Publications
2025: Tracing traditions: An analytical study of Late Chalcolithic ceramics from Cyprus. In this paper Maria Hadjigavriel and Maria Dikomitou Eliadou present new data on how ceramic production in Late Chalcolithic Cyprus was organised, using the techniques of ceramic petrography and portable XRF, to better characterise the clay sources used and pottery technologies.
2024: Where there’s smoke there’s ritual? Interpreting burnt buildings of the Cypriot Chalcolithic. By Victor Klinkenberg. In this article Victor assesses the various possible explanations that one could put forward to explain the practice of houses burnings in the Chalcolithic. Was this an accident or intentional, and if so – why were houses burnt down?
2024: Shifting societies in Chalcolithic Cyprus. by Bleda During. in this paper discusses how many people might have lived at Palloures and other contemporary Chalcolithic sites. Were these a few hundred or a few thousands. These things determine what sort of society we might be dealing with. Bleda argues for a lower estimate than has been proposed by other researchers.
2023: Rethinking the emergence of social inequalities. The case of Chalcolithic Cyprus. Bleda Düring. In this book chapter Bleda discusses how wealth may have mattered in our prehistoric past. Could wealth be inherited? Was wealth something to show off with in those times? Using Palloures as a case study, he attempts to connect archaeological contexts with the systems of wealth and inequality during the Cypriot Chalcolithic. (Please email him for a pdf copy)
Düring B.S. (2023), Reconsidering cruciform figurines of Chalcolithic Cyprus. In this paper Bleda During proposes a radical new inteprations of the well known Chalcolithic crucifom figurines, arguing that they were in fact, dancing.
2023: Decentring the archaeology of West Asia: reconsidering early trade networks and social complexities. By Bleda Düring. This is the lecture presented by Bleda on the occassion of his inauguration as professor at Leiden University.
2023: The 2015-2017 Excavations at the Chalcolithic Site of Chlorakas-Palloures on Cyprus. By Bleda Düring, Victor Klinkenberg, Ellon Souter, Paul Croft, and Michelle Gamble. This article is the first comprehensive site report, covering the first three seasons of excavations at Palloures. Inside you will find a lot of information about the project, the buildings, artefacts, and human and animal bones.
2022: Inequality before the Bronze Age: the case of Chalcolithic Cyprus. By Victor Klinkenberg and Bleda Düring. In one of the first years of Palloures, we found a huge building, ‘Building 1’. It measures 14 meters in diameter, and so is one of the largest buildings of prehistoric Cyprus. Elsewhere, the existence of such large buildings is equated with inequalities in wealth and status. In this paper, we discuss how Chalcolithic Cyprus fits in this framework, or how it may change it.
2022: Building biographies of the Cypriot Chalcolithic. By Victor Klinkenberg. This article focussess on the life stages of Chalcolithic buildings: how were they erected, used and abandonned? Why were some buildings much larger than others, and why are some buildings burnt to the ground, while others are simply left to collapse?
2021: Building Function through Micromorphology of Floors at Chalcolithic Chlorakas-Palloures, Cyprus. By Victor Klinkenberg. In this paper, the floors of buidlings from our site are investigated using micromorphology. It shows just how changeable these houses were – they were constantly renovated and no two floors looked the same.
2021: Crafting Values in Chalcolithic Cyprus and Anatolia. By Bleda Düring. This paper deals with craftmanship and ancient economies. It discusses how figurines were valued in Chalcolithic Cyprus, by comparing them to Marlboro cigarettes and mobile phones.
2021: Transformative copper metallurgy in Chalcolithic Cyprus: a reappraisal. By Bleda Düring, Sarah De Ceuster, Patrick Degryse and Vasiliki Kassianidou. This detailed article in the renowned Antiquity journal, describes how a major find from Palloures has inspired a fresh perspective on how people in the Copper Age interacted with metals.
2021: The potential and problems of volumetric 3D modeling in archaeological stratigraphic analysis: A case study from Chlorakas-Palloures, Cyprus by Marina Gavryushkina. As a PhD candidate, Marina investigates how we can best document all layers in our excavation using 3D techniques. This article describes the results from the first three years of excavating and documenting.
2019: Excavations at Chlorakas-Palloures: New Light on Chalcolithic Cyprus by Bleda Düring, Victor Klinkenberg, Harry Pareskeva, Paul Croft, Ellon Souter and Till Sonnemann. This article gives an overview of our project aims and the results of the first excavation season in 2015.
2018: Metal Artefacts in Chalcolithic Cyprus: New data from Western Cyprus. By Bleda Düring, Victor Klinkenberg, Harry Paraskeva, Lina Kassianidou, Ellon Souter, Paul Croft, and Andreas Charalambous. This article, published in Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry, discusses the spectacular discovery of a copper axe, stone axe, and fish hooks from Palloures.
2017: De opgravingen van Chlorakas-Palloures. Een Chalcolithische nederzetting op Cyprus. By Victor Klinkenberg. This article describes (in Dutch) the results of the first two seasons of excavation at Palloures.
2016: Chlorakas-Palloures, research into the Middle and Late Chalcolithic of Cyprus by Victor Klinkenberg and Bleda Düring is a brief introduction of our project aims (in Dutch).
2015: Press release after the 2015 season by Bleda Düring. A brief account of the 2015 findings.