Hala Sultan Tekke: the New Swedish Cyprus Expedition (2010-)

Since 2010 the New Swedish Cyprus Expedition (the Söderberg Expedition) has dug the 13th- and 12th-century BCE city quarters and the extramural cemetery of Late Bronze Age Hala Sultan Tekke, using georadar and magnetometer surveys to identify structures and guide excavation^1,2. Peter M. Fischer has directed it from the beginning, and Teresa Bürge co-directed from 2019². The Department of Antiquities of Cyprus was host, with funding in 2012 from the Swedish Söderberg Foundations and INSTAP³. The University of Gothenburg was host and the Swedish Research Council a funder in 2018⁴.

Surveys and the city quarters

The project set out to establish the city's total extent and layout, its occupational history and the nature and development of its intercultural relations². The 2010 georadar survey guided the choice of areas for excavation in 2012³. The 2012 season, from 23 April to 25 May, added a radar survey of about 1.3 hectares that revealed substantial structures, new city quarters, west of Area 6³. In Area 6 the work exposed walled and open spaces in Strata 1 and 2, dated roughly from the end of LC II to the beginning of LC III, with small-scale industrial activities³. The excavators read Rooms R10, R19 and R20 as working spaces for food processing and storage and for textile production, R20 being an open space with several food-processing installations³. The season also produced another pictorial krater with birds, a cylinder seal of black stone and a pataikos pendant figurine³.

From 2016 an added objective was to place the site's later phases in the study of the "Sea Peoples phenomenon", funded by a Swedish Research Council grant; the main objectives stayed the oldest city and its total extent¹. In the seventh season, 9 May to 10 June 2016, a 165 m² extension to the south-east in City Quarter 1 (the former Area 6) exposed three phases of occupation, Strata 1 to 3, of the 13th and 12th centuries BCE¹. The ninth season, from 30 April to 1 June 2018, dug in City Quarters 1 and 4⁴. A magnetometer survey over 23 hectares in 2017 had revealed City Quarter 4 between City Quarter 1 and the cemetery, with regular stone compounds intersected by streets, which the excavators call the largest quarter found so far^2,4. In 2018 a 15 m by 10 m area exposed its latest phase, with ashlar-faced walls, an ashlar bathroom, a storage corridor (Room 84) with pithoi, and a stone installation with crushed murex shell, which the excavators say give the impression of an area related to trade⁴. The 2018 georadar survey of 0.6 ha, carried out by B. Ullrich and M. Carletti, was of very limited value because of clay-rich soil⁴.

In City Quarter 1, small-scale industrial and domestic compounds show three phases. Stratum 3 (LC IIC, 13th century BCE) held storage, food processing, copper slag, tuyere fragments and furnace remains; Stratum 2 was destroyed early in LC IIIA; Stratum 1 (LC IIIA, first half of the 12th century) was burnt and followed by a squatter phase⁴. The excavators report two destruction layers between about 1200 and 1150 BCE and suggest the city was finally abandoned in LC IIIA⁴. Fischer and Bürge describe the city as flourishing from approximately 1630 to 1150 BCE, Wild and co-authors from roughly 1650 to 1150 BCE^2,5. Fischer and Bürge report that surveys and excavations indicated a city of at least 25 hectares². In 2019 a test trench to some extent confirmed structures around the city centre that the excavators interpret as a possible city wall and moat².

The cemetery in Area A

The cemetery lies in extramural Area A, roughly 500 m from City Quarter 1 in the 2020 report and 600 m in the 2016 one^1,2. The mission discovered it in 2014, when a magnetometer survey revealed more than 100 anomalies indicating pits, and the study of burial practice became an important project focus^2,5. In 2016 seven anomalies were excavated: two modern pits, three Late Cypriot wells, a rich offering pit (Offering Pit V) with figurines and over 60 vessels, and a probable tomb (Tomb X) of a wealthy family with about 80 vessels, gold jewellery, weapons, scarabs and seals¹. The 2017 study identifies at least 17 individuals in Tomb X, 8 juveniles and 9 adults, and dates its use from roughly the second half of the 16th century to 1200 BCE (LC IB to IIC)⁶.

Tomb RR, found under a marker of Minoan and Mycenaean sherds, had two interconnected chambers with 13 skeletons in 2018 and gifts of Mycenaean, Minoan, Levantine and possibly Egyptian origin, among them a Mycenaean amphoroid krater with chariots⁴. The eleventh season, in autumn 2020, was reduced by pandemic-related travel restrictions and Cypriot regulations; it continued Tomb RR and investigated Tomb SS, with a Cyprus Institute team supporting the work². Tomb RR gave a preliminary minimum of 54 individuals, and Fischer and Bürge assign the tomb's life span to LC IIA1 to LC IIC1 on the evidence to date; finds include complete vessels, figurines, jewellery, ivory objects, a scarab and a cylinder seal². Only the uppermost burial layer of Tomb SS was reached, under two large deposits of several hundred intact or restorable vessels².

In May and June 2023 the season dug three tombs, among them the undisturbed Chamber Tomb XX⁷. The project website says the season aimed to safeguard and record tombs threatened by farming, erosion and looting, and that Tombs VV, XX and YY were preliminarily dated to the 14th century BCE, Tomb VV having been opened in the 19th century CE⁸. The authors date Tomb XX around 1300 BC; it held 17 individuals and 264 complete objects, among them bronze mirror N988, directly associated with female Skeleton B, and imports from Aegean, Minoan, Egyptian and Levantine contexts⁷. Rainer Feldbacher and co-authors suggest the mirror was made in the Aegean, more precisely Crete, and interpret it as possible evidence for direct contact between Crete and Hala Sultan Tekke⁷. A cemetery season in May and June 2025, announced by the Department of Antiquities, excavated a well and two chamber tombs of about the 14th century BC, with imports from the Aegean, Egypt and further afield⁹.