Chlorakas-Palloures: the Leiden excavation

A jar from Building 6 at Chlorakas-Palloures held a copper axe or adze, a flat stone axe or adze and hooks made of tusk; the excavators call the axe the oldest securely dated copper axe known from Cyprus^1,2. It came from the Leiden excavation directed by Bleda S. Düring, with Victor Klinkenberg as field director, which began in July 2015 as a rescue excavation of Plot 568, set up with the Department of Antiquities^1,3. Leiden University sponsored it, with the Byvanck Fonds as funder³. The plot was expropriated for three years, 2015 to 2017, after the owners did not allow archaeological research; a study season followed in 2018^1,3. Press reports describe further excavation in 2022 and 2024^4,5.

The 2015 season ran from 10 July to 10 August, when a team of 24 opened six 5 by 10 m trenches³. By the end of 2017 there were 17 trenches and about 810 square metres¹. The excavators asked how the buildings and burials fit the Chalcolithic of western Cyprus, how Palloures fits the settlement system of the Ktima lowlands, and what the Middle to Late Chalcolithic transition looked like³.

In the north stood Building 1, a round building 14 m in outer diameter with a wall about 1 m thick, white plastered walls and floors and a 2.5 m hearth platform; the authors call it the largest building known from Late Chalcolithic Cyprus. A cache of eight Moni chert flakes lay in a niche by its door¹. Its charred post gave a radiocarbon date of 2875–2835 / 2815–2665 cal BC¹. The southern area produced ten partial buildings, mostly round houses, and a Middle to Late Chalcolithic sequence in trenches BX14 and BW14¹. The excavation recorded 15 burial contexts and 17 individuals, pit inhumations without grave goods¹. Lead isotope work by Düring, De Ceuster, Degryse and Kassianidou concludes that there is no compelling evidence for transformative metallurgy in the Chalcolithic⁶.

The finds from 2015 to 2017 include 1,180 ground stone artefacts and about 8,000 pieces of chipped stone¹. The 2015 season is reported in Reports of the Department of Antiquities, and the years 2015 to 2017 in Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry^1,3. A press report says large reconstructed storage vessels from a burned building were moved to the Archaeological Museum of Paphos⁴. The 2023 report says two plots have been acquired by the Republic of Cyprus¹.