The Archaeological Research Unit of the University of Cyprus
invites you to a hybrid public lecture (ZOOM & Amphitheatre E010),
Old Academy Campus, Kallipoleos Avenue
on Monday, November 17th 2025, at 19:45 (Athens/Nicosia Time)
by
Dr Diane Bolger, Research Fellow in Archaeology
School of History, Classics and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh, U.K.
titled:
Figurines, fragmentation and social transformation in prehistoric Cyprus
For registration, please, click here:
https://ucy.zoom.us/meeting/register/1N5wQ7adRrKaIVXdbvZK5w
Summary:
The large corpus of figurative material and human skeletal remains from the Chalcolithic period of Cyprus allows us to explore the ways in which practices of fragmentation coincided with transformations in personal and social identity, most notably gender. While research on fragmentation has been undertaken in other regions of Europe, particularly in the Balkans, it has not been investigated previously in Cyprus. In this paper the deliberate breakage of figurines recovered from excavations by the University of Edinburgh at a number of sites in the southwest of the island is juxtaposed with treatments of the human body in burial contexts. Preliminary results suggest that at settlements where intra mural burial of fully articulated skeletons was the norm, there are markedly higher proportions of deliberately fragmented figurines, often resulting in the alteration of their previous gender categories. Elsewhere, at sites within the same region, human bodies were disarticulated prior to interment in extra-mural cemeteries while a significantly higher proportion of figurines remained intact. In both cases, gendered identities were transformed through practices of fragmentation. During the first half of the 3rd millennium, the long tradition of anthropomorphic figurine production on the island came to an end, as did the diversity of gendered identities it entailed. These changes can be linked to the growth of social complexity on the island and to increasing levels of interaction between Cypriot communities and those of the surrounding mainland.
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