In Cyprus, door knobs mean nothing. I have yet to use a door knob for the entry of a domicile that had a mechanical function. It is just something to pull or push the door with. All doors with the purpose of securing a room are operated with a key, and the key is what works the latch to unsecure the door. I once broke a key off accidently in a lock tumbler inside a door knob, so I get anxiety every time I have to use the torque of a key to get inside the various apartments I’ve stayed at in Larnaca. This also makes it really easy to lock yourself out if you don’t have a routine in place when you enter and exit an apartment. I’ll tell you a secret: we have one key for four people in this apartment, so the door mat outside the front door is the communal hiding spot so no one will ever be trapped outside. But I have a hard time imagining Cypriots being the kind of people to enter your home without permission and with ill-intent.

There is definitely more history from me to look into on this next subject, but the general understanding I have about water heating in Cyprus is this: Hot water tanks are stored on the roofs of buildings, not on the inside. In the United States, we generally insulate our water heaters inside the homes as it is efficient at keeping temperatures high. But here in Cyprus, the roofs are generally warm to hot most of the year, so polyurethane tanks are used to store hot water on roof tops with solar panels to power the heating process. One of the isolation apartments I stayed in had a digital temperature gauge on the wall that took me awhile to understand why it usually read anywhere from 65 to 73 degrees Celsius. It was the water heater temp, and it dropped during the night. A lot of older buildings have a switch you need to hit to turn on the hot water to the bathroom where your shower and sink are. They do not always have hot water in kitchen sinks, because you have a stovetop or appliance to help you out if you need small batches of heated fluids. With the near constant sunshine during the daylight hours of Cyprus, hot water can easily be summoned to the pipes this way. No where else in the world that I have travelled does it this way, but I imagine it is not entirely uncommon in the Mediterranean.

Further discussion on the topic of water: it is cheap here. For as much as I consider Cyprus pretty arid, they seemed to have little water concerns currently. While reading into the water heating tanks on the roof, I read anecdotes by a 20 year ex-pat in Cyprus who described a period of time where water was only piped a few days a week, so cold water storage tanks became common in homes for the days the water did not run. Part of this was several years of drought and the other part was no alternatives for fresh water. But this storyteller said after a few good ‘wet years’ and the creation of desalination plants along the coast (there is one just east of the Larnaca airport) the water problems seemed to be long forgotten. I can see off in the inland horizons the use of wind turbines and I wonder to myself if the islands renewable energy resources are enough to power the desalination process for fresh water. If it is enough, the island has near limitless fresh water potential. But if the renewables are not enough, then one would assume the cost of bottle water would have skyrocketed with the massively inflated hydrocarbon fuel costs in the year of 2022… which it hasn’t.

I just wish there were not so many plastic bottles being used here. (Seriously, 1.5 liters of delicious, refreshing water can run you like 75 cents, so water bottles are so much easier than refilling from the tap constantly as you consume huge amounts throughout the hot days). I really hope they have one hell of a separation and recycling program on the island for plastics. My inner environmentalist might never forgive me for my time here in Larnaca otherwise.

-Adam E

The very first full day of excavation work was hot, sweaty, and tiring. I was up for the challenge well before I arrived, but on that first day, as the hours under the sun trickled on, the others and myself noticed how sluggish and seemly unwell I was. It only kept getting worse as the work day came to a close. I jumped on the first transport back to our accommodations, figuring that I was just dehydrated, lacking in sleep from the night before (4:00 am wake ups are brutal), and needed some calories in my stomach. After some time passed as I laid in bed, I noticed I was not cooling off, I was starting to have cramps in my back, and the pit in my stomach was not subsiding. Then the vomiting began. I have medical experience and after thinking through everything related to signs of heat exhaustion and dehydration, I finally bit the bullet and pulled out a COVID-19 rapid test.

I managed to go through the entire pandemic without catching it once, even working in a COVID ICU in New York City during the height of the first wave. But I had to catch it on my first week of real archeology work. I was crushed. Thankfully, no one else ever tested positive or showed symptoms despite the proximity they spent with me in vehicles, apartments, elevators, and dining. Those vaccinations are pretty effective at shielding, not just reducing severity.

I had to isolate for the rest of the day in the room I was already in, forcing my bunkmate to live on the couch in the living room for the night. My professors arranged to have my move to a private studio apartment for several days, which was quite the chore to locate while masked up in 95 degree humid heat, lugging 45lbs worth of backpacks, coughing my lungs out, and feeling like a truck ran over me. My isolation was extended for precautionary reasons, but I had to switch apartments two more times, each one thankfully nicer than the last one. I had the chance to see the standards for hostel stays in Larnaca over this period of time, which made me realize how uniquely a lot of the refurbished architecture practices in Cyprus are accomplished. I will definitely follow this up with a blog post about those idiosyncrasies.

Several of the other students took pity on me and made sure to drop food and fluids off for me. They even kept in contact with me over Whatsapp which honestly really helped me get through the whole thing without losing my mind. That is the longest I’ve ever spent just trapped in a room. I’d never survive prison with my sanity intact. Thanks Tristan and some of the Reed College kids for making sure I didn’t feel forgotten. They even sent me a photo from when they went to visit my friend Petros and called me so I could talk to him on the phone. I totally didn’t have tears in my eyes from that, it was my sinuses burning up…

You’ve got to be flexible with the demands of a field school like this, especially so in a world that has COVID still rearing it ugly head. I missed out on some precious dig time, but that it just how the cookie crumbles sometimes. I hope, dear reader, if you join the 2023 PKAP excavation, you are living in a world where the daily concern and threat of contagious viruses is behind us. No COVID, no monkeypox, no <insert whatever is next>.

