Author Description

The wealth of excavation in Cyprus conducted across a period of nearly a century and a half has revealed much evidence of ancient building of all functional categories. Whereas the earlier excavation concerned mainly funerary and religious contexts, more recent work has endeavoured to clarify the whole range of building in Cyprus. This picture extends over a vast range of time (ca. 10,000 years) since Cyprus is probably the place where the earliest substantial building known, the Neolithic round house style is better presented than anywhere else in the world. Certainly it was immeasurably longer lived in Cyprus than in any other region of the ancient world. This longevity of tradition became a proverbial aspect of the Cypriote character. It is the aim of this book to set forth and document this building tradition which hitherto has received no detailed exposition. After preliminary geographical and historical introductions the ancient building of Cyprus has been surveyed and analysed from the following view-points: its historical development; its design; its construction and its foreign connections. Because of the extensive and detailed coverage every effort has been made to facilitate the use of the book equally as a treatise and as a work of instant reference - e.g. by way of introductory precis, list of general references, running titles to pages and marginal rubrics. The book is also virtually a double treatment of the subject since a separate volume contains specially drawn illustrations arranged with captions on the facing pages which themselves constitute an incisive coverage of the subject matter. The book will fill several gaps in the library shelves at one and the same time: architectural history that presents all the archaeological evidence.