Athienou-Bamboulari tis Koukounninas: the Department's trial excavation

In 1958 the owner of the land wanted to level the mound at Bamboulari tis Koukounninas near Athienou with a bulldozer, and the excavators made about 30 soundings in two days.^1,2 Porphyrios Dikaios and Ch. Paraskeva conducted the work for the Department of Antiquities.¹ The soundings were each about 1 × 2 m and went down to virgin soil.¹

The annual account describes occupation beginning in the Middle Bronze Age and a reoccupation in the 13th century BCE, when the site was an industrial centre for copper working.² Dothan and Ben-Tor write that there is no direct evidence that melting and refining of the copper took place at Athienou.¹ The trial recovered votive vessels, large pithoi, signs of burning and metal slag.¹ Several large pithoi, reconstructed from fragments found at the site, were then in the Cyprus Museum.² Dothan and Ben-Tor, of the Hebrew University excavations of 1971 and 1972, report that the 1958 soundings were irregular in size, not laid out on a systematic grid, and could not be located precisely from a plan.¹

In 1959 Dikaios and Chrysostomos Paraskeva made a Department of Antiquities survey in the area around Pamboulari tis Koukounninas, and collected fragments of large pithoi, votive vessels and metal slag.³ The later regional history by Toumazou, Kardulias and Counts reports that the site remains accessible from the northern end of Athienou and has been protected with a gated fence.³