Take care of yourselves and get vaccinated.

-Adam E.

The very first group trip we took was a very short one around Larnaca, anchored around Finikoudes Beach. There we saw a Venetian castle later held by the Ottomans, the Church of St. Lazarus, the Jami Kebir Mosque, the statue of Cimo… but the very first site seen was the statue of Zeno.

Zeno was from Larnaca, then known as Kition, and followed in his fathers footsteps as a seafaring merchant. He managed to survive a shipwreck and found his way to Athens, and while passing the time he read a scroll discussing Socrates. He was immediate taken by the works of philosophy and asked the shopkeeper who owned the scroll where he could find these wise sophists. At that very moment one was walking by and the shopkeeper pointed Zeno over to this man. From that moment forward, Zeno devoted his life to learning the philosophies of the great Greek thinkers. He eventually came to form his own school of thought we call today ‘Stoicism.’

Now I am no philosopher. A lot of the great Greek tomes I confuse with one another and sometimes outright do not understand the point the author was trying to get across. However, Stoicism, when I do have the chance to absorb the philosophy, often speaks to me on a very personal level. Later stoic philosophers like that of Marcus Aurelius really honed in much of the details of stoicism that made it much more broadly applicable to the modern person. None of Zeno’s writings have survived throughout time, but those who succeeded him gave us enough of an understanding of Zeno’s original philosophies that we can attribute the new school of though to him.

Zeno’s philosophy was very Taoist, if we could compare it to a surviving religio-philosophic ideology. The balance and the ebb and flow of nature is what should be sought out to live a good life. The good life can only be found through virtuous actions and not that of pleasure or vice. Virtuous actions themselves were natural, thus to act naturally in accordance to nature, not to fight against it, was the way to achieve this good life. Again, I am not a philosopher, but Zeno often preached his ideas in a cyclical fashion. His chosen code of life to live by was effectively one of contemplation before acting and moderation in every pursuit of life. I think there is some solid ideas in taking a moment to ponder our words and actions before we respond and also making sure we are not underperforming or overzealously acting when we do chose to act. One of Zeno’s reported writings was one called ‘Republic.’ It had the same concept of Plato’s ‘Republic’ where it explored the idea of the perfect society, but Zeno’s was much more utopian. In fact, today we would call it outright anarchist. But it is a really good exploration of the philosophy of utopianism, to the point where virtue guides all human actions, thus laws are no longer needing to exist because everyone has figured out what they need and demand nothing more.

Zeno came to a very strange end according to a few ancient historians. Zeno tripped and injured his toe, hit the ground with his fist and cursed out loud as if he was acknowledging his own death, and according to different sources, he either held his breath until he died or strangled himself out right. Unlike the beautiful and poetic end that Socrates met, Zeno’s death was sudden, puzzling, and did not fit the image of a man so in control of his own mind and actions.

If you have the chance, read up on Stoicism. But if you feel stoicism is a little too detached from self-determination, you are more than welcome to join me in my other favorite Greek philosophical camp, the Cynics.

-Adam E.

At the site we store our discovered material culture at (mainly pottery), they have a treasure trove of empty stone tombs stacked under awning and lean-tos. There was one unique item that did catch my eye, and it was an old wooden carriage. It had seen better days, but the decay of the wheel spokes and the frame had not proceeded far enough for the whole carriage to collapse. My first impression right away was it must be for transporting caskets. There was no room to sit in the back, too high lifted off the ground (around chest height), the Arabic inscription on the sides, and the framing of the back portion had carved flowers. This seemed too fancy for a simple merchant or farmers carriage to take their wares to market. I had to look into it more.

I was told 4th hand that it was found in this condition in someone’s barn. The mere fact it was being stored at the facility we used meant it had some sort of historical value. My mind immediately went to 19th or early 20th century Ottoman funerary practices on the island. The more I looked into that specific theory, the more frustrated I became because I could not find anything that seemed to explain what I was examining.

I took the time to verify the translation of the inscription of the casket by emailing a professor of mine who was fluent, and he returned back to me what was suspected by another professor who had some familiarity with Arabic. “There is no God but God” on the right and “Mohammad is the prophet of God” on the left. So we are very likely dealing with a device used in religious practices. I admittedly was patting myself on the back for guessing correct.

On a different day visiting the storage site, I looked at it one more time and started wondering about another feature of the carriage. The exterior circumference of the wheel had a material on it not of metal nor made of wood. After staring at it for a bit I came to the conclusion it was basically petrified rubber. But wait… rubber in 19th century Ottoman Empire? Organic rubber from tree plants could have been around back then, but I had never known or seen really old rubber last this long. Synthetic modern rubbers yes, they tend to last long periods of time, but that didn’t become commonplace until after the Second World War. The Japanese invasion of Southeast Asia was in part motivated by the need to access the rubber tree plantations for their war machine. The loss of this rubber supply chain pushed the further development of petroleum based rubber in the United States. With this new problem presented to me, I had to look into it further. My new guess became this funerary carriage was much more recent than I suspected. The minimal deterioration of the wooden accoutrements on the frame gave weight to this new theory.

After some searching on the internet, I was a able to find another carriage in located in Famagusta, Cyprus that had many of the same features. The person who uploaded this picture left an anecdote that they remember as a child watching carts like this being used in Cyprus all the way up until the 1970’s. I was kind of sad to find out this carriage was nowhere near as old as I wanted it to be, but there is a lesson in my search to prove myself right. All the details matter before you can start making a serious hypothesis and you should try to prove yourself wrong rather than seeking out the answers that prove you right.

-Adam E.