Cahiers du Centre d’Études

Chypriotes 38, 2008

DOSSIER J. BÉRARD

3. CYPRIOTE ANTIQUITIES FROM NICOSIA AYIA PARASKEVI

acquired by the Melbourne Cyprus Expedition in 1955/ 56

Robert MERRILLEES

After many years of planning and frustration, J. R. Stewart and his wife, Eve, succeeded in 1955 in mounting an expedition to Cyprus where they excavated two Philia Culture cemeteries at Vasilia on the north coast and at Ayia Paraskevi in the capital, Nicosia. Their

avowed aims were to clarify the origins of the Early Bronze Age in Cyprus, and at the same time acquire Cypriote antiquities not only for display and teaching purposes in the Nicholson Museum at the University of Sydney but to reward their sponsors. To this end they planned on receiving a share of the finds from their own fieldwork and also bought objects from licensed dealers in Cyprus, which they exported legally to Australia. They also obtained them in other ways, and Eve Stewart recorded in her copy of the

Ayia Paraskevi and Vasilia excavation report that “ about 30 pots from several tombs in Gladstone Street [ in Nicosia], which had been broken into during building operations, were given to J. R. Stewart [ by the Department of Antiquities] to compensate for the quantity of pots in Vasilia Tomb 103”. This was the collection of 33 items said to have