Bodies of Evidence: Burial, Memory and the Recovery of Missing Persons in Cyprus

In the course of hostilities between Greek and Turkish Cypriots between 1963 and 1974, over 2000 persons, both Greek and Turkish Cypriots, went "missing" in Cyprus, an island in the Mediterranean with a population distribution of 80% Greeks and 18% Turks. This represents a significant number for a population of only 600,000. Few bodies have been recovered; most will probably not be. All are still mourned by their surviving friends and relatives. The conflict has still not been resolved and the memories are still alive.

Paul Sant Cassia is Reader in Anthropology at the University of Durham, UK, and Editor of History and Anthropology. He previously lectured at the University of Cambridge, UK, where he was Curator of the Anthropology Collections at the Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (1985-1990). He was Visiting Professor at the Universities of Paris (Nanterre) (2000), Aix en Provence, and Malta (1992-94). He has conducted anthropological research in the Mediterranean (Cyprus, Greece, Tunisia, and Malta), and has published on politics, banditry and violence, oratory, property transmissions, family and kinship, and ethnomusicology. He is the author (with Constantina Bada) of The Making of the Modern Greek Family (Cambridge University Press, 1992).