I decided to officially archive this blog on the day my DPhil was confirmed. But I have waited for the electronic publication of my thesis, Interrogating Archaeological Ethics in Conflict Zones: Cultural Heritage Work in Cyprus, to announce the archiving. From now on, I will blog at Conflict Antiquities.

Arediou: abandoned neighbourhood, destroyed

[Thanks to Dave S's comment on the Evretou photo blog, I will try to give each site photo blog a proper introduction; until then, I'll cross-post the introductory posts from Cultural Heritage in Conflict.]

I've just published photographs on a new site blog, Arediou: cultural heritage and community. Arediou/Aredyu's Turkish Cypriot neighbourhood was evacuated in 1958, later repopulated, then permanently evacuated between the 1st and the 31st of January 1964 (Patrick, 1976: 77 - fig. 3.10; 98n65). After the Turkish Cypriots fled, unknown Greek Cypriots - either nationalist locals or Akritas paramilitaries - completely erased their mosque and many of their homes, and destroyed many of the others.

This episode came out during part of one of the conversations I had during my site visit:

'Hello. Sorry, perhaps you will know. Is there a mosque near here?'
'There wasn't [ever] a mosque here... Are you a Turk[ish Cypriot]?'
'No, I'm not. I'm English.'
'Ah. The mosque was there', the local Greek Cypriot said, indicating an area of wasteland used as a football pitch and car park.



'What happened?'
'It fell down. Here was the mosque' she said, pointing to the wasteland again.
'Here', waving her hand at the rest of the wasteland, with some standing mudbrick homes the far side of it, some stone-and-mudbrick buildings in various states of decay the near side of it and the plans of former buildings visible only in crop marks in its centre, she explained that 'there were all the Turks [the Turkish Cypriots' houses]... but they fell down.'
'How did they fall down? They didn't just, simply, fall. Does that mean, did you mean that they were destroyed?'
'Yes, they were destroyed.'

Patrick, R A. 1976: Political geography and the Cyprus Conflict, 1963-1971. Waterloo: University of Waterloo Department of Geography.

(Also posted on samarkeolog.)

[This was originally posted on Cultural Heritage in Conflict on 28th January 2009.]

Arediou buildings 7b

Arediou buildings 7a

Arediou building 6a2

Arediou building 6a1: APOEL crosshairs

Arediou buildings 5a2

Arediou buildings 5a1

Arediou artefacts 1a2

Arediou artefacts 1a1

Arediou buildings 4b

Arediou artefacts 1b

Arediou buildings 4a

Arediou buildings 2b

Arediou buildings 1b

Arediou buildings 3a

Arediou buildings 3a1

Arediou buildings 2a

Arediou buildings 1a