Erimi-Pamboula: Dikaios's excavations

Porphyrios Dikaios excavated Erimi-Pamboula from 1933 to 1935¹. Maria Hadjigavriel describes it as the site where he first defined the Chalcolithic, dividing it at first into Chalcolithic I and II; the period was later subdivided into three phases².

Casson, writing in 1937, described Erimi as a large settlement with deposits several metres deep and classified its culture as Neolithic³. Dikaios's excavations produced the tip of a chisel from a depth of 2.2 to 2.4 m, which Gale dated to about 3200 B.C.⁴. Gale also identified two further copper-based objects among the Erimi finds in the basement of the Nicosia Museum. A hook is tied by a 1933 excavation day book to a Chalcolithic context at 0.4 to 0.6 m and was not published by Dikaios. A metal fragment, perhaps a knife, has no recorded find number, level or trench, and the day book does not mention it⁴. Christine Winkelmann notes that Dikaios's Erimi figurines were found in excavation debris and that many were incompletely described in the final report⁵.

Dikaios published "The Excavations at Erimi, 1933–1935: Final Report" in the Report of the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus for 1936⁶. Diane L. Bolger's Erimi-Pamboula: A Chalcolithic Settlement in Cyprus appeared in 1988⁷.