Forestry Cairns and Rural Lifeways: Adelphi State Forest, Cyprus
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 14/12/2016

The Adelphi State Forest, located in the foothills of the Troodos Mountains, Cyprus, is a tensioned and contested landscape. Shepherds and their families once inhabited the forest – drew on its resources to feed their flocks, supply wood to make charcoal and pine resin for pitch. Under the British Colonial administration the forest was demarcated; the boundary between State Forest and privately owned land was marked out with forestry cairns, and interactions with the forest and its resources were prohibited in order to ‘protect the forest from grazing and felling’(SA1/556/1942 Red 9‐8). By 1930 most villages and seasonal settlements within the forest were abandoned and villagers relocated to those rural villages lying outside the State Forest boundaries. To date, formal protection and enhancement of rural heritage in Cyprus has focused on the preservation and development of ‘places of natural beauty’. This paper explores how the boundaries imposed in the 19th century by the British Colonial administration which physically and ideologically separated the ‘natural’ landscape (State Forest) from the ‘lived’ or experienced landscape of the Adelphi State Forest continues to frame approaches to rural heritage in Cyprus.
Villagers continue to hold a deep connection to the forest and its archaeological remains – the abandoned dwellings, threshing floors and goatfolds used by their ancestors. In examining the continued impact of Colonial boundaries on rural heritage, I also question why their narratives are absent from ‘official’ State sectioned and celebrated heritage sites like the Byzantine church of Panayia Phorviotissa – a UNESCO World Heritage Site located within an enclave in the Adelphi State Forest.

Erin Gibson. University of British Columbia.

Session 2: Rural Heritage and Landscape (1)
CHAT Annual Conference: Orkney 2016