The Institute of Mediterranean and Oriental Cultures Polish Academy of Sciences,
 The Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology of the University of Warsaw
and
"Artibus Mundi" Foundation

have a pleasure in inviting for a conference

DECORATION OF HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN BUILDINGS IN CYPRUS
Residences at Nea Paphos and other cities of the region

in the series

"Nea Paphos - Polish excavations of residential quarter of the ancient city"

which will take place on 10-11 March 2017

in Warsaw at the Polish Academy of Sciences

The organizers invite to submit proposals for lectures and poster presentations.

Please send notifications and abstracts for lectures to by December 31st 2016. The Scientific Committee will evaluate abstracts and inform the authors by January 15th 2017.

Details of payment: conference fee: 200 PLN per person, reduced fee: 100 PLN per person. Participants presenting a lecture (except invited guests) bear the full cost and for poster presentations will be applied the reduced fee.

Fees will be allocated into the post-conference monograph. The monograph is scheduled to be published in 2017 in open access.

Lectures may be presented in English and French.

Organizing Committee:
dr hab. Barbara Lichocka, prof. PAS
dr hab. Tomasz Waliszewski (Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology, University of Warsaw)
dr Henryk Meyza
 Monika Więch, MA

For over 50 years the Polish Archaeological Mission (Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology), directed for most of that time by prof. Wiktor Andrzej Daszewski and currently led by Henryk Meyza PhD, conducts excavations in the residential part of the ancient city of Nea Paphos, on the south-western coast of Cyprus. Excavations have led to discovery of the so-called “Villa of Theseus,” a substantial building of palatial character, which is sometimes interpreted to be the seat of the Roman governor of Cyprus, and of two smaller houses - the Late Roman House of Aion and the so-called Hellenistic House. These architectural structures were richly decorated, with wall paintings, floor mosaics, architectural decorated members, and sculptures (including almost life-size statue of Aphrodite). During the excavations an amount of various furniture was discovered as well, from objects of decorative and symbolic role to some items of everyday usage. These findings allowed researchers to perceive and interpret the past of the city and its inhabitants in a more complex way. The publication of many of the objects is only preliminary and the conference will provide access to these objects before final making them available to public. We hope that to specialists in the fields involved, such a meeting would be a valuable forum of exchange of information and ideas.

The main aim of this conference is to confront research on decoration system of houses uncovered by Polish mission in their mutual context with expertise on precise types of decoration. The intention of the Committee is to initiate a broader discussion of the finds from our excavations and relate them to other finds. We hope that this might allow to look at those issues from different points of view and create new perspectives for future studies.