Episkopi-Bamboula (Pampoula): the University of Cincinnati excavations

In 2001 a University of Cincinnati team under Gisela Walberg uncovered a 9.5 m well at Episkopi-Bamboula and took a complete Red Lustrous arm-shaped vessel from its lower Bronze Age strata¹. Iacovou describes Bamboula as a site that had remained poorly known and inadequately recorded, and notes that Cincinnati began a new project there². A University of Cincinnati magazine article says the Department of Antiquities sought out Walberg to excavate it³. Andreou calls the reinvestigation of the site controversial⁴.

The first seasons, 2001 to 2003

The first season surveyed the site and opened eight trenches in Area E along the Erimi-Episkopi road. The well held mixed upper fill, largely Late Cypriot II and Cypro-Archaic I with occasional Early Cypriot and Roman sherds, and below it Bronze Age strata with loom-weights, ground stone, a Mycenaean shallow cup and the Red Lustrous vessel¹. A Late Cypriot tomb had been plundered in the Iron Age, the looting dated by White Painted and Bichrome IV sherds in the looters' pit; it still held a potter's wheel, an ivory disc, whole unworked hippopotamus tusks, a bronze pin and a gaming stone. Ashlar masonry in the looters' pit suggests a monumental building nearby. Two other looted Bronze Age tombs and a large Roman tomb were also explored¹.

In 2002 six areas were explored. Rock-cut pits probably formed a production installation, possibly a wine press, with a second processing area that had two liquid-collection channels. A collapsed Late Cypriot building lay near the summit, and a second Bronze Age well on the north slope held pithos sherds, one with a seal impression of groups of men and bulls, and dog bones from at least 36 individuals¹. Three tombs to the east included one very rich tomb, used in the Late Cypriot, Cypro-Geometric and Cypro-Archaic periods. Its finds include a gold earring, a bronze fibula, bronze earrings and a seal with a bull's head, and a Cypro-Archaic jar held an individual with chronic osteomyelitis¹.

In 2003 the work moved to the hill summit and the south-east area above the Kouris. Two summit walls of havara blocks, part of a large building, were probably robbed out when a third wall was built in the Cypro-Archaic period; the excavators thought they might have found an entrance to the Bronze Age town. A tomb on the north-east of the summit dated to the Late Bronze Age and was reused several times in the Cypro-Geometric and Cypro-Archaic periods, and it held the remains of at least two individuals. A nearby pit suggests Roman-period looting¹. On the south-east of the hill lay a stone formation 46 m long and about 4.5 m wide, running to a cave in the southern face. Steel writes that its date and function remain elusive. The geologist judged the cave human-carved and probably a tomb, and it was cleared but not excavated. West of the formation four trenches had disturbed strata of mixed Cypro-Archaic, Roman and Byzantine date, with seven Lusignan coins in the uppermost layer, and a large Roman cistern lay to the west¹.

Areas XI and XVI, 2004 to 2009

In 2005, in Area XI, a large rock-cut cistern, Well 3 and the foundation of part of an apparently apsidal structure were found⁵. In 2006 Walberg presented at the CAARI and Department workshop new information on a deep well at Bamboula and a further alignment of the massive Bronze Age wall⁶. Area XI ceramics were studied in 2006 and 2007⁵. Butzer and Harris studied geoarchaeological sections at the north-west edge of the hill, a sedimentary sequence resting on the base of an Archaic wall⁷.

The Department of Antiquities report for 2008 says the walls and floors of Area XVI belong to a Late Bronze Age citadel that overlooked the western side of the Kouris. It also describes work in Area XI under J. Gordon. Three new trenches between the cistern and the wall showed that the apsidal building, predominantly Late Roman by its ceramics, had a rectangular phase, may have been destroyed at least once, and was linked to domestic and industrial use. The cistern water may have been kept in basins⁵. In Area XVI, Wall 37, about 4.80 m wide, divides the area into eastern and western halves, and four enclosing walls average 2.50 m wide^5,8.

The 2009 season lasted three weeks in June. The team dug 27 test trenches in Area XVI to verify earlier results, to test whether walls and spaces showed planning, and to clarify how Wall 37 relates to Walls 53, 47, 56 and 51. Wall 37 proved later than the other four, and a passage with two large steps up to the rampart excavated in 2008 belonged to a later phase^5,8. The Department's report treats Walls 53, 47, 56 and 51 as defensive, citing their width and a comparison in plan and technique with the Late Cypriot I to IIB fortress of Nitovikla⁸. The University of Cincinnati magazine reports Walberg's view that the wall is military rather than civil architecture and an early fortress core of the Late Bronze Age city³. Three fields on and east of the Pampoula plateau were also surveyed, and their surface ceramics range from the Late Bronze Age to the Roman and Medieval periods, with a higher percentage of Roman and Archaic sherds⁸.