Gastria-Alaas: Karageorghis's rescue excavation

Five of the six tombs dug in the Alaas cemetery near Gastria in 1973 were still intact. Vassos Karageorghis directed the rescue excavation for the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus in 1973 and continued it until July 1974, the month of the Turkish invasion. The cemetery lies between Gastria and Ayios Theodoros, in the Valia forest^1,2. Karageorghis reports that a surface exploration found substantial occupation since the Late Bronze Age, that the isolated location was exposed to looting and that several tombs had already been clandestinely opened¹.

At Gastria-Alaas Karageorghis dated the six tombs to the first half of the 11th century BC and reported Proto-White Painted pottery with Proto-Bichrome decoration. The chambers were small and sometimes had no dromos; where there was one it was long and narrow, and one tomb combined chamber and dromos in a single partly roofed structure. The finds included stirrup jars, cylindrical-bodied bottles, kylikes, zoomorphic vessels, pyxides, askoi, jugs, bowls, amphoriskoi and large amphorae¹. Two tombs yielded Syrian lentoid flasks and two yielded gold earrings; the one plundered tomb produced four bronze scales from a cuirass, and fibulae came from other tombs¹. A Mycenaean IIIA pear-shaped jar was described by Karageorghis as an heirloom¹. He called the burial material rich and argued that continued excavation was desirable¹.

The work before July 1974 uncovered more tombs with many Proto-White Painted vases, and Karageorghis described the cemetery as Late Cypriot III B. One tomb was a rectangular trench whose covered half held the burial chamber and whose open half served as the dromos, the two separated by a pebble screen wall². Ioannou's later account counts nine tombs in all, three without a dromos and the others with a small chamber and short dromos³. Karageorghis's Alaas. A Proto-Geometric Necropolis in Cyprus appeared at Nicosia in 1975⁴.