CRDP Recording Traditional Boats Workshop-June 2024

Towards the end of May and beginning of June, two workshops were conducted in Larnaca and Agia Napa (Famagusta) in Cyprus. Both workshops were part of the Cyprus Regional Development Project (CRDP), which is a partnership with colleagues from the Cyprus Marine and Maritime Institute (CMMI), Cyprus University of Technology (CUT), and MarEA project (Universities of Ulster and Southampton, UK) and funded by the Honor Frost Foundation (HFF). Also, it collaborates with partners from the HFF region (Egypt and Lebanon). The main aim of the CRDP is to explore the maritime cultural resources of the island of Cyprus and develop an integrated approach to recording archaeology. It also aims to build capacity in the HFF eastern Mediterranean region by organising workshops and training events.

Thus, the HFF SWAN workshop-meeting was held at the Social Welfare and Employment Centre of the Municipality of Larnaca and lasted from the 26th to the 27th of May 2024. The aim of this workshop was to identify common themes, challenges, and approaches to documenting modern metal wrecks, and defining their social, economic, and cultural value. In this workshop, Dr. Lucy Semaan (HFF Lebanon) presented an overview of the “Modern Shipwrecks Project” conducted in Lebanon, and Dr. Felix Pedrotti (Southampton Marine and Maritime Institute – SMMI) presented the objectives and aims of the project “Digital Twins of dive sites in Cyprus”, which is a collaboration between the Cypriot Deputy Ministry of Tourism and the Cyprus Marine and Maritime Institute (CMMI). Also, Dr. Jon Henderson (University of Edinburgh) presented the “Wrecks at Risk Project” conducted in Egypt. Maritime archaeologists and photographers from Cyprus, Egypt, Greece, and Lebanon took part, and concluded that an action plan and a common strategy must be developed for the integrated research into metal shipwrecks in the HFF region.

After the HFF SWAN workshop-meeting, a workshop about the recording of Cypriot vernacular boats followed and lasted from 31st May to 3rd June 2024. This workshop was held at the Municipal Museum of Agia Napa Thalassa. The aim of this workshop was to introduce participants to the principles of the archaeological recording of wooden boats by using traditional and modern recording methods and applications. Presentations were delivered by Mr. Constantinos Nicolaou (Coordinator of the HFF Recording the Vernacular Boats of Cyprus Project), Professor Lucy Blue (Director of the HFF CRDP), Dr. Lucy Semaan (HFF Lebanon), Dr. Maria Michael (Project Officer of the HFF CRDP), and Dr. Ziad Morsy (HFF Liaison Officer in Egypt). During the workshop, participants had the opportunity to be involved with the measuring procedures on a liberty boat in Agia Napa and a fishing boat in the Municipal Museum of Agia Napa Thalassa. Also, they learned how to record fishing boats at the Ormidia fishing shelter (village near Agia Napa). Also, the last day of the workshop was an introduction to the maritime ethnographical perspective of boat recording and the collection of data from archives and interviews. Presentations were delivered by Dr. Anna Demetriou (Cyprus Marine and Maritime Institute – CMMI) and Mrs. Lauren Tidbury (HFF Listening to our Past: Recording the History of Maritime Archaeology Project). Participants included maritime archaeologists from Cyprus, Egypt, Greece, and Lebanon