Hala Sultan Tekke Hinterland Project (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)

In 2022 a surface survey north and north-east of Hala Sultan Tekke, at Palaeophikara, where there had been no earlier systematic research, identified two large and two small concentrations of material ranging from the Iron Age and Cypro-Archaic to the Hellenistic and Roman periods¹. It was the second season of the Hala Sultan Tekke Hinterland Project, directed since 2021 by Ralf Vandam, Jan Coenaerts and Karin Nys of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel under permit from the Department of Antiquities^1,2. The project's announcement gives the aim as placing the settlement in a broader context and reconstructing long-term settlement patterns in the land around it¹.

A pilot study at Dromolaxia-Melissari in 2021 suggested to the project that the town was larger and more dispersed than once thought¹. The Palaeophikara season lasted three weeks in October and November 2022. One of its concentrations yielded possible ritual material (parts of bull figurines, a human figurine head and a tabloid seal), and the project proposes a possible sanctuary pending more work¹.

In 2024 A. Sarris of the University of Cyprus directed a ground-penetrating radar survey². The 2025 season, again three weeks in October and November, covered the Larnaca Salt Lake landscape and the Pyrga region, with magnetometry of about 8,000 sq m by I. Medarić of the University of Ljubljana and the University of Zurich². At Pyrga the team recorded numerous copper-slag heaps, dense Late Roman material and misfired ceramics nearby, which the project reads as a Late Roman production landscape². Late Roman copper slag was also reported at Aliki, in the Larnaca Salt Lake area³. The magnetometry showed linear features and zones of high magnetic intensity, some possibly metallurgical installations or slag deposits and others possibly natural geology^2,3.

Polte De Weirdt, with Vandam, Coenaerts and Nys, published the survey and a map of the Late Bronze Age ceramic distribution in Near Eastern Archaeology 87 in 2024⁴. The project describes its 2025 results as significantly refining the spatial understanding of activity areas in the hinterland and as a foundation for future targeted excavation².