Athienou: the Athienou Archaeological Project (Malloura)

At Athienou-Malloura a sanctuary was founded late in Cypro-Geometric III, and the same valley holds chamber tombs of the Hellenistic and Roman periods, a Roman settlement and the Venetian-period houses that followed it¹. The Athienou Archaeological Project (AAP), sponsored by Davidson College and directed by Michael K. Toumazou, began fieldwork at Athienou-Malloura in 1990, after Toumazou's visit to the site in 1989¹.

Setting up the project

Giorgos Koursaris led Toumazou to Malloura for the first time, and the mayor of Athienou, Kostas Sakkalos, together with Christos Hadjiyannakou, persuaded him that such an undertaking was "imperative"¹. The first season, in 1990, had a six-person crew; large parts of the site were mapped with a total station in 1990 and 1991¹. Work has been under permits of the Department of Antiquities, issued under successive Directors from Vassos Karageorghis to Maria Hadjicosti¹.

The project's stated agenda is how rural inhabitants balanced local and external forces in economic, ritual and political behaviour, and it documents every occupational component of the area with equal weight¹. P. Nick Kardulias and Richard W. Yerkes joined as associate directors in 1991¹. That year the sanctuary first found in 1862 was relocated, and the survey team covered 5.5 sq km in its first main phase¹. Walkers in designated swaths systematically surveyed 13.5 sq km, 67.5% of the project area, in 1991 and 1992². The survey recorded 30 sites, from Aceramic Neolithic chert workshops to Roman farmsteads, medieval hilltop lookouts and recently abandoned hamlets; it found no Bronze Age or Cypro-Geometric settlement in the valley^1,2.

On the excavated areas, work proceeded in Excavation Units (EUs) divided into 1 x 1 m Square Meter Units, and all soil was sieved through 7 mm sieves¹. From 2011 recording was born-digital on tablets³.

The sanctuary

The sanctuary lies on the west edge of the site¹. A deposit of 46 sherds from eight vessels in EU 94 marks its foundation late in Cypro-Geometric III; it flourished in Cypro-Archaic II, and at the end of the 4th century BC it was reorganised with a hard-packed floor and a peribolos enclosing at least 400 sq m¹. The finds include limestone statuary from a few centimetres high to over life size, terracotta figurines of warriors, chariots and animals, mostly Cypro-Archaic pottery, incense burners and coins. The statuary is mostly male votaries and divinities, and much of it was damaged by looters and by early Christians¹. Excavation in 1999 went beneath the late 4th-century floor to bedrock and produced sheep scapulae incised with Cypro-Syllabic signs, a large peribolos foundation in the west and a complete 6th-century limestone male statue in a conical cap⁴.

In 2007 a large burnt mudbrick platform, the sanctuary's probable altar, was partly exposed, with a bucranium and a limestone statuette near it¹. The pisé altar was investigated in 2011 and 2013; about 3.50 m north-south by 1.50 m east-west is preserved⁵. An entrance to the temenos from the north, with a threshold stone and an upright pillar, was exposed in EU 52, which also held more than 30 Roman lamps in a 4 x 4 m trench⁵. The 2011–2013 report describes three major phases: initial use in Cypro-Geometric III to Cypro-Archaic I, a first floruit in Cypro-Archaic II to Cypro-Classical, and a Hellenistic to Roman phase that saw the monumentalization of the temenos⁵. Derek B. Counts and Toumazou argue that the goddess Artemis was worshipped at the sanctuary from the Cypro-Classical to the Hellenistic period alongside a principal male divinity⁶.

The tombs at Magara Tepesi

Tombs 25 to 28 are four large chamber tombs cut in chalk on the lower northeast slope of Magara Tepesi, with stepped dromoi and three benches. Tomb 27 is the largest, with a sunken forecourt, a side tunnel and double benches; the tombs yielded coins, gold and silver jewellery, lamps and nearly 10,000 sherds, and were used from the Hellenistic period to the 2nd century AD¹. An intact mould-made lamp signed Romanesis came from Tomb 27 and dates to the early 2nd century AD⁷. Reports differ on the number of individuals in Tomb 27: as many as 100 in 1998, no fewer than 105 in 2004, and 31 in 2010 and 2011^2,7,8.

Tombs 50 to 53 on the northwest summit are four small looted chamber tombs; Tombs 51 and 52 held human bone and Cypro-Archaic pottery, and the dromos of Tomb 59 yielded in 2005 a symposiast stele of late Cypro-Archaic II or Cypro-Classical I date¹. In 2001 a Public Works Department water-line ditch exposed three small tombs, 100 to 102, in a field east of the hill; the AAP excavated them, and they held bones and a few artifacts tentatively dated Roman¹. The looted tombs were excavated as far as possible by the procedures used for intact deposits, with the dromos split by a string and one half dug at a time¹.

Settlement and cemetery

The settlement was founded early in the Roman period, in the first century BC, and habitation continued through Early Byzantine times, was interrupted from AD 647 to 1191, and resumed under Frankish rule¹. Structures in EU 3 and EU 5 with African, Phocaean and Pompeian red slip pointed to abandonment in the 7th century, and EU 3 burnt in the mid-seventh century¹. EU 2 produced a Venetian-period building of 11.75 x 7.5 m with a channelled interior, possibly a granary or flax-processing structure, and EU 3 a Venetian house with a well 8.5 m deep¹. In the cemetery, EU 6, a thick wall, a stone cross, opus sectile, painted plaster and two sixth-century gold solidi suggest an Early Byzantine church nearby; the excavators report skeletal remains of at least 57 individuals in about 25 sq m, where the 1998 report counted at least 22 individuals of the Venetian period^1,2.

Publication and finds

Preliminary reports cover 1990 to 1995² and 2011 to 2013⁵. A 2011 volume edited by Toumazou, Kardulias and Counts counts 15 excavation seasons to 2010¹. The project's material is kept in Cyprus: the volume's acknowledgements thank the Larnaka District Museum for access, and the Athienou Municipal Museum in the Kallinikeion Megaron houses AAP artifacts and a permanent archaeology laboratory with storage¹. A web notice describes a seven-week field school in 2015, from 7 June to 27 July⁹. A 2024 Davidson College news item says the discoveries were all sent to the Larnaca District Archaeological Museum¹⁰.