Archaeological materials research at the Cyprus Institute covers three broad fields: ancient ceramics and plaster, archaeometallurgy, and ancient glass. Additional work is done on stones and pigments, both natural and artificial. We combine externally-funded specific projects and long-term in-house projects building on the expertise of our researchers, and our collaborators in Cyprus and beyond. Important approaches include accurate and meaningful characterization of materials, as well as reverse engineering to reconstruct the ways they were made, and the application of the chaîne opératoire concept to situate these past activities into their wider context of choices, decisions, innovations and societal norms.
See projects:
Byzantine and Ottoman ceramic workshops
Nigerian glass making in the early 2nd millennium CE