This edited volume, published with the support of the A G Leventis Foundation, comprises eight essays written in honour of the late Veronica Tatton-Brown, celebrating her lasting academic contribution as former Curator of Cypriot Antiquities at the British Museum. The collection brings together eight international scholars working with Cypriot material, all of whom were directly influenced by her passion and drive during her long and fruitful career, and all of whom clearly hold Tatton-Brown's work in extremely high regard. Together, the essays skilfully highlight the rich corpus of Kypriaka in the British Museum's collections, while exploring the honourand's wide-ranging interests and knowledge.
Lesley Fitton's warmly felt preface offers a colourful and personal overview of Tatton-Brown as curator and colleague. At first glance the selection of essays may appear eclectic, but Fitton places them effortlessly into context with a succinct but detailed tour of Veronica's academic career; all of the papers engage with her research interests from a variety of angles. The volume is extremely informal and consequently the essays capture the unique nature of the Cypriot archaeological community. Vassos Karageorghis, former Director of Antiquities in Cyprus, sets the tone, his paper full of ‘reminiscences and general remarks’. His anecdotal background to the Cypriot collection at the British Museum embraces a theme that runs throughout the book – the historiography of the British Museum's long association with Cyprus. This is a theme that comes full circle with the final essay – the editor's paper on the notebooks from the British Museum's excavations at Kourion.
As a collection the papers lack a certain level of coherence, both in content and in style. Individually, however, they address interesting and often topical subjects. Antoine Hermary, Robert Merrillees and Annie Caubet all favour the discussion of discrete artefact groups – the portrayal of parents and children in sixth- and fifth-century bc sculpture; terracotta model daggers; the iconography on an ivory gaming box from Enkomi and a gold cup from Ugarit respectively. Caubet's paper prompts the reader to consider how ideas and materials came to be transferred and transformed across the Mediterranean, the idea of an ‘International’ culture at the end of the LBA; although much of the paper is necessarily descriptive it highlights the eclectic origins of the international style in the eastern Mediterranean.
A particular highlight of the volume is Franz Georg Maier and Marie-Louise von Wartburg's beautifully illustrated essay on the siege mound at Old Paphos. This paper moves beyond artefact analysis to explore the role of the imagination in archaeological reconstruction; they consider how archaeologists engage with material to present their own interpretation of the past, how interpretations are shaped and how they can be visually represented. Both Thomas Kiely and Lindy Crewe have close associations with the British Museum, which is abundantly clear from their contributions. Crewe's paper supplements the corpus of published material on Enkomi Tomb 66 excavated in 1896. Her discussions about funerary feasting and post-depositional practices are particularly stimulating. Kiely, the current Curator of Cypriot Antiquities at the British Museum and editor of the volume, brings previously unpublished notebooks from Kourion to light. Both papers engage with the archives, the artefacts and the online resources of the British Museum, highlighting the accessibility this has brought to much of the Cypriot collection, something close to Tatton-Brown's heart throughout her career.
The plates and illustrations, both black-and-white and colour, are plentiful and generally of a high quality. Indeed, for several of the essays the illustrations are central to their discussions – particularly Maier and von Wartburg, Crewe and Kiely. There are typing errors scattered throughout the volume and inconsistencies within bibliographies; spelling mistakes – one particularly noticeable example being Caubet's title where ‘invoire’ should read ‘ivoire’; and omissions – particularly of cited references in bibliographies. These errors do not detract from the enjoyment of the essays but careful readers may find them distracting.
This book will have broad appeal. The general reader is given a taste of the rich archaeology of the island and an insight into the unique community of archaeologists working on Cypriot material; a passion for the subject is evident in all of the essays presented here. Importantly, the essays do not stint on detail and complexity but engage with a variety of archaeological issues in an accessible manner, ensuring this is a book the non-specialist will enjoy.
For the specialist, this volume provides new data. Crewe's catalogue of Tomb 66 at Enkomi is particularly useful. It also provides the careful reassessment of old interpretations, bringing earlier discoveries up to date. Each paper offers a slightly new approach to established subject matter, making this volume an extremely worthwhile read. It provides a taste of the rich Cypriot collections at the British Museum and marks the huge contribution made by Tatton-Brown to our knowledge of the archaeology of Cyprus.
