Kalavasos-Ayios Dhimitrios: the Vasilikos Valley Project excavations

Survey and test excavation at Kalavasos-Ayios Dhimitrios identified a Late Cypriot town of about 11.5 ha whose architecture shares one orientation and shows a high degree of planning¹. Excavation brought out Building X, an ashlar building with pithos halls, in which gas chromatography found olive oil^2,3. The work was done for the Vasilikos Valley Project under Ian A. Todd and Alison K. South, until a final season in 1997⁴.

Rescue ahead of the road

The 1979 work was an emergency response: the new Nicosia-Limassol road was about to cross the centre of the site, and about 10 percent of the site lay in its path⁵. Two small soundings of 4 by 4 m were opened within the road line at the end of the summer season. In late November and December 1979, 75 soldiers of the National Guard worked in the West Area, and machines working in the road line revealed four subterranean tombs^1,5. A wheel loader stripped topsoil from the test square, and the first aim was to clear the tops of walls, with some rooms and small soundings excavated; the labour was inexperienced volunteers, because project funds were exhausted⁵. Square R 14 gave two storerooms with five large pithoi, a Canaanite jar and Mycenaean LH IIIB vessels, which dated the occupation to Late Cypriot IIC⁵.

C. Polycarpou of the Department of Antiquities surveyed the 1979 plans with Alison South, who wrote the 1979 account⁵. The report's future plans included sampling as many parts of the site as possible, to ascertain whether specialised activities took place in different parts⁵.

Streets, houses and workshops, 1980 to 1982

The second campaign dug about 700 m2 some 25 m south of the road line. The north-south street, about 3.6 m wide here, continued, and a rectangular building of at least seven rooms held bronze tools⁶. In 1981, between July and October, the same sector was extended south. Room 45 seems to have been a store for bronze tools, and room 44 had a small hearth, ash and crucible fragments^6,7. No mould was found, and the Chronique for 1981 judged it probable that new bronze tools were cast elsewhere⁷.

In 1982 two new areas were opened. A building of at least 14 rooms near the centre of the site yielded a hoard of three stone and eleven bronze weights with a cylinder seal, and in the North-East ashlar masonry was found in situ for the first time on the site, with four Cypro-Minoan clay cylinders⁸. The Chronique counts 1983 as the fifth season at the site, 1984 as the sixth and 1987 as the seventh^8,9,10.

Building X and the town

From 1983 the Chronique names Todd with South-Todd as directors⁹. Work that summer continued on Building X, partly cleared in 1982 and the largest building found at the site; a fifth Cypro-Minoan inscribed clay cylinder came from it⁹. The cylinders were the only written documents found on the site at that date^9,11. Palaima dated them to LC IIC, about 1275 to 1225 BC¹².

In 1984 the building, which measures 35 by 30 m, was dug further: the central court was fully cleared, as were six rooms east of it and the pithos hall (19 by 7.5 m) with forty or more pithoi^9,11. A storeroom north of the large hall, excavated in 1991, held another 45 pithoi¹³. The 1987 season, financed by Brandeis University, aimed at a complete plan of the building. It found a west pithos hall with six stone piers and at least 47 pithoi, probable kitchens or workshops on the east side, and a refuse pit with about 150 restorable Mycenaean and local vessels¹⁰. A well more than 7 m deep had been filled in the Cypro-Archaic period with stones from Building X walls and complete jugs and bowls¹⁰. Karageorghis called Building X an administrative centre and the residence of the community's rulers, in other words a palace¹⁰. Keswani argues that differences among major public buildings are better explained by independent local developments than by an externally imposed administrative and ideological order³.

Gas chromatography found olive oil in the Building XI basin and, according to Keswani, in 15 of 19 samples from pithoi of the hall^2,3. South gives about 50,000 litres for the storage capacity of the two magazines, Keswani 33,500 litres for the pithos hall from preliminary calculations^3,14. The Chronique for 1984 dated occupation of the ashlar building to LC IIC (about 1325 to 1225 BCE) and its abandonment to the end of that period¹¹. Radiocarbon dates from the roof beams, analysed by B. Weninger and Sturt Manning, were reported as preliminary and clustered around the mid-fifteenth century BC^2,15. Herscher reported that Building X may have been first built in late LC IIB or, more likely, in early LC IIC, and rebuilt in ashlar later in LC IIC¹⁵. The building burned at or soon after abandonment, and no evidence of deliberate destruction was found⁹.

South's synthesis describes an administrative and industrial quarter in the north-east, more modest buildings to the south, still smaller ones to the west, and drained streets; no defensive wall was found, and the town was abandoned at the end of LC IIC¹⁴. She estimates 750 to 1500 inhabitants and argues that olive oil, copper production and export were centrally controlled by an elite who perhaps lived in Building X¹⁴.

The tombs

The notice of the 1984 season describes Tomb 11, an unlooted bilobed chamber with the bones of three young women, a child and newborns, and 432 g of gold jewellery among its finds; Karageorghis dated its use to about 1375 BCE, early LC IIB, and read it as the tomb of people of high rank and great wealth¹¹. In 1992 excavation below the street south of Building X uncovered Tombs 12 and 13. Tomb 12 held several infants and young children, LC IIC pottery and a silver Hittite figurine of a deity on a deer; Tomb 13, looted at about the time of abandonment, still held at least 80 vessels, about half Mycenaean imports, including the chariot krater K-AD 1619^13,16. Tomb 14 lay in the wide street approaching Building X; not intact, it held two gold diadems and a glass and faience gaming set¹⁵.

Excavation of the complex of Tombs 18–20, about 150 m west of Building X, began in 1995 and continued in 1996². Their main use ran from LC IIB to IIC, and Tomb 18 was reused in the Iron Age^2,15. In the final season of 1997, Tomb 21 was excavated; emptied in antiquity, it still held a crumpled gold diadem and gold mouth pieces, and a smash of sherds near the entrance yielded two pictorial Mycenaean kraters⁴. The season also uncovered smaller units north of Building X apparently associated with agro-industrial activities⁴.