Professor Louise Steel BA (Hons), PhD

My research focuses on the archaeology of the East Mediterranean, and in particular that of Cyprus, where I have been involved in a number of research projects and since 2004 I have directed a fieldwork project at Arediou, which led to an AHRC funded community archaeology project (Hidden Pasts) under the Care for the Future Scheme in 2013.

Prior to this (1998-2000), I co-directed the Gaza Research Project with Dr Joanne Clarke (UEA) and Dr Moain Sadeq (then director of the Palestinian Department of Antiquities, Gaza), during which time I was based at the British Institute of Archaeology at Jerusalem.

My current research focuses on materialities and in particular the application of the New materialisms in Archaeology. Together with my colleague Dr Luci Attala, I am series editor for Materialities in Anthropology and Archaeology for University of Wales Press.

Between 1995 and 1998 I held a British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the University of Edinburgh. My research examined Mycenaean pottery imported to the Levant. I also spent a few months in 1999 at the Maison de l’Orient, Lyons working on the archives from Ugarit and Tell Abu Hawam.

My PhD thesis examined burial practices on Cyprus during the transition from the Bronze to the Iron Age, but subsequently, my research has focused on interactions in the East Mediterranean (Cyprus, the Aegean and the Levant) and the impact on material worlds of ancient communities..

My Research interests are:

• Bronze Age Cyprus, the Near East and Aegean
• Materiality and the New Materialisms
• Interconnections in the Bronze Age Mediterranean
• Representations in the East Mediterranean

I am co-editor (with Luci Attala) of a new series: Materialities in Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Wales Press.

I am currently preparing a monograph to publish excavations at Arediou-Vouppes (Lithosouros), Cyprus. This is a Late Bronze Age farming and production site with evidence for trading contacts with Egypt, the Aegean and the Levant. Fieldwork was funded by INSTAP, AOSR, CBRL, Society of Antiquaries London, Prehistoric Society.

2013: Hidden Pasts is a new project, funded by the AHRC (Care for the Future scheme) to explore the local community at Arediou’s engagement with their archaeological heritage and more recent historical past.

Between 1996 and 2000 I co-directed the Gaza Research Project with Dr J. Clarke (UEA) and Dr M. Sadeq (Department of Antiquities, Gaza). This involved survey of old city of Gaza and excavations at al-Moghraqa.

My main research interest is material culture studies. My earlier work focused on the renegotiation of meaning encoded in material culture through cross-cultural exchange. THis grew out of my postdoctoral research, which examined Mycenaean pottery exported to the East Mediterranean (Cyprus, the Levant and Egypt), to examine the cultural and intellectual consequences of this exchange (how specific items of material culture are incorporated and re-consumed within new cultural contexts. More recently I have been working on how material culture is entangled within human-object relations. and how people and other materials are in relationship, in particular how the distinct capacities of the matter from which these objects were crafted provoked, enabled and constrained human behaviour

One aspect of this work has been a re-assessment of feasting practices in Cyprus and Mycenaean Greece. This has resulted most recently in a workshop Embodied Encounters: Exploring the Materialities of Food ‘Stuffs’ planned for May 2014 and co-organised with Dr Emma-Jayne Abbots and Dr Katharina Zinn. Another area of interest, which I have primarily developed through supervision of research students, is ancient representations and the anthropology of art.

My ongoing research interests in Cyprus have involved work on the Late Bronze Age ceramic assemblages at Kalavasos-Ayios Dhimitrios and Maroni-Tsaroukkas.

I have also studied Cypriot imports to the southern Levant, at Deir el-Balah and Tell Batash. My interests in the household use of ceramics is now proving beneficial in relation to my current fieldwork at Arediou-Vouppes, where a fascinating insight into the domestic culture of a rural community is beginning to emerge.