Series·Swedish Cyprus Expedition

Lapithos, finds from the Vrysi tou Barba tombs (301–323)

418 object photographs

Sites: Lapithos, Lapithos-Vrysi tou Barba, Idalion

These 418 object photographs show finds from the Bronze Age cemetery of Vrysi tou Barba, on the shore about three quarters of a mile west of the centre of Lapithos. The Swedish Cyprus Expedition opened twenty-three tombs there, numbered 301 to 323, between the end of September and the end of November 1927, with Erik Sjöqvist in charge of the work. John Myres in 1913 and M. Markides of the Cyprus Museum in 1917 had dug on the same ground, and a few of the Swedish trenches struck tombs they had already cleared.

The prints show Red Polished and White Painted jugs, bowls and amphorae, Black Polished ware, bronze pins, tools and weapons, and beads, among them a faience necklace from Tomb 322. Each label carries the expedition's find number: L.302C.28 is object 28 from chamber C of Tomb 302. Tomb 322 accounts for 74 prints and Tomb 313 for 54.

SCE I published the tombs one by one and set the burials in a sequence from Early Cypriote I to Middle Cypriote II, with most of them in Early Cypriote II and III; Sjöqvist found no relation between where a tomb lay and its date. His field diary is in the Archive as D II:1a, and the dig itself appears in the Lapithos fieldwork photographs.

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. 33–34 and 160–162.