Ancient and Preindustrial Ceramics from Cyprus

This book provides a comprehensive, up-to-date examination of ceramic materials from ancient and pre-industrial Cyprus, integrating scientific approaches and research advances across disciplines such as archaeology, materials science, art history, and ethnography.

While existing research has often concentrated on individual wares, styles, sites, or periods, this volume brings together a wide range of case studies that showcase the richness and diversity of Cypriot ceramic traditions, highlighting how localised investigations can inform broader discussion of technological practice, social meaning, and cultural interactions across time and space. Employing interdisciplinary and diachronic perspectives, it traces transformations in ceramic traditions of the island, from their earliest developments to their persistence into the modern era. It highlights not only shifts in production techniques and technological practices, but also the wider social meanings attached to pottery as an everyday medium and as a marker of identity, exchange, and interaction. The contributions combine synthetic overviews with detailed case studies that demonstrate innovative methodological frameworks and cutting-edge analytical techniques, while also engaging with broader interpretative and theoretical paradigms. Organised into four thematic sections – Theoretical and Methodological Advances; Bronze Age to Geometric Periods; Archaic to Roman Periods; Late Antiquity to Modern Periods – the book covers an exceptional chronological span. Topics explored include craft specialisation and technological innovations, resource exploitation and manufacturing processes, production strategies and consumption patterns, as well as the role of ceramics in connectivity networks, long-distance trade, and socio-cultural interactions both within and beyond Cyprus.

Addressing current challenges and limitations in Cypriot ceramic studies and proposing new avenues for future research, this book offers a multidisciplinary, comprehensive, and diachronic synthesis of the latest scholarship on Cypriot ceramics within its broader cultural context and is therefore a crucial resource for scholars and students alike

Sergios Menelaou is a Postdoctoral Researcher (Williams Fellow in Ceramic Petrology) at the Fitch Laboratory, British School at Athens, and a Special Scientist at the University of Cyprus. He specialises in Aegean and Cypriot prehistoric pottery, with a focus on island connectivity and ceramic technologies. Holding degrees from the University of Cyprus and the University of Sheffield, his research combines stylistic and scientific approaches across sites spanning the Neolithic to the Ottoman period.

Edyta Marzec is Assistant Professor at the University of Warsaw and Associate Researcher at the N.C.S.R. “Demokritos”. She holds degrees from the University of Sheffield and Jagiellonian University and was previously a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Fitch Laboratory, British School at Athens. Her research focuses on Eastern Mediterranean archaeology in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, with particular emphasis on ceramic analysis.