Ayia Varvara-Almyras: the Swiss mission

Within an area of under 50 x 50 metres at Ayia Varvara-Almyras, Fasnacht writes, the whole sequence of copper production can be found, alongside domestic activity.¹ A mission of the University of Zurich and the National Museum of Switzerland under Walter Fasnacht investigated the site regularly from 1988 to an autumn season in 1999.^2,3 It followed the 1982 discovery and rescue work.³

In spring 1988 the team opened six trenches on the firing installations, after a magnetometer survey by Jürg Leckebusch.³ In 1989 the open-cast mine was identified about 30 m west of the smelting area; Peege describes a small shaft about two metres deep and less than two metres across, with steps cut into bedrock.^1,3 In 1993 and 1994 further rock-cut chambers were found, and the excavation area was enlarged to approximately 155 m2.³ From 1995 the Sia-Mathiati-Agia Varvara Survey Project set the site in a wider technological, economic and historical context.³ Around 680 kg of slag were found between 1982 and 1999.³

In the smelting area, furnaces, roasting installations, ore-beneficiation areas, tuyères and slag documented the production sequence, and Peege's monograph describes double-chambered, double-decker and freestanding furnaces.^1,3 Rock-cut chambers, hearths and an apparent dome-shaped bread oven lay among the metallurgical features.² Earlier readings took the chambers as ritual spaces or tombs; Peege argues from the excavation evidence that they were more plausibly part of the everyday life of the miners and smelters.³ Fasnacht dates activity at the site to approximately 600 to 150 BC, in Cypro-Archaic II, Cypro-Classical and early Hellenistic phases.¹

Fasnacht, Peege and Hedley published a final excavation report in the Report of the Department of Antiquities, Cyprus for 2000⁴, and Peege's 2018 monograph, Agia Varvara-Almyras: An Iron Age Copper Smelting Site in Cyprus, reassesses the stratigraphy.³ Furnace 1, removed in pieces after excavation, is stored at the Cyprus Museum in Nicosia.³