Islanders: The making of the Mediterranean (24 February - 4 June 2023) topples gods, emperors and generals from a stage which has produced many an ancient world blockbuster for museums in recent years.
“For a long time, everything has been directed around questions of power and elite groups in archaeology, particularly in Mediterranean archaeology,” says Dr Anastasia Christophilopoulou, the exhibition’s curator and the Fitzwilliam’s Senior Curator of the Ancient Mediterranean.
“Our exhibition is different. We are interested in island identity, and if you really want to understand that in the ancient world, you need to look at the cultural identity of everyday life. How were resources used and how did that shape perceptions of a place? How did people come together, and how did they view one another?”
Islanders is the culmination of a three-year interdisciplinary research project, led by Dr Christophilopoulou, which examines 4,000 years of art and identity on three of the Mediterranean’s largest and most culturally rich islands: Cyprus, Crete and Sardinia.
Local knowledge
The project and its exhibition are unusual not only for their interest in relatively overlooked pre-Roman societies but also because of their collaboration with their modern-day island descendants. Typically, major museums decide on an exhibits ‘wish list’ before sending out loan requests, usually to other large institutions. Not so for Islanders.
Dr Christophilopoulou spent months in the store rooms of several regional museums in Cyprus, Crete and Sardinia learning from and exchanging ideas with local archaeologists and curators. It was from these conversations, together with interactions with local artisans and community groups on the islands and in UK diasporas, that research project and exhibition took shape.
“This was a laborious way of doing things but it was essential to include their views on how an object really belonged to a particular narrative and what it still means for their community,” says Dr Christophilopoulou.
“In Paphos, I saw amazing finds from Iron Age graves, objects which had been influenced by both Greece and Phoenicia. This was evidence of a hybrid community living in harmony and when I spoke to the archaeologists who had actually dug this site, they emphasised that this had been happening on Cyprus for millennia.
“Cyprus has been invaded and settled by nearly everyone in the eastern Mediterranean and this continues to raise powerful questions about the nature and meaning of identity on the island today.”
The project’s community engagement work also led to the co-creation of a film and an array of contemporary art, poetry and performance pieces.
Excerpt from 'Being an Islander' film: The Mayor of Siphnos explains the meaning of the sea
