Series·Swedish Cyprus Expedition

Vouni, the Korakas tombs (1–16)

32 field photographs, 171 object photographs · 1928

Sites: Vouni, Vouni-Korakas

Korakas is a ridge about 400 m west of the foot of the Vouni hill, ending in a rocky knoll above the valley of Paradisotissa. Alfred Westholm excavated sixteen chamber tombs there between 26 June and 26 July 1928, during the Swedish Cyprus Expedition's work at Vouni. The tombs lay unusually far apart. Most have a stepped dromos, a rectangular chamber with a barrel-vaulted roof and a doorway blocked with rubble or slabs. The dead were laid along the chamber walls, with the gifts near the entrance; vases were often left in the dromos outside the blocked door, pithoi among them turned upside down after an offering.

Of the 203 photographs, 171 are object photographs of the tomb finds, numbered by tomb and object (V.7.5 is Tomb 7, object 5): Plain White and White Painted amphorae, jugs and pithoi, coarse ware, glass, beads and bronze ornaments. The 32 field photographs show tombs during clearing, among them a skeleton in the dromos of Tomb 15, and the expedition camp. Westholm dated the tombs to Cypro-Classic I–II, the later years of the palace and after; Tomb 11 received a burial in the first century AD. Each tomb has a page, from Tomb 1 to Tomb 16; the daily record is Westholm's notebook DII:3B.

Sources

Gjerstad, E., Lindros, J., Sjöqvist, E. and Westholm, A. 1937. The Swedish Cyprus Expedition: Finds and Results of the Excavations in Cyprus 1927–1931, vol. III. Stockholm, pp. 298–339.
Hellström, P. 2009. "The Palace of Vouni Revisited". In Medelhavsmuseet: Focus on the Mediterranean 4. Stockholm, pp. 28–42.