The new discoveries at Enkomi in Cyprus, excavation season of autumn 1950Claude Frédéric-Armand Schaeffer

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during the occupation relating to floors III and II:

In all these houses, the level [handwritten: of the] floors was considerably raised in relation to the preceding floors.

At the same time all the doors and windows giving onto the street which borders the south façade of the old palace were walled up and definitively blocked.

This street, which follows the slight east-west slope of the ground of the town, had been transformed during the winter rainy season into a veritable stream carrying numerous sherds and bones provenant from the eastern quarters of the town, slightly higher.

We were able to identify six layers of gravel alternating with as many layers of sand according to the periodic rhythm of floods and declines.

Assuming that each layer of gravel followed by a layer of sand represents the deposits left by a rainy season, we arrive [handwritten: at a] total of six consecutive years of particularly heavy [handwritten: rainfall] heavy.

At the end of this period, in the area of the old palace, a layer of alluvium nearly one metre thick had accumulated.

The foundry workshops corresponding to floors IV and III had to be evacuated, and the level of the houses had to be adjusted in relation to the new surface of the street lying on top of the layers of gravel and sand.

This explains the considerable raising of floors II, corresponding to the penultimate occupation of the palace ruins, and which lies thus at 1m30 above floor V of the original building.

According to the archaeological material recovered in and on floors III and II, this climatic disturbance of Cyprus took place in the period between 1150 and 1100 in round figures.