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FRENCH ARCHAEOLOGICAL MISSION Excavations at Enkomi, Famagusta, 30 September 1946.
Sir, the Secretary of the Excavations Commission Direction of Cultural Relations, Paris
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, have not been kept. I have therefore suspended the excavations, dismissed everyone (except the specialised workmen of the Nicosia Museum). Then I summoned the committee to the general secretary of the workmen's union, where I set out to them the conditions under which I will resume work: abolition of shift work by team man and woman, minimum working hours 7 hours a day out of 8 hours on site, dismissal without notice in case of idleness or incompetence, 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 have led to the departure of the Mission. Visibly disturbed, the mayor of Famagusta, Labour leader, and the general secretary of the Communist party put pressure on the spokesmen of the workmen and made them accept my conditions. Work resumed the next day with newly engaged staff and the elimination of the older men. Discipline was established and that evening the men themselves declared to me that the arrangement of the work 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 good will. The volume per man is 3 m³ per day instead of 1,7 m³ in the past.
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 extent. We have not yet been able to determine the limits to the W. and N. Up to now four successive levels, corresponding to three superimposed towns, have been uncovered. The most recent level is Postmycenaean, from the end of the 13th c. and of the 12th, with pottery of the sub-Mycenaean type and the characteristic tools where iron is already fairly common. The funerary traditions and the architecture of the buildings are different from the previous level. Thick layers of fire 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 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 Cypriote pottery. A catastrophe accompanied by fires and characterised by walls overturned and displaced from their alignment devastated the town towards 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 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 Mycenaean town
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