Chalcolithic Complexities in Copper Age Cyprus: Perspectives from Chlorakas-Palloures | Χαλκολιθικές συνθετότητες στην Κύπρο της Εποχής του Χαλκού: Οπτικές από τη Χλώρακα-Παλλούρες

Το Σπίτι της Κύπρου και το Τμήμα Ιστορίας και Αρχαιολογίας του Εθνικού και Καποδιστριακού Πανεπιστημίου Αθηνών σας προσκαλούν την Τετάρτη 22 Απριλίου 2026 και ώρα 18.00 στη διάλεξη του Καθηγητή Αρχαιολογίας Δυτικής Ασίας στο Τμήμα Αρχαιολογίας του Πανεπιστημίου του Leiden Prof. Bleda S. Düring με θέμα : «Chalcolithic Complexities in Copper Age Cyprus: Perspectives from Chlorakas-Palloures | Χαλκολιθικές συνθετότητες στην Κύπρο της Εποχής του Χαλκού: Οπτικές από τη Χλώρακα-Παλλούρες»

Προλογίζει: Γιώργος Βαβουρανάκης, Καθηγητής Προϊστορικού Αιγαίου ΕΚΠΑ

Η διάλεξη εντάσσεται στην ετήσια σειρά διαλέξεων

Η αρχαιολογία της Κύπρου και θα πραγματοποιηθεί στην Αγγλική γλώσσα

Chalcolithic Cyprus has often been perceived as consisting of small scale and autarkic village communities, with only sporadic evidence for connections with other island communities and the broader eastern Mediterranean. The rise of social complexity is commonly thought to occur in the subsequent Early Bronze Age, from the mid third millennium BCE, during the so-called Philia period. However, research in recent decades has started to provide evidence for Chalcolithic Complexities that do not fit well with this idea of small scale and autarkic village communities and suggests substantial changes in subsistence, craft industries and exchange networks during the Chalcolithic. This presentation will follow the lead of researchers such as Peltenburg and Bolger and reassess Chalcolithic complexities, following on a decade of research at the site of Chlorakas-Palloures and the results our research on that site has provided.

Bleda S. Düring is Professor in the Archaeology of West Asia at the Faculty of Archaeology of Leiden University. Bleda studied archaeology in Leiden, and went on to do a PhD in the same university. Subsequently he did a postdoc at University College London. This was followed by another postdoc (Veni) at Leiden, after he which he was hired as a member of staff in 2011. In 2012 Bleda obtained an ERC Starting Grant on the archaeology of empire, and since 2025 he is leading an ERC Advanced Grant project on the origins of social inequalities in Late Prehistoric Cyprus. Bleda has directed fieldwork in the Black Sea region of Türkiye, in the northern Batina of Oman, and in the Paphos region of Cyprus, where he began excavations at the Chalcolithic site of Chlorakas-Palloures in 2015. One of his main research foci throughout the years has been on the reconstruction of Neolithic and Chalcolithic societies in the Eastern Mediterranean.