Three Things Thursday: Halloumi, Slaves, and Dogs

As I’m settling in Cyprus, I’ve been reading a few recent articles on Cypriot things that have piqued my imagination a bit. There are three pieces in particular that feel like a good place to start a short, but fun “three things Thursday”:

Thing the First

I was intrigued by a recent article by Rafael Laoutari titled “‘Cheese-scapes’: An Ethnoarchaeological Study of the Traditional Production of Halloumi in Cyprus,” in Archaeological Review from Cambridge 35.2 (2020): 60-79. The article applies Tim Ingold’s concept of taskscapes to the production of halloumi and is clever enough in that regard (although I might have titled the article “Blessed are the Cheesemakers: The Cheese-scapes of Halloumi Production on Cyprus.” The article offered me two insights. First I was vaguely aware that there were two types of halloumi on Cyprus: a softer almost buttery halloumi and a dryer and saltier halloumi. The latter is known as “red halloumi” perhaps after its association with the Kokkinochoria in southwestern Cyprus. I became familiar with the latter in Larnaka where it was part of one of my favorite snacks: halloumi and a slice of tomato in a mini pita.

The other thing that I appreciated in this article is that  “Furthermore, despite the fact that Panagiota and Kyriakos clearly know the “proper” way of halloumi-making (e.g. “milk should be on 38° C for pithkia to work optimally”), it was difficult for them to list all the steps of the procedure without actively materializing them, a clear illustration of the embodied component of the process and the role of body memory.”

A few months ago, a colleague noted that in his experience, a particular scholar with whom I am quite familiar never really liked talking shop. In my experience, however, this particular scholar would come alive when on an archaeological site. Laoutari’s piece reminded me how even certain forms of academic knowledge—“shop” as it were—can be embodied. When this scholar got onto site, not only did his deep and sophisticated understanding of the site and material culture in front of him came to the fore, but he also became far more eager and interested in talking about the place of the site in, say, scholarship and in the larger landscape of the field (both literally and figuratively).

This, of course, wasn’t the point of the article, which offered a nice mini-ethnography halloumi production, but it also offered something a bit more.

Thing the Second

I’ve also enjoyed Dušan I. Bjelić’s “Resituating Europe’s Greek Origins from the Athenian Polis to the Cypriot Sugar Plantation” from Journal of Modern Greek Studies 42.1 (2024): 1-24. The paper makes the interesting argument that Medieval sugar plantations on Cyprus represented an early expression of both global capitalism, but also the racial regime set into place its development. Sugar production came to the island in the aftermath of the fall of the Crusader states in the 12th century. From the purchase of the island first by the Templars and then by the Lusignan dynasty in the 13th century to the island becoming a Venetian colony in the 15th century, the sugar plantations encouraged the understanding of Cyprus as capital facilitating its purchase by various Medieval interests. Under the various regimes, sugar cultivation became a major source of revenue for the state usually through the taxation of private owners of sugar mills and fields, such as the famous Cornaro family (or operators who controlled sugar production through royal concessions).  Under the Lusignans and the Venetians the scale and intensity sugar production increased buoyed in large part by slave labor. Slave labor on Cyprus was both part of a longer term trend away from a Byzantine system of serf and peasant labor and toward forms of agricultural slavery.  The growing value of sugar, the development of a sugar monoculture and the loss of labor in the aftermath of the bubonic plague further contributed to the emergence of slave regime on Cyprus. From Cyprus, this system of labor spread across the Eastern Mediterranean, the Western Mediterranean, and eventually found footing the in the Caribbean.  

Bjelić’s article does more than just flesh out a well-known narrative of sugar and slavery in Cyprus. He argues that what made Cyprus susceptible to the growth of plantation style slave was its position astride various “global systems” that could provide the island with a constant supply of labor as the island’s workforce was not self-sustaining. Italian merchant cities plied routes into the Black Sea which gave them access Asian slave markets. Cyprus also had connections with Anatolian and Levantine ports where “foreign” captives were sold as slaves. The conflict riddled Balkans became a hotspot for slave traders owing in part to convergence of Byzantine, Slavic (Bulgarian and Serbian), and Turkish states. These groups, as well as enslaved people acquired through Asian and ultimately North African markets, emerged both through slavery and through the political and military nature of their captivity as racial “others” to the Latin plantation owners. According to Bjelić (and others), this established the basis for the radicalized slavery which the political regime on Cyprus (and Crete as well as other Venetian possession), which established clear divisions between Greeks and Venetian (and other Latin) authorities, further heightened.

The presence of Greek slaves in the Mediterranean makes the tension between the Greek origins of civilization and the status as slaves all the more significant. For Bjelić, the “West” not only constructed its racial and political identity on the basis of Greek symbolic capital (in the form of Antiquity), but also Greek labor (in the form of slaves). The author argues that this gives Greeks not only a distinct position to critique the racial basis of Western Civilization, but also a distinctive responsibility. 

Thing the Third

I just read a short article by Eustathios Raptou titled, “Paphos and the Levant during the Hellenistic Period, Recent Developments,” in Hellenistisches Zypern : Akten der Internationalen Tagung, Institut fur Archaologie, Universitat Graz, 14. Oktober 2010 (2013). He describes, briefly, a dog cemetery at the site of Glyky Nero near Paphos. This site produced nearly 70 dogs and nearly 45 complete skeletons buried carefully and deliberately amid human more haphazard human burials apparently from the late Hellenistic period. The dogs appear to have died natural deaths and included both young and elderly animals. The presence of old dogs reminded me of the long history of dog’s loyalty to humans and our appreciation of their service.