Recent excavations at Alambra: A Middle Bronze Age settlement in Cyprus

Public Lecture

Dr Andrew Sneddon has recently published the results of four seasons of excavation at the Middle Bronze Age site of Alambra in Cyprus. The settlement was destroyed by fire around 1700 BCE. It also displayed indications of social fragmentation in its layout while its architecture hints at disparities of resources. These things together raise questions about the role that inter-community violence may have played in Alambra’s abandonment, in an increasingly socially complex Cyprus.

Dr Andrew Sneddon is co-owner and a director of Australia’s largest specialist heritage consultancy, Extent Heritage. He has lived and worked in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, and been involved in archaeological research excavations around the world, including in Cyprus, Syria, Turkey, Uzbekistan, Italy, Greece, Cambodia, and Myanmar. In 2001 he gained his PhD from La Trobe University on Cypriot prehistory, and from 2012–2016 directed the University of Queensland’s excavations at Alambra in Cyprus.

He has recently published Prehistoric Joy through University of Queensland Press; a memoir charting the often frightening and sometimes farcical journey of his teenage years, he also reflects on them through contemporary eyes as an archaeologist. Told with candour and refreshing humour, Prehistoric Joy explores the importance of family and the timeless search for happiness.