October 23, 2025
by Anna Belza
One of our 2024 Harriet and Leon Pomerance Fellowship winners, Anna Belza, provides us with an update:
Anna Belza, PhD candidate in the Department of Classics at the University of Cincinnati and 2024 recipient of the AIA Harriet and Leon Pomerance Fellowship, has undertaken the primary study as outlined in her project proposal, “The Cyclades in the Mycenaean Period: A View from Ayia Irini, Kea.” Her research examines three-thousand-year-old pottery, small finds, and architecture dated to Late Bronze Age IIB–IIIC from the port town of Ayia Irini, on the island of Kea, Greece. The project provides the first site-wide presentation of Mycenaean-period activity in the port town, offering an up-to-date understanding of the efficacy and reach of maritime distribution systems in the Late Bronze Age.
With the support of the AIA Harriet and Leon Pomerance Fellowship, Belza has completed a full draft of her dissertation, produced an article now in press, and presented the results of her study at two academic conferences (AIA Annual Conference 2025; Kea-Kythnos II: History and Archaeology). Her work catalogues and classifies finds previously unaddressed by earlier scholarship on Ayia Irini, recording production techniques, forms, and decoration of ceramics. By reexamining the role of the Cycladic Islands—long dismissed as “marginal” to the Greek Mainland during the Mycenaean period—her research has challenged outdated assumptions and highlights the islands’ active participation in Aegean economic and cultural exchange during the Late Bronze Age.
