Project Staff

Michael K. Toumazou

Director

mitoumazou@davidson.edu 

B.A. Franklin & Marshall College
M.A. Loyola University of Chicago
M.A., Ph.D. Bryn Mawr College


Michael K. Toumazou is a Professor Emeritus of Classics at Davidson College. He taught at Davidson College from 1987 to 2022. He specializes in art and archaeology, and offers courses in Greek language and literature, as well as in Classical and Cypriot Art and Archaeology. A field archaeologist with extensive experience in both Greece and Cyprus, he has directed the Athienou Archaeological Project on his native island of Cyprus since 1990. Grants from Dumbarton Oaks, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Science Foundation have supported his research. He was awarded the Hunter-Hamilton Teaching Award in 2003, and is the first president of the new Central Carolinas chapter of the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA).


Derek B. Counts 

Co-Director

dbc@uwm.edu 

A.B. Davidson College
M.A. University of Georgia
Ph.D. Brown University

 

Derek B. Counts is Distinguished Professor of Art History at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he teaches ancient Mediterranean art and archaeology. Counts has been excavating in Cyprus for three decades; his research and publications focus on Cypriot sculpture and its associated iconography, as well as the history of religious cult in Cyprus and the eastern Mediterranean. He is currently co-editing (with Erin Averett) The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Cyprus from the End of the Bronze Age to the Romans, which is set to appear in 2026.

P. Nick Kardulias 

Associate Director

pkardulias@wooster.edu


B.A. M.A. Youngstown State University
M.A. State University of New York
Ph.D. Ohio State University


Professor of Anthropology, Sociology, and Archaeology Emeritus at the College of Wooster, and Adjunct Professor of Anthropology at Youngstown State University, P. Nick Kardulias is an expert in the archaeology and ethnography of  the Mediterranean region, the archaeology of North America, political anthropology, world-systems theory, ancient trade systems, and analysis of stone tools. Currently, he serves as Associate Director of  the Athienou Archaeological Project in Cyprus, and Co-PI of the Ashland/Wooster/Columbus Archaeological and Geological Consortium in Ohio. He served as President of the Oberlin-Wooster Local Society of the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA), 1999-2020; President of the Central States Anthropological Society, 2012-2013; on various committees of the AIA, Society for American Archaeology, and Ohio Archaeological Council. Professor Kardulias was awarded the AIA’s Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award in 2002.

Erin Walcek Averett

Associate Director

erinaverett@creighon.edu 

B.A. University of Georgia
M.A., Ph.D. University of Missouri

 

Erin Walcek Averett is Professor of Art History & Archaeology and Classical & Near Eastern Studies in the Department of Fine and Performing Arts at Creighton University, where she teaches classes in ancient Mediterranean art, archaeology, and history. Her research explores the archaeology of Cyprus and the eastern Mediterranean in the Iron Age, with particular focus on terracotta figurines, ancient ritual and religion, and digital archaeology. She co-authored Visualizing Votive Practice: Exploring Limestone and Terracotta Sculpture from Athienou-Malloura Through 3D Models (2020) and co-edited Mobilizing the Past for a Digital Future: The Potential of Digital Archaeology (2016). She has published on Cypriot archaeology and the Athienou-Malloura site in the American Journal of Archaeology, Antiquity, the Journal of Field Archaeology, and World Archaeology.


Jody Michael Gordon, 

Assistant Director

gordonj7@wit.edu


B.A. St. Paul's College, University of Manitoba

M.A., Ph.D University of Cincinnati

Jody Michael Gordon is Professor of History and Archaeology at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston. He received his Ph.D. in Classical Archaeology from the Department of Classics at the University of Cincinnati, where his dissertation involved an archaeological study of the effects of imperialism on local identities in Cyprus during the Hellenistic and Roman periods. Jody has published a range of book chapters and articles on the archaeology of both Roman and Late Roman Cyprus as well as the co-edited volumes, Mediterranean Archaeologies of Insularity in an Age of Globalization (2020) and (with his AAP colleagues) Mobilizing the Past for a Digital Future: The Potential of Digital Archaeology (2016). In addition to working at Athienou, Jody has excavated in Tunisia, Italy, Spain, and Greece. Jody received the President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching at Wentworth in 2023 and was recently named Wentworth’s Faculty Fellow for Global Education. In 2024, he was elected a member of the CAARI Board of Trustees.