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FRENCH ARCHAEOLOGICAL MISSION Excavations of Enkomi, Famagusta, 30 September 1946.
As I foresaw in my previous report, the promises of the workmen and the undertakings of their union to improve the output of work in exchange for a rise in wages were not kept. I therefore suspended the excavations, dismissed everyone (except the specialised workmen of the Nicosia Museum). Then I summoned the committee to the office of the general secretary of the workmen's union, where I set out to them the conditions under which I would resume work: abolition of team work by man and woman, minimum working hours 7 hours a day out of 8 hours present, dismissal without notice in case of idleness or incapacity, daily wage 11 shillings, 12 for those who distinguish themselves. In case of non-acceptance, I declared that I would stop the work definitively and leave the island after giving the press a note explaining the reasons which led to the departure of the Mission.
Visibly alarmed, the mayor of Famagusta, the Labour leader and the general secretary of the Communist party [handwritten: made] pressure on the spokesmen of the workmen and made them accept the conditions.
Work resumed the next day with newly engaged personnel and the elimination of the older men. Discipline was instituted and that same evening the men declared to me that the arrangement of work suits them. I now obtain a minimum of 6 1/2 hours a day of effective work instead of 3 1/2 h., for a price of 11 or 12 shillings instead of the 15 shillings under the old system, per couple (man 8, woman 7 sh.).
Since then, the work has progressed without difficulty, in an atmosphere of goodwill. The volume per man is 3 ms per day instead of 1,7 ms previously.
In addition to the central area, three subsidiary areas have been opened to explore the Cyclopean enceinte and the extension of the town. The latter proves to be very dense and covering a considerable extent. We have not yet been able to determine the limits to the W. and to the N. So far four successive levels, corresponding to three superimposed towns, have been uncovered. The most recent level is Postmycenaean, of the end of the 13th c. and of the 12th c. with pottery of the Sub-Mycenaean type and characteristic tools where iron is already fairly common. The funerary traditions and the architecture of the buildings are different compared with the previous level. Thick layers of burning attest that the change was accompanied by a general catastrophe. Certain quarters of the town were not reoccupied after the upheavals of the end of the 13th c.
Rich, well laid out, with spacious buildings provided with sanitary installations, the preceding town lived through the whole of the Late Bronze period, from the end of the 16th c. with a Pre-Mycenaean phase, then the 15th-13th c. with well-developed Mycenaean and Cypriot pottery. A catastrophe accompanied by fires and characterised by walls overturned and displaced from their alignment ravaged the town towards the middle of the 14th c. The pottery is abundant and together with the other finds, bronzes, scarabs etc., they allow a precise dating. The chronological and stratigraphic parallelism with the Syro-Palestinian sites is striking. In places one would say that one is clearing a quarter of Ras Shamra, with the difference that, however, the parts of the town of Enkomi so far uncovered are much poorer in isolated finds. After the destruction of the Mycenaean town
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