Apliki-Karamallos: the Late Bronze Age mining settlement (du Plat Taylor, 1938–1939)

At Apliki-Karamallos a Late Bronze Age house, destroyed by fire, had a storeroom that may once have held up to fifteen large pithoi, and copper slag and tuyères lay in and around it.^1,2,3 Joan du Plat Taylor directed limited excavations on the site in 1938 and 1939, after the Cyprus Mines Corporation found Late Bronze Age ceramics.² The rescue operations of summer 1939 were undertaken on behalf of the Department of Antiquities, and the excavator found remnants of ancient mining galleries, one connected with a waste ore dump containing pottery.^3,4 The settlement lay on a high plateau, where trenches A to H were opened and buildings were found in areas A and B.²

House A, in Area A, was an L-shaped structure of at least eight rooms opening onto a courtyard. Taylor identified two occupation periods, distinguished by floor levels and rearrangements, and the complex was destroyed by fire. Six of the storeroom jars were recovered in situ.⁴ Copper slag, tuyères and other metallurgical remains were found, especially in House A.^1,2,3 Area B held the remains of at least five houses of a single occupation period, abandoned but not burnt.² The earliest buildings are dated to Late Cypriot IIC, and habitation continued into the early stages of Late Cypriot IIIA, when the site was abandoned.⁴

Van Wijngaarden's study concludes that its valuables, storage facilities and superior architecture relate it to an elite group in the town, and Keswani proposes that it was an official residence and workplace from which the local mining and primary processing of copper were controlled.^1,4 Stos-Gale and colleagues write that there is no difficulty in seeing Apliki as a Late Bronze Age mining and smelting site.³ Taylor published the settlement in The Antiquaries Journal in 1952, and the excavation was republished as Joan du Plat Taylor's Excavations at the Late Bronze Age Mining Settlement at Apliki Karamallos, Cyprus, edited by B. Kling and J. D. Muhly (2007).⁵⁶