Series·Swedish Cyprus Expedition

Lapithos, finds from the Kastros tombs 416–429

183 object photographs · 1927–31

Sites: Lapithos, Lapithos-Kastros

Kastros is the Iron Age cemetery of Lapithos, cut into the rock below the plateau of Anastasia and excavated by the Swedish Cyprus Expedition in November and December 1927 and in the spring of 1928, with Erik Sjöqvist in charge. SCE I numbered the tombs 401 to 429 and dated them from Cypro-Geometric I to Cypro-Geometric III.

These 183 object photographs cover the later-numbered tombs. Most come from Tomb 420 (64 prints) and Tomb 417 (57), the two placed by SCE I among the earliest burials, in Cypro-Geometric I A, followed by Tomb 428 and Tomb 425. The prints show White Painted I amphorae, jugs and bowls, White Painted III and Black Slip vessels, bronze pins and pendants, and gold rings, pendants and strips from tombs 422 and 425; a number are drawings. One print collects faces and figures from the whole Kastros group.

The volume's summary notes a child buried in a bowl in the niche of Tomb 420, and interprets some skeletons in tombs 412, 417 and 420 as people killed at the funeral. Sjöqvist's diary of the dig is D II:1b. Tombs 401–415 are in the previous series, and photographs taken while the tombs were open are among the Lapithos fieldwork.

Sources

Gjerstad, E., Lindros, J., Sjöqvist, E. and Westholm, A. 1934. The Swedish Cyprus Expedition: Finds and Results of the Excavations in Cyprus 1927–1931, vol. I. Stockholm, pp. 172–173 and 264–265.