Aredhiou-Vouppes: the Lampeter project

At Aredhiou-Vouppes, also called Lithosouros, Louise Steel and a team from the University of Wales Lampeter excavated two non-domestic buildings of the 13th century BCE, with about 10 kg of copper slag in and around Building 1¹. The project began in 2004 with an intensive survey on a 10 m grid over Fields 1 to 5, about 2 ha, together with geophysics, to establish the size, date and nature of the settlement². The survey recovered 2385 sherds, 1743 (73%) of them Late Cypriot, with the densest concentration in Field 4². Geophysics and surface density were then used to choose excavation areas². Two trenches were opened in 2005², Tomb 1 was excavated in 2006¹, geophysics in 2007 identified the north wall of Building 1, and in 2008 work continued in Area 243/244 beside Building 1 and in Room 208 of Building 2³.

Building 1 is an L-shaped structure with a 0.5 m thick wall of diabase stones¹. Its sunken Room 103, about 7.5 x 5.0 m, held fragmentary fine tableware, Minoan and Mycenaean imports, Base Ring bull fragments and a horse figurine fragment, and Steel reads it as a restricted ceremonial space¹. Building 2 lies about 25 m to the north¹ and has a well 5.2 m deep³. Steel proposes that it was a barn or warehouse, and notes that there is no evidence for metalworking at the site itself¹. No domestic buildings were found, and Steel suggests that terracing and ploughing destroyed household remains¹. Steel says that Tomb 1 had been looted and almost emptied in antiquity; it held a Black Slip Wheelmade jug, a hook-tanged bronze spear and a Mycenaean stirrup jar¹.

The main occupation is Late Cypriot IIC; a Middle Cypriot III to Late Cypriot I phase is attested by small amounts of pottery but no clear living space, and there is no clear evidence for Late Cypriot IIIA¹. Steel argues that the site was more complex and multifunctional than survey-based typologies of inland production centres allowed¹. Steel's full analysis appeared in the American Journal of Archaeology in 2016. It reports five seasons of fieldwork¹ and says that the pottery results will be presented in the final publication of the site¹.