Schaeffer's report on the Enkomi excavation siteClaude Frédéric-Armand Schaeffer

Excavations of Enkomi, Famagusta, 30 September 1946.

{hw: Burry Dunan Odele.}

As I foresaw in my previous report, the promises of the workmen and their union's commitments to improve the output of work in exchange for a wage increase, were not kept. So I suspended the excavations, dismissed everyone (except the skilled workmen of the Nicosia Museum). Then I summoned the committee to the gen. secretary of the workmen's union, where I set out to them the conditions under which I would resume work: abolition of shift work men and women, minimum working hours 7 hours a day out of 8 hours on site, dismissal without notice in case of idleness or incapacity, wage daily 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 setting out the reasons which had led to the departure of the Mission.

Visibly worried, the mayor of Famagusta, the er Labour and the gen. secretary of the Communist party put pressure on the spokesmen of the workmen and had them accept the conditions.

Work resumed the next day with newly hired staff and the elimination of the older men. Discipline was instituted and that evening the men had me state that the work arrangement suits them . I now obtain a minimum of 6 1/2 hours a day of work effective 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, work has progressed without difficulty, in an atmosphere of goodwill. The volume per man is 3 m³ per day instead of 1,7 m³ in the previous.

In addition to the central area, three subsidiary areas have been opened to explore the Cyclopean enclosure and the extension of the town. The latter proves to be very dense and covering a considerable area. We have not yet been able to determine the limits to the W. and N. As far as here, four successive levels, corresponding to three superimposed towns have been uncovered. The most recent level is post-Mycenaean, from the end of the 13th c. and of the 12th with sub-Mycenaean type pottery and the characteristic implements, caracwhere iron is already fairly common. The funerary traditions, the arbuilding architecture differs from the previous level. Thick layers of burning attest that the change was accompanied by a general catastrophe. Some quarters of the town were not reoccupied after the upheavals at the end of the 13th c.

Rich, well laid out, with spacious buildings provided with sanitary installations, the previous 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 the well-developed Mycenaean and Cypriot pottery. A catastrophe accompanied by fires and characterised by walls overturned and displaced from their alignment ravaged the town around the middle of the 16th c. The pottery is abundant and together with the other finds, bronzes, scarabs etc., they permit a precise dating. The chronological and stratigraphic parallelism with the stratigraphic with Syro-Palestinian sites is striking. In places one would say that one is clearing a quarter of Ras Shamra, with the difference however that the parts of the town of Enkomi so far uncovered are much poorer in isolated finds. After the destruction of the town m