Ayios Sozomenos: Gjerstad's excavation of the Bronze Age fortifications (1924)

In 1924 Einar Gjerstad excavated the wall foundations of a rectangular building measuring 19 × 8.3 m at Glyka Vrysis, a settlement below the Ayios Sozomenos plateau, near a spring on the eastern bank of the Alikos river¹. Fortin describes rubble-stone foundations carrying mud-brick superstructures, with internal rooms, an eastern corridor, and adjacent rooms and a courtyard¹.

Fortin dates the building to Late Cypriot IA. Earlier evidence below its first floor gives a terminus post quem of Middle Cypriot III, and in his reconstruction the building was destroyed toward the end of Late Cypriot IA, restored at the beginning of Late Cypriot IB, and abandoned at the end of Late Cypriot IB¹. Gjerstad interpreted it as a military station or fortress; Fortin rejects the designation, arguing that the building has little in common with a fortification, and compares it with domestic architecture at Alambra-Moutes¹. Brown notes that Glyka Vrysis has been interpreted as a warehouse on the evidence of abundant pithos sherds, and argues that storage and defensive functions need not be mutually exclusive².

Göransson reports that Gjerstad excavated at Nikolidhes, a plateau site about 3 km north of Idalion, during his 1923–24 research in Cyprus. The structure there had two building phases, both dated in that account to Late Cypriot I, and Gjerstad interpreted it as a small fortress³.