking place via Zoom on 6-7 November: the programme is here and registration is here. Further online events will follow early next year.

I’m also really pleased that a couple of papers I’ve been working on for some time have now been published – both in the space of a week! A joint article with Dr Sally Waite of Newcastle University on the Kent collection is in the Journal of the History of Collections: ‘Re-collecting Cypriot antiquity: The Kent collection in Harrogate’. We’ve been very lucky to have the opportunity to work on the Kent collection, which has been discussed from time to time on this blog, and to explore its history.

A group of ancient Cypriot objects from the Kent Collection, Harrogate © Harrogate Museums and Arts, Harrogate Borough Council

The other is in the Bulletin of the History of Archaeology, titled ‘The Archaeological Activities of the Scott-Stevensons in Cyprus, 1878–1883’. It’s about Andrew and Esmé Scott-Stevenson, their explorations in Cyprus and their collections of antiquities, some of which I’ve traced to UK collections. It’s been so much fun exploring this episode in the entangled history of Cypriot archaeology.

As always, please do get in touch if you’d like to share ideas or hear more about my work – I love making contact with blog readers.

Labels in Liverpool: the Garstang Museum

Thanks to a tip-off from the Alexander Malios Research Institute, I recently came across this Black on Red flask from the Garstang Museum in Liverpool, which is featured on the Museum’s Sketchfab site.

Garstang Museum Black on Red flask

Sketchfab is a great way of making objects accessible – even more so, in some ways, than having them on display (many’s the time I’ve awkwardly crouched to see the bases of objects through glass shelves).

Unsuccessful photo of object labels at the Manchester Museum

I’d really like to try Sketchfab for the University of Leeds ancient Cypriot collection, it would be a brilliant project to do with undergraduates, though the prospects look rather remote at the moment. One of its major advantages is that you can look at the object from all angles – including a good look at this label on the base of the flask. It’s always exciting to find a label on an ancient Cypriot object, as a clue to its travels, and this one looks very familiar.

Label on base of Black and Red flask, from the Garstang Museum

It identifies this flask as having been on display in the 1875 Yorkshire Exhibition of Arts and Manufactures in Leeds, alongside other objects from Cyprus put up for sale by Thomas Backhouse Sandwith, HM Consul on Cyprus from 1865 to 1870, in order to raise money to relieve famine on the island.  It formed part of a large display of Cypriot antiquities, including what must have been quite an extensive range of Black on Red ware.  In the Official Catalogue to the Exhibition, these were described, with more enthusiasm than precision, as:

‘…a series of vessels and objects not readily classified. They are generally water bottles, scent, oil, or colour vessels, of a fine, red smooth body and slightly varnished, with ornaments of rings and circles, both horizontal and vertical, in black. The workmanship of this class of pottery exhibits a high skill, and the variety of circling is most profuse and effective.’

Many people bought Sandwith’s objects from the 1875 Exhibition – serious and casual collectors, those who wanted to know more about the ancient past, and those who simply admired the appearance of the objects. Parts of the collection were loaned or given to museums in York, Halifax and Sheffield when the Exhibition closed, and many objects were later dispersed in sales. Before the Exhibition took place, some of Sandwith’s objects were sold at a dealer’s shop in Liverpool  in 1870, and some of these were bought for the Liverpool Free Public Museum. A Mr G. Sinclair Robertson seems to have bought at least one ancient Cypriot vessel directly from Sandwith’s brother in 1870, and probably donated it to the Liverpool Museum in 1876. But this flask had a different route, which ended not at the Liverpool Museum, but at the Garstang Museum, then known as the Liverpool Institute of Archaeology, a library and museum founded by John Garstang in 1904 as a resource for archaeology at the University of Liverpool. Garstang (1876-1956) was an archaeologist who excavated in Egypt and the Sudan, Anatolia and Palestine. He was skilled at fundraising for excavations and other projects, and managed to muster private support for his new Institute.

Cypriot pottery was sent to the Institute from the government of Cyprus in 1904, and from the Cyprus Museum in 1922, but this flask wouldn’t have been part of either of these donations, having been in the country since at least 1875. It might have formed part of the founding collections, perhaps part of a larger donation, or might have come to the Institute at a later date. Research in the Museum’s archives – sadly not possible under present circumstances – could perhaps shed some light on this; my guess would be that it was donated from a miscellaneous collection of antiquities that had outlived the enthusiasm of its original purchaser. The disparate collections put together in the 19th century often caused difficulties for their inheritors, and transferring them to a public institution was a common solution, forming the basis of many of the public collections that survive today.

This flask is no. 117 in Mee and Steel’s 1998 catalogue of the collection, which gives the provenance as ‘unknown’, and doesn’t mention the Yorkshire Exhibition. We don’t know anything for sure about the archaeological provenance of the flask (though we could speculate on the basis of the evidence, albeit patchy, for Sandwith’s explorations and collecting in Cyprus), but this record reflects changing approaches to the history of Cypriot archaeology, and the relatively recent growth of interest in the history of collections. Labels are a gift to the researcher, and I hope that as more collections become digitised – both their information, and the objects themselves – they’ll become easier to discover.