Researches in Cypriote History and Archaeology

'Researches in Cypriote History and Archaeology' collects the Proceedings of an international meeting held in Florence in April 2009. The title and the contributions disclose how the original planning of a workshop in Florence evolved in time. A report of the University of Florence research activity in the Kouris river valley has been initially planned; as soon as the idea of the meeting was advertised, it was found appropriate to enlarge the horizon and to include in the discussion further issues on Cypriote History, Archaeology and Philology. It will, thus, be seen that starting from the Kouris Valley a kind of small overview on Bronze and Iron Age Cyprus has been put together. A wide variety of themes and interests raised up during the meeting in Florence, as well as a positive esprit de collaboration which allowed to share new results of interesting researches in progress, open further possibilities of exchanges and lead us to hope for a new meeting dedicated to Cypriote History and Archaeology, to be planned in Tuscany in a next future.

Luca Bombardieri is PhD Lecturer in Mediterranean Archaeology at the University of Florence. Main research interests include early technology and relation patterns between Near East and Eastern Mediterranean during the III-I Millennium B.C., focusing on Bronze Age Cyprus. Involved in Research Projects devoted to Aegean and Cypriote Museum Collections (DBAS Project, (MUS.INT Project, co-editor of 'Le Collezioni Egee del Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Firenze'), he collaborated to the organization of several archaeological exhibitions both in Italy ('Il Simposio egeo e cipriota del Museo Nazionale di Firenze; Tell Barri: 5000 anni di storia') and abroad ('Tell Barri e l'attività di Paolo Emilio Pecorella' – Damascus, Syria). Fieldwork experiences in Syria (Tell Barri, Hassake) and Cyprus, where he headed a C.N.R. Research Project (Programma Promozione Ricerca 2005 – Cipro) and has been field director of the Kouris Valley Survey Project (Cyprus). Currently he is leading the excavations of the EC-MC site of Erimi-'Laonin tou Porakou' (Limassol, Cyprus).

Anna Margherita Jasink, Professor of Aegean Civilisations at the University of Florence, is interested in historical and philological problems of Aegean and Near Eastern world. Of particular relevance among her works are monographs on 'regional' histories like 'Cilicia' (Firenze 1990), 'Gli stati neo-ittiti' (Pavia 1995). Her more recent work has been dedicated to 'Cretan Hieroglyphic Seals' (Pisa-Roma 2009). She is co-editor of a volume on 'Le Collezioni Egee del Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Firenze' (Firenze 2009), published by the Firenze University Press. Presently she is the scientific director of an archaeological research project on the Kouris river valley in Cyprus. She is also responsible of an on-line portal for databases on Aegean civilisations (DBAS: http://dbas.sciant.unifi.it).