Vounous: the Cyprus Museum excavations under Dikaios

Porphyrios Dikaios cleared 48 tombs, chiefly in the western part of the Vounous cemetery, in three seasons for the Cyprus Museum in 1931 and 1932¹. He undertook the work after seeing extensive looting at the site, and concluded that systematic excavation was urgently needed. The first campaign began on a small scale and became systematic as looting continued¹. About three weeks in 1931 cleared tombs 1–20, about a fortnight in June added 11, and a third season in May 1932 cleared 17 more¹. Rupert Forbes Gunnis collected donations for the first campaign, and a donation from J. C. Gaffiero enabled the third. George Anastasiou, Museum Assistant, was foreman and in many cases expert digger¹. The Land Registration Office prepared the field plan, and Dikaios drew the original tomb plans¹.

Dikaios divided the contents into three periods, 2600–2500 BC, 2500–2300 BC and 2300–2100 BC, corresponding in his scheme to Early Cypriot I c, II and III. He considered the material mostly Early Cypriot II–III, with a few tombs at the end of Early Cypriot I¹. Tomb 6 held 26 large vessels, nine of them large bowls, and he called it a well-preserved Period II context¹. In Tomb 13 he read a lower layer of animal bones and bowls as evidence of animal sacrifice in honour of the dead¹. A Red Polished jug from Tomb 19, T. 19:9, has an incised inscription on its handle; Dikaios counted 22 identifiable signs and argued that it was evidence for an Early Bronze Age script¹.

Dikaios reports that Tomb 22 had been entered by robbers and that its burial evidence and find distribution were lost. It yielded a model of a sacred enclosure, reconstructed from fragments¹. The model, in Red Polished ware, is in the Cyprus Museum, Nicosia^1,2. Dikaios published the excavation in Archaeologia 88 (1940), pages 1–174, after preliminary notices in the Illustrated London News¹.