More than a Church: Late Antique Ecclesiastical Complexes in Cyprus

Boğaziçi University Byzantine Studies Research Center  (https://byzantinestudies.bogazici.edu.tr/) cordially invites you to a lecture by Catherine Keane, entitled "More than a Church: Late Antique Ecclesiastical Complexes in Cyprus" as part of the lecture series "Changes on the Horizon: Economy of the Late Antique Mediterranean".

The lecture will take place in person at Boğaziçi University, South Campus, M1100, on November 20, 2025, at 5:00 p.m.

To register, if you are not affiliated with Boğaziçi University, please contact byzantinestudies@bogazici.edu.tr.

ABSTRACT

The church annexes of late antique Cyprus were bustling places of industry, producing olive oil, flour, bread, ceramics, and metal products. From its earliest centuries, the church was an economic player, participating in agricultural and artisanal production. _More than a Church_ brings together architecture, ceramics, numismatics, landscape archaeology, and unpublished excavation material, alongside consideration of Cyprus's dynamic and prosperous 4th–10th-century history. Keane offers a rich picture of the association between sacred buildings and agricultural and industrial facilities— comprehensively presenting, for the first time, the church's economic role and impact in late antique Cyprus.

BIO
Catherine Keane (PhD, 2021) is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Tübingen, Germany. Her research interests in late antique and Byzantine archaeology include the economic activity of the early Church, water infrastructure, and agricultural and artisanal production.  After her M.Sc. at the University of Edinburgh in Mediterranean Archaeology, she did a PhD at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich in Late Antique Archaeology and Byzantine Art History. She has held postdoctoral fellowships at Koç University (ANAMED), the Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute, Philipps-Universität Marburg, the University of Tübingen, Macquarie University, and from 2026 onward, the University of Glasgow.