More archeological discoveries in Cyprus

ARCHAEOLOGISTS have uncovered what they call “an archaeological window” on the communities that provided the foundation for urbanised civilisation on Cyprus, the Antiquities Department said yesterday.

Renewed excavations at the Bronze Age community of Politiko-Troullia, in the copper-bearing foothills of the Troodos Mountains, found a series of households around a large communal courtyard. The site is 25 km southwest of Nicosia near the Ayios Irakleidios Monastery.

The find produced evidence of intensive animal husbandry and crop processing, copper metallurgy and sophisticated ceramic technology during the Middle Bronze Age, just prior to the advent of cities on Late Bronze Age Cyprus.

The Politiko-Troullia settlement, dated at 2000-1500BC, was the predecessor of ancient Tamassos the seat of a centrally important kingdom during the subsequent Iron Age.

The Antiquities Department have said the 2009 excavations at the west sector provided evidence of occupation at Politiko-Troullia “somewhat earlier” in the Middle Cypriot Period than the evidence from the east sector excavated in 2007, which dates to the latter portions of the Middle Cypriot Period.

“These results suggest the potential of a dispersed farming community comprised of earlier households with shared communal space and later discrete room blocks,” the Department said.

“The inhabitants of Politiko-Troullia appeared to have shifted from being mixed hunters and farmers to dedicated farmers and herders.”

Future excavations hope to reveal stratified evidence that may carry the record of settlement at this community earlier into the Bronze Age.

The excavations were carried out by Dr. Steven Falconer and Dr. Patricia Fall of Arizona State University, and involved graduate and undergraduate students from Cyprus, Canada and the United States.

Content by courtesy of the Cyprus Mail 2009