Report on the 1955 seasonH. de Contenson

On Floor IV, the objects are grouped in the South-West corner: a large pithos with wide mouth, flat rim and vertical handles below the rim (Pt. 22, 1.40), an ovoid jug with small foot ring, a sherd with broad parallel red bands, a loom weight of white hard stone with black dots, a bronze rod, as well as a polished bone stylus (Pt. 36, 1.50) and painted sherds related to the "Granary style" type "wavy line", end of the 12th c. , from the beginning middle of Iron I. It should also be noted a bowl with horizontal "wish bone" handle of degenerate type, a handle with incised sign [handwritten: ring drawn around] in the shape of [handwritten: sign drawn] and a rectangular plaque of bone.

Handwritten: cf. figure

Below this floor, one meets, over forty cms. of thickness, a heap of stones in disorder, which doubtless indicates a destruction. In the middle of these stones there remained intact and resting on the white floor. Floor V, at 1.90 depth, a krater Late Cypro-Mycenaean, with opposed spirals in red paint on the buff wall without slip, of the beginning [handwritten: towards the end of] the 13th c. ("Myc. III C 1" )(Inv. no. 137)(Pt. 12). To this layer is attached the architectural lower level, with the dividing wall of large dressed blocks ; it represents the transition [handwritten: the end] of the Late Bronze or Iron.

Floor V, in this area, rests on the rock, except in the middle of the hall, to the West of the dividing wall: there is a tomb formerly excavated and filled with greenish powdery earth between 2.00 and 3.00 depth; it has yielded remains of Late Bronze III: head of a painted animal figurine, "milk bowl".

One can therefore recognise here four phases of occupation: the first is represented by the robbed tomb of the Late Bronze; the second is marked by careful constructions, with the pottery called "submycenaean" of Mycenaean III C 1, beginning of 12th c. on Floor V. The third comprises Floors IV and III, with architectural alterations and the "wavy line" bowls of the end of the 12th c. (Myc. III C 2"); intellectual activity is intense, if one judges by the number of bone styli. Finally, the fourth phase, with Floors II and I, is a period of decline, with impoverished pottery, doubtless at the beginning of the 11th c.