Strata: In Their Own Words

Vassos Karageorghis is professor emeritus of archaeology at the University of Cyprus and director emeritus of antiquities in Cyprus. In his recent book, Aspects of Everyday Life in Ancient Cyprus: Iconographic Representations (A.G. Leventis Foundation), he explained what motivates archaeologists:

Having been involved in Cypriot archaeology for well over 50 years, I have realized that what archaeologists are really endeavoring to achieve by excavation, which results in the discovery of objects, is not so much the discovery of works of art and the study of phenomena which lead to theories of doubtful value, but the retrieval of concrete vestiges of how people lived, especially ordinary people, what constituted their daily habits, beliefs and dispositions, both their material and “intellectual” worlds.