Ayios Epiktitos-Vrysi: the Birmingham and Glasgow expedition

At Ayios Epiktitos-Vrysi on the north coast, Neolithic villagers built stone-walled houses in deep hollows cut into the soft marl of a headland, rebuilt them on the same plan, and linked them by narrow passages; walls survived up to about 4 m^1,2,3. The site was excavated in four seasons between 1969 and 1973².

Choosing the site

The site was chosen after survey in the Kyrenia lowlands. Its pottery resembled that of Philia, and its walls stood about 2 m high in a modern slit trench, so it promised a well preserved, deeply stratified site of the period before Sotira that could give radiocarbon dates; it was also under threat of development². The work was done under a licence from the Department of Antiquities, which also made land, storage and first-aid conservation facilities available^2,4. The University of Birmingham and the University of Glasgow were the sponsors^5,6,7. After the 1969 soundings the aims grew to an analysis of the growth of a Cypriot Neolithic settlement, a survey of early sites along the north coast, and the collection of faunal and floral data and of material for radiocarbon dating⁴.

The four seasons

P. S. Gelling and E. J. Peltenburg directed the seasons of 1969 and 1971, the first for Birmingham and the second for Birmingham and Glasgow^5,6. From 1 to 20 September 1969 they dug five test trenches (Areas I-V) to judge the preservation, extent and chronology of the site. They found stone-built houses with curved walls, hearths, benches and plaited mats, and Red-on-White pottery dominated; in Area V walls stood up to 2.25 m high and digging to 2.47 m did not reach natural rock⁵.

The second season, five weeks in August and September 1971, uncovered the whole plan of House 1 and four other structures at Site I, and twelve buildings at Site V, five of them examined in detail. Workshops for axes and chisels and for bone beads were recorded, and the first radiocarbon date, for the late rebuilding of House 1, was reported^2,6.

From 1972 Peltenburg directed alone, with I. A. Todd as assistant director and Alison South as registrar^4,7. The five weeks of July and August 1972, sponsored by Glasgow, opened 250 m2 on the west slope of the headland to an average depth of 3.5 m. The earliest buildings were partly sunk into hollows in a natural earth cap, a ditch lay beneath the houses of Site V, and one house had two stone seats and a stone phallus (AEV 389A) wrapped in plant matting^2,7. Systematic sieving and flotation began that year, with A. Legge and J. Atkinson; wheat, barley, lentils, peas, olives and grapes were identified^2,7.

In 1973 the scattered exposures of the west slope were joined into a 575 m2 area with sixteen multi-phase buildings in two partly sunken sectors. The ditch proved to be a 4 m deep barrier across the plateau, the earliest hollow dwelling yielded over a hundred bone needles, and Area VI on the east of the headland produced a further house; three occupation phases were distinguished^1,2. The season lasted six weeks according to the Bulletin de correspondance hellénique and eight according to the final report^1,2. A fifth season planned for 1974 and a study season for 1975 never took place².

Houses, ditch and pottery

Floors were exposed in total, with objects left in situ, plotted in three dimensions, drawn and photographed before removal. From 1971 houses were numbered in sequence with their deposits tied to them, and no grid was needed². Access to deep deposits was by ladder alone².

The houses lay in two sectors separated by a natural ridge². A V-shaped ditch cut across the plateau, 4 m deep and 7 m wide at the top, and Middle Phase houses were built over it¹. In the lowest levels, reached in 1973 about 6 m down under H1, the excavators found a stone chest, a large shallow plaster basin, over a hundred fine bone needles and bone hooks, and pottery different from that of the later houses¹. The pottery was overwhelmingly painted Red-on-White, unlike Dikaios's Erimi ware, and its decoration passes from curvilinear in the Early Phase to linear in the Middle and multiple-brush ripple patterns in the Late^2,5,7.

Dating and interpretation

The final report distinguishes an Early, a Middle and a Late Phase: hollows dug for dwellings and a defensive wall and ditch, then expansion southward over the ditch, then buildings projecting above the surface². British Museum charcoal dates BM-843 to BM-849 were published as consistent with this phasing, and BM-847 (H7.4B) was measured at 5389 +/- 53 BP⁸. Clarke (2007) treats fourteen of seventeen Vrysi dates as internally consistent and places the end of the Late Neolithic near 4000 to 3900 BC⁹.

Peltenburg concludes that the settlement belongs to the Sotira group and that a northern variant with broad-line painting can be told from a southern one with monochrome and combed ware². He suggests, as a working hypothesis, that the subterranean habit may reflect a perceived need for defence². Stanley Price (1977) reads the Early Phase wooden structures in shallow hollows, across which a 4 m deep defensive ditch was dug, followed by stone buildings that extend over it, as evidence for colonisation; Peltenburg wrote that the origins of the Sotira group could not be settled on the evidence^2,10.

Publication and the finds

Registered objects (marked with AEV numbers), sherds and flints were stored at Kyrenia Castle². Peltenburg published the excavation as Vrysi: a Subterranean Settlement in Cyprus in 1982, and wrote there that, since the finds in the Kyrenia Castle stores could not be studied after 1973, most have not been analysed or recorded to publication standard; he noted that the buildings were then collapsing and many finds lost². A 2011 newspaper report says the site lies in the part of Cyprus occupied by Turkey since the invasion of 1974, which has been inaccessible to the Department of Antiquities since then, and that no investigation has been possible there since¹¹. Peltenburg's excavation records, reported in 2011 as over 1,000 photographs and drawings of unpublished objects, plans and sections, are in the Department of Antiquities in Nicosia¹¹.