Phlamoudhi-Melissa 2003 Overview

Phlamoudhi-Melissa, Cyprus:
Ceramic Production, Adaptation, and Internationalism
Joanna S. Smith

At Columbia University lie the remains of Phlamoudhi-Melissa (35° 24" north, 33° 52" east), a late Middle to Late Bronze Age (ca. 1700-1200 BC) settlement site on Cyprus. The late Professor Edith Porada brought the records and finds from her excavations there to the campus in the early 1970s. The site has remained unpublished. In 2000, I began to organize for the study and publication of this excavation, the only Late Bronze Age habitation site ever excavated north of the Kyrenia mountain range. This proposal is for partial funds to support a month-long study season at Columbia University in June 2002. This study season would complete the analysis of ceramics and small finds from the site housed at Columbia. The expected date for submitting a completed manuscript for publication is 2004.

Phlamoudhi-Melissa offers an exciting new view into second millennium BC Cyprus and its significance vis-a-vis the Levant and the eastern Mediterranean as a whole because of its ceramic assemblage. The ceramics are of interest not only for their international profile and local wares, but also because of the evidence from the site for ceramic production. The mixing of wares and forms from the Levant to the Aegean at Phlamoudhi-Melissa offers new insight into the processes of experimentation, adaptation, invention, and tradition that are important for understanding the complex variety of Late Bronze Age ceramics across the Mediterranean. When published, Phlamoudhi-Melissa will be of importance to scholars of the eastern Mediterranean who are interested in the making of pottery and the significance of ceramics for issues of commodity use, chronology, and cultural interaction.