Undergraduate Curator Mounts Exhibition of Pottery from Cyprus in Carpenter Library

Jug. Cypro-Archaic I (700-600 BC). Gift of Mrs. Joseph M. Dohan. Bryn Mawr College Art and Archaeology Collection.

Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology majors often work with objects in Bryn Mawr's Arts and Archaeology Collections, but Rebecca Hahn '07 may be the first to curate an exhibition as part of her senior thesis. The exhibition, Cypriot Pottery From the Ella Riegel Memorial Museum, presents about 80 pieces of pottery representative of more than 450 in the College's collection of ceramics from the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, ranging in date from about 2500 to about 600 B.C.E. It is on display in the Kaiser Reading Room of Carpenter Library until April 13.

The exhibition draws on extensive research and cataloging done last summer by Ph.D. Candidate Nick Blackwell, who studied the Cypriot collection as a curatorial intern funded by a challenge grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Hahn worked under the supervision of Professor of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology Jim Wright and Collections Registrar Tamara Johnston.

Rebecca Hahn '07

Hahn has organized the display into four cases. One case is presented chronologically, a second is organized by form, a third illustrates trading patterns by showing pieces both imported to and exported from Cyprus, and a fourth presents objects excavated from a single site, to give viewers an idea of the variety of objects that coexist in a given place. The exhibition is accompanied by a booklet, written by Hahn, that gives a chronology, as well as an overview of the types of Cypriot pottery and trends influenced by trade and cultural exchange.

"We can learn a lot about a culture from the pottery it leaves behind," Hahn says. "What I find especially fascinating about Cypriot pottery is what it tells us about Cyprus's relationships with its neighbors, especially Mycenae." The location of Cyprus made it a site of exchange among peoples of Europe, Africa and Asia.

Hahn has been interested in the archaeology of Cyprus, she says, ever since she attended a field school there the summer after her sophomore year. The field school, at Atheniou, is operated by Davidson College and directed by Michael K. Toumazou, a Bryn Mawr Ph.D and a native of Cyprus.

Although this is her first experience curating an exhibition, Hahn says that she has often worked with objects from the College's collections in archaeology courses and finds the experience invaluable.

"It's hard to learn about artifacts, especially pottery, from books — or even from looking at them in a museum case," she says. "Being able to handle them is really helpful."

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