ICUB invites you to the lecture „Burning Questions from a Prehistoric Backwater: Reexamining Chalcolithic Cyprus”, delivered by Dr. Victor Klinkenberg from the University of Cyprus

On Thursday, 9 April 2026, the Research Institute of the University of Bucharest (ICUB) invites you to the 50th ArchaeoSciences seminar. This edition’s guest speaker is Dr. Victor Klinkenberg from the University of Cyprus (Cyprus), who will present a lecture titled “Burning Questions from a Prehistoric Backwater: Re-examining Chalcolithic Cyprus”. 

The seminar will take place on 9 April 2026, starting at 10:00 (EET), at the Seminar Classroom (former Herbarium) of the Faculty of Biology building at the Botanical Garden in Bucharest (Intrarea Portocalelor no. 3, District 6, basement floor).

Chalcolithic Cyprus (ca 3900-2400 BCE) has often been characterised as a backwater — an island society stubbornly peripheral to the transformations unfolding across the Early Bronze Age Mediterranean and Near East. Where neighbouring regions were developing complex exchange networks and urban centres, Cyprus appeared isolated and idiosyncratic. Undoing this persistent framing requires not just new data but a fundamental rethinking of the questions we ask. Over the past decade, the application of new analytical techniques — including 3D GIS, spatial analysis, isotope studies and micromorphological investigation — has complicated, enriched and in some cases fundamentally revised the prevalent picture.

This lecture traces that transformation through a series of case studies drawn from ongoing research at Chlorakas-Palloures and related projects. Rather than presenting new methods only as solutions, however, Dr. Klinkenberg will also discuss where they have fallen short, and what questions remain stubbornly unresolved. The burnt buildings of Chalcolithic Cyprus serve as a particular case in point — exhaustively analysed, repositioned in broader frameworks, yet still deeply puzzling.

Dr. Victor Klinkenberg is a postdoctoral researcher at the Archaeological Research Unit of the University of Cyprus, where he leads the IGNITE project — an investigation into why and how prehistoric people deliberately set their houses on fire. Funded by a Vision-ERC grant of the Research and Innovation Foundation of Cyprus, IGNITE combines 3D GIS, stratigraphic analysis and a broad ethnographic study to build a more nuanced understanding of burnt building events across prehistoric Europe and the Near East. The project challenges interpretations of house burning as a uniform ritual practice, arguing instead that these events reflect a diverse range of personal, household and societal motivations that can only be understood through rigorous contextual analysis.

His broader research focuses on social structures in the past through the analysis of domestic space, with specialisations in 3D GIS, spatial analysis and micromorphology. He is field director of the ongoing excavations at Chalcolithic Chlorakas-Palloures in Cyprus. His current work includes the analysis of coprolites as a window into prehistoric health and diet, and he holds teaching positions at the University of Cyprus and the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Victor completed his PhD at Leiden University and has held research fellowships in the Netherlands, Greece and Cyprus, publishing widely on digital archaeology, geoarchaeology and prehistoric settlement.

These seminars are an original initiative of the ArchaeoSciences Platform (ASp) at ICUB, which aims to provide an open space for professionals in archaeological sciences worldwide to share knowledge and engage with the latest methodological and theoretical advances in the study of the past. They also offer Romanian students a valuable opportunity to discover the interdisciplinary dimensions of archaeology and archaeosciences.