Alambra: the Cornell University mission

At Alambra-Mouttes, Cornell University exposed a group of closely set, multi-room buildings on the north-east slope of the Mouttes hill, almost all founded on bedrock, with walls mostly over 1 m high and one wall about 3 m high¹. The final volume dates the main excavated phase of the settlement to roughly 1900–1800 BC¹. John E. Coleman directed the expedition from 1974 to 1985, and Jane A. Barlow, the pottery specialist from the first campaign, later served as associate director¹. The project worked at Alambra-Mouttes and made a brief sounding in 1976 at Pervolia tou Savva (Alambra)¹.

Survey and four campaigns

The principal goal was to investigate a habitation site that would add to knowledge of the architecture and daily life of people in Cyprus and give stratigraphic evidence for the Bronze Age chronology of the island¹. A survey in the summer of 1974 walked the plots of the current landholders to judge whether the site justified excavation; after three weeks the Turkish invasion of Cyprus forced the team to leave the island¹. Coleman visited the site again in January 1976 to prepare for excavation, and a permit was granted that year¹.

The 1976 campaign ran from 5 July to 13 August¹. It opened trenches in Area A, in Areas C-E and in Area F, where tomb Al. 101 was dug, and trench 2 (8 by 3 m) exposed parts of four rooms of a building, with pottery mostly a coarse local Red Polished and some White Painted^1,2. A magnetometer tried for a few hours gave inconclusive results¹. At Pervolia tou Savva a scatter of Archaic stone figurines led to a brief sounding that found no architecture; the figurines suggest a rural shrine, predominantly Archaic¹. The 1978 and 1980 campaigns worked only in Area A. In 1978 the team found at least two large buildings, with walls up to 0.90 m thick and over 1.5 m high and one room of 7.5 by 6 m, and copper pin and crucible fragments taken as evidence of small local copper workshops³. A practicum from Brock University under Lone W. Sørensen and Stuart Swiny joined for about four weeks¹.

In 1980 at least four buildings with shared walls appeared, among them two long, narrow houses with a broad front room and smaller rooms behind, one a cellar with four pithoi, and rooms fitted with platforms, hearths and work surfaces⁴. A University of Texas at Arlington team under Kenneth W. Schaar, the excavation architect, ran environmental studies that year, and Arlan F. Kalina designed and carried out a systematic surface survey that examined 13,653 sherds and other artefacts in 22 randomly chosen 10 by 10 m cells in each of eight zones¹. The 1980 report proposed the provisional name "Alambra Phase" for the Middle Cypriot occupation, since it could not be assigned to a current subdivision⁴.

The 1982 campaign, the fourth and last, extended Area A to the north-east and south-east and cleared six or perhaps seven houses, several with contiguous walls and plaster-lined cavities for setting pots; Building 11 was the most imposing, with walls to 3 m⁵. Study seasons were held in 1977, 1981 and 1983–1985, the last three mostly in Alambra village, and a surface survey in 1984, directed by Douglas H. Kliman, covered 57 of 59 quadrants and found no evidence of habitation in Area W¹.

The settlement

The bedrock floors in Area A were probably swept clean often, so use deposits are thin, and the filling above them is a thick deposit of collapse and wash. The excavators found a single episode of occupation; the buildings appear to have been abandoned and then to have disintegrated, and water damage and soil movement may have contributed to the abandonment¹. Over 110,000 sherds were recovered, 99 per cent classed by Barlow as Red Polished III⁶. Room 8 of Building IV yielded 29 complete pottery vessels, 28 of them concentrated near the south end of the "hearth", as Crewe and Hill describe it⁷. Knapp counts at least 23 metal objects plus moulds, crucibles, slag and minerals, read as small-scale local metalworking⁸.

Four radiocarbon determinations come from stratified Area A contexts: Beta-82995 (3970 ± 90 BP), Beta-82994 (3610 ± 60 BP), ETH-210 (3500 ± 120 BP) and ETH-206 (3440 ± 140 BP)¹. The final volume judges Beta-82995 of little significance for the date of Area A, perhaps a terminus post quem from a hearth predating it or simply erroneous, and finds the other three compatible with the 19th century BC; Cretan and Levantine links are taken to put the abandonment no later than c. 1800 BC¹. Knapp agrees with Coleman and Barlow that the lack of public or ceremonial structures and of clear indicators of authority or wealth suggests an egalitarian society, but calls the use of spits for use deposits rather arbitrary, says it compromises their stratigraphic integrity, and finds it disconcerting that only four radiocarbon dates were obtained⁸.

The tombs

The final volume reports that chamber tomb Al. 101 in Area F, dug in 1976, had been entered by looters through a hole in the top, though its dromos was nearly untouched; two blackened pots lay at the bottom, possibly from a funerary meal¹. Survey work in 1982 found five partly undisturbed tombs in imminent danger of destruction by erosion; these (Al. 102–106) were excavated in Area Z¹. Al. 102, an open pit tomb with niches, held the remains of two people and a knife, dagger, axe and whetstone that may be a tool kit; Al. 103 and Al. 104 were severely disturbed, each with skeletal fragments of a single individual¹. The pottery of Al. 102–104 is fairly homogeneous and thought a little earlier than Area A¹.

The finds

Inventoried finds went to the Cyprus Museum each year for storage, and in 1985 those inventoried since 1982 and all catalogued pottery were deposited there; various scientific samples and unstratified sherds were taken to Cornell with Department of Antiquities permission¹. Forty sherds went to the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in 1976 for analysis². All other objects and sherds judged of little scientific value were discarded in a pit behind the schoolhouse in Alambra village in 1985¹. The final volume is Coleman, Barlow, Mogelonsky and Schaar, Alambra: A Middle Bronze Age Settlement in Cyprus, SIMA 118 (Jonsered, 1996)¹.