Akhera: Karageorghis's Department rescue excavations

Three tombs opened at Akhera in spring 1960 produced White Slip and Base Ring pottery, many small Mycenaean vessels, bronzes, cylinder seals and a glass-paste pendant in the form of a bucranium¹. Vassos Karageorghis carried out the rescue excavations at Akhera, near Mitsero, for the Department of Antiquities². In 1959 he had excavated a chamber tomb at Paradhisi holding Cypriote and Mycenaean wares of Late Cypriot I to III, the Mycenaean mostly of IIIB style². In spring 1960, the 1960 account reports, looters redoubled their activity and the Department decided to excavate some tombs to establish the importance of the site¹.

Karageorghis described Tomb 1 as a shallow pit without a dromos, with two skeletons. He assigned it to the beginning of Late Cypriot I, in the first quarter of the sixteenth century, on the evidence of its White Slip I bowls, which he regarded as an early type or Proto-White Slip¹. Eriksson later classified all 11 White Slip vessels from the tomb as Phase 2 Proto White Slip³. The tomb also held local painted pottery, an animal-shaped Syrian Bichrome vase, bronze weapons and tools, ornaments, faience beads and a large white-steatite Egyptian scarab¹. Tombs 2 and 3 he assigned to Late Cypriot II; the 1960 account describes both as pits without dromoi, deeper than Tomb 1¹. Pezzi, citing the later publication, describes Tomb 3 as a chamber tomb with a stomion and an oval niche⁴. Their contents included local White Slip II and Base Ring II, silver earrings, three cylinder seals, and gold and faience beads¹.

Karageorghis argued that Akhera was a flourishing Late Cypriot settlement, comparable with Meniko and Akaki, given its position near the Mitsero copper mines and in a fertile, well-watered valley¹. Keswani and Knapp report two burials in Tomb 1, 14 in Tomb 2 and 6 in Tomb 3, and caution that Tombs 2 and 3 alone are much too small a sample for definitive conclusions⁵.