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… conquered by Ramesses III around 1163 according to the short chronology (Rowton). At Enkomi, with calm restored, craftsmen set up their workshops among the walls still standing of the burnt palace and fitted out their modestes habitations. The archaeological material is now characterised p by the appearance of the first everyday iron objects and of an original glyptic hitherto unknown on the island. One notes there the complete absence of the Mycenaean pottery, replaced by pottery of the sub-Mycenaean type (the debased levanto-helladic ware of Gjerstad and the decorated LCIII ware of Furumark). We were also able to establish that all the copper ingots coming from Enkomi, hitherto attributed to the 14th-13th c., in fact date from this period post-Mycenaean, our Cypriot Iron I (1200-1050). The new occupants of Cyprus at the beginning of the Iron Age enjoyed for 4 or 5 generations a peace that no external intervention disturbed. They had however at Enkomi to face a threat whose nature one would not readily suspect ja in a country with such a dry present climate: flooding during the rainy season in the western quarters of the town, sisituated below. The levels of floors III and II must have been considerably raised in relation to the earlier floors. At the same time all the openings in the façade onto the old palace were walled up and blocked. The street that runs along this façade and follows the slight east-west slope of the town site was transformed during the winter rainy season into a veritable stream carrying many sherds and bones coming from the quarters to the east of the town, slightly higher. We were able to identify six layers of gravel alternating with as many layers of sand following the rhythm of periodic floods and recessions, which represents about six consecutive years of particularly abundant precipitation. At the end of this period, in the area of the old palace, a layer of alluvium of nearly one metre in thickness had accumulated. 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. We are thus led to relate it to the general deterioration of climate that one observes in protohistoric Europe precisely in the 12th century, and which profoundly influenced the occupation of the land at the end of the Bronze Age and the beginning of the époque of Hallstatt (cf. our study La Question des variations du climat à l'Age du Bronze et du Fer, Bulletin Archéolog. 1928/29, p. 451 et seq.). From the period corresponding to floor III (first half of the 12th c. began to mingle with the remains of Cypriot Iron I, the witnesses of
65 figures hard to readstruck struck outadded written in above” jug ditto, and what it repeatsword reading not certain
