Vounous: the Louvre expedition under Schaeffer (1933)

In 1933 Claude F. A. Schaeffer, for the Musée du Louvre, excavated about thirty tombs numbered 49–79 in the western sector of the Vounous cemetery, some of them pillaged, with the collaboration of Porphyrios Dikaios¹. Dikaios reports that the National Museums of France obtained permission to excavate in collaboration with the Cyprus Museum, and that both he and Schaeffer directed the operations².

Dunn-Vaturi reports that the tombs range from the end of Early Cypriot I to Middle Cypriot II, most of them assigned to Early Cypriot III/Middle Cypriot I¹. A single child burial, in side chamber 50b of Tomb 50, was accompanied by White Painted III vessels¹. She identifies two pithoi from Tombs 64 and 68 as imports from the Syro-Palestinian coast¹. A small chamber cut into the dromos wall of Tomb 72 contained about ten vessels and no recorded bones¹.

The finds were divided. Some were attributed to the museum at Nicosia, though their later routes cannot always be traced¹. Others went to the Louvre under a decree of 6 December 1934, and were not kept together as complete tomb groups; they include a composite vase from Tomb 59 (AO 17519) and a pomegranate-shaped vase from Tomb 72 (AO 17512)¹. Boucher reports that Schaeffer donated 43 objects from Vounous to the Musée d'Archéologie nationale at Saint-Germain-en-Laye in 1934³. Dunn-Vaturi reports that 174 objects remaining in Cyprus were sent to Australia and were held at the Nicholson Museum at Sydney when she wrote, and that Schaeffer kept a collection for study at his home, the Castel Blanc¹.

When Dunn-Vaturi wrote in 2001 the complete tomb catalogue was unpublished; she cites inaccessible plans, dispersed material and numbering errors among the difficulties¹. Her catalogue of tombs 49–79 appeared in 2003 as Vounous: C.F.A. Schaeffer's Excavations in 1933⁴.