ABSTRACT
In 1997, the Sydney Cyprus Survey Project (SCSP), made a preliminary attempt to record the local cemetery and graves of the village of Mitsero, where the survey project was based, in the foothills of the southwest Troodos Mountains in Cyprus. This study of the cemetery formed part of the Modern component (Historical Archaeology) of the wider survey, for which Kylie Seretis and I were responsible throughout the duration of the project.1 Historical Archaeology, or Modern Period Archaeology-a term preferable in a Mediterranean context-was practically nonexistent in Cyprus before then. In those early days, however, such studies were restricted to non-systematic recordings of mainly targeted features on the landscape
from the last two centuries, and to the collection of oral information related to these features, as part of the diachronic agenda of a regional survey.2 Thus, alongside the main attributes of the village of Mitsero (the church, houses, coffee houses, shops, and roads) as well as those associated with its agricultural and copper-mining activities (agricultural fields, threshing floors, mines, and mining accommodation and buildings), the village cemetery was recognized as an important cultural feature worthy of investigation. At the very least, given the limits of our particular project at the time, the cemetery was measured, drawn, and described in a very general way. It was not until a few years later, during my involvement with two other survey projects in Greece, that the study of Modern cemeteries assumed a more central role with a research agenda of its own, in the investigation of the diachronic mortuary landscape of the regions under study.3
