ExcavationForeign missions

Alambra and Kalopsidha: Gjerstad's Bronze Age soundings (1923–1924)

Name: Alambra and Kalopsidha: Gjerstad's Bronze Age soundings (1923–1924)
Start: 1923
End: 1924

1923–1924 · Alambra-Mavroyi

Also known as Kalopsidha: Gjerstad's excavations at Tsaoudhi Chiflik and Koufos

Einar Gjerstad's doctoral fieldwork of 1923 to 1924: a two-room house at Alambra and a ten-room Middle Cypriot III house at Kalopsidha, dug stratigraphically to bedrock.

Map of Cyprus

Where the work took place

Main site
Also worked at
Ground above 200, 500, 1,000 m

Sites

1Alambra-Mavroyi (approx.)
2Alambra (approx.)
3Alambra-Mouttes
4Kalopsidha (approx.)
5Kalopsidha-Koufos (approx.)

Modern coastline (OpenStreetMap) and relief (Copernicus DEM).

The project

Einar Gjerstad excavated stratified Bronze Age deposits at Alambra and Kalopsidha in 1923 to 1924, part of his doctoral research. Frankel names three Bronze Age sites in his stratigraphic excavation (Alambra, Kalopsidha and Nikolidhes), says it gave him overlapping series of stratified deposits for closer analysis of the pottery, and calls it the major new contribution of his work¹.

In 1924 Gjerstad excavated a house at Alambra, at Mavroyi, together with a trench in its vicinity^2,3. He reported two nearly rectangular rooms without a connecting door, opening onto a yard enclosed by walls and fences, and dated its construction to the end of Early Cypriot III; Monahan reports his date as EC III to MC I^2,3.

At Kalopsidha, Gjerstad described a house of ten rooms with an inner open courtyard and an outer courtyard, built of mud-brick walls on rubble-stone foundations, and assigned it to Middle Cypriot III; below it he dug stratigraphically down to bedrock. He interpreted the rooms as workrooms, storerooms and bedrooms, and one courtyard as used for cooking². Fisher describes the same house as having 11 rooms around an inner open court⁴. A trial trench at Kalopsidha-Koufos is also placed within his work there⁵. Gjerstad published the results in his Studies on Prehistoric Cyprus (1926), whose pages 19 to 27 concern the Alambra house and pages 27 to 37 the Kalopsidha house¹.

Directors and team

Directed by

Einar Nilson Gjerstad1923–1924

References

1.D. Frankel, 1974, Middle Cypriot White Painted Pottery: An Analytical Study of the Decoration, Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology.
2.E. Gjerstad, 1980, Ages and Days in Cyprus, Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology Pocket Book 12.
3.Eilis M. Monahan, 2010, Dwelling with the Dead: Mortuary Landscapes and the Production of Community During the Prehistoric Bronze Age on Cyprus, MA thesis, Cornell University.
4.K. D. Fisher, 2014, Rethinking the Late Cypriot built environment, The Cambridge Prehistory of the Bronze and Iron Age Mediterranean.
5.I. Hein, 2009, The formation of Cyprus in the 2nd millennium B.C.: Studies in regionalism during the Middle and Late Bronze Ages.

Sources

1.The Cypriot Bronze Age: Some Recent Australian Contributions to the Prehistory of Cyprus, p. 25.
2.Cypriot Ceramics: Reading the Prehistoric Record, p. 67.
3.Excavations at Kalopsidha and Ayios Iakovos in Cyprus, p. 48; p. 8; p. 116; p. 138; p. 69; p. 89; p. 227.
4.The formation of Cyprus in the 2nd millennium B.C.: Studies in regionalism during the Middle and Late Bronze Ages, p. 82.
5.Ages and Days in Cyprus, p. 64; p. 42.
6.The Development of Pre-State Communities in the Ancient Near East: Studies in Honour of Edgar Peltenburg, p. 65.
7.Early Enkomi: Regionalism, Trade and Society at the Beginning of the Late Bronze Age on Cyprus, p. 50.
8.Chronique des fouilles et découvertes archéologiques à Chypre en 1959, p. 281.
9.Chronique des fouilles et découvertes archéologiques à Chypre en 1976, p. 748.
10.Dwelling with the Dead: Mortuary Landscapes and the Production of Community During the Prehistoric Bronze Age on Cyprus, p. 73; p. 77.
11.Middle Cypriot White Painted Pottery: An Analytical Study of the Decoration, p. 2.
12.The Swedish Cyprus Expedition: The Cyprus collections in Stockholm and the Swedish excavations after the SCE, p. 410.
13.Greek and Cypriot Pottery: A Review of Scientific Studies, p. 330.
14.The Cypriot Bronze Age, p. 46.
15.The Excavations at Vounous-Bellapais in Cyprus, 1931–2, p. 119.
16.Excavations at Phaneromeni: 1975–1978, p. 62.
17.Rethinking the Late Cypriot built environment, p. 402.
18.Settlement, sanctuary and cemetery in Bronze Age Cyprus, p. 46.
19.Cyprus: From the Stone Age to the Romans, p. 55.
20.White Painted V eye-pitchers in Cyprus and the Levant, p. 98.
21.Color variation on prehistoric Cypriot Red Polished pottery, p. 207.