Kalavasos-Ayious: the Vasilikos Valley Project excavations

At Kalavasos-Ayious more than 100 pits of varied forms were investigated and no standing architecture was found¹. In the north-west area two tunnels about 3.2 m and 5.0 m long linked three features, with 'porthole' constrictions that gypsum slabs probably blocked². The Vasilikos Valley Project, sponsored by Brandeis University and financed by the National Science Foundation, dug the site in three campaigns between 1978 and 1980^2,3,4.

A site on the line of the road

The site lay on the line of the new Nicosia-Limassol road, which would destroy it almost entirely, and that prompted the soundings and the 1979 rescue excavation^2,5. A contour plan, a 10 m grid and a surface collection were made in summer 1978¹. In November 1978 two small soundings were made near the west edge, with the permission of the Department of Antiquities. The northern one found a shallow hollow; in the southern one, a 4 by 4 m square on the road centre line, half was dug and a deep pit appeared^1,5.

Ian A. Todd directed the project. Alice Kingsnorth directed the summer 1979 excavation, from 5 July to 15 September, when about 1000 sq m were opened in four areas (north-west, west central, east central and south-west) and more than 50 pits were revealed². Work resumed on 8 November 1979 and ran to 18 January 1980, after the road's right of way was widened; Paul Croft directed the excavations of the autumn and winter months, and the north-west area with the pit-and-tunnel complex². The 1979 aims were to date the site, find its limits, understand the relations between pits and exterior features, and discover their function². In three areas a grader and excavator removed deposits to pit level, and all pit deposits were screened through 0.3 cm mesh².

The final season lasted ten weeks, from July to September 1980, and the Chronique names Todd and Alison K. South as its directors, while South's list of field directors gives Croft for 1979 and 1980^3,4. It was kept to finish the north sector, which the road would not destroy, and to try to explain the tunnel complex⁴. Two further tunnels ran from a two-metre-deep bell-shaped pit, one to another large pit about six metres away and one to the surface, and a third tunnel was left unfinished⁴. Road earthworks exposed dozens of pits in the part of the site later destroyed, but the cost of stopping the earthworks meant that most could not be excavated or even planned; about ten storage pits and one oven were dug⁴.

Pits, hearths and tunnels

Large pits were 1.50 to 2.75 m across and up to about 2.20 m deep, some with compacted earth surfaces holding ground stone and pots, and with alcoves. Medium pits about 1 m across served as hearths or ovens, and bell-shaped pits resembled recent grain storage pits¹. Pit 1 in the west central area was 3 m wide at the top, narrowed into a shaft, had several alcoves and five sequences of deposits, and was possibly a temporary shelter; Pit 4 may have been a granary². At the edge of a large shallow pit north of that area stood a group of intact vessels: an upturned bowl over a flat-bottomed cooking pot placed upside down in a painted bowl⁶.

About 30 pits lay in the north-west area, among them Pit 25 (about 2.75 m across), Pit 27 and Feature 111, the three joined by the tunnels. Their fill held domestic debris and figurine fragments². The south-west area gave only shallow sterile pits of probably modern origin². Human remains were very few, with no complete skeleton; Todd's 1982 report describes a very incomplete infant skeleton under two years in a shallow grave without gifts in the north-west area^1,2. South records 405 registered objects, 19 of them figurines, and no metal³; Todd counts over 500 catalogued objects and 37 figurines and fragments¹. About 70 percent of the identified bone fragments were deer, with caprines, pig, dog and fox; Croft says the exceptionally fragmentary bone sample may bias it towards deer^2,7.

Dating and reading the pits

Samples of carbonised material were sent to the British Museum for radiocarbon testing, and four determinations date the deposits several centuries before the middle of the fourth millennium BC, between the Sotira and Erimi groups, according to Todd^1,2. Kingsnorth's section of the 1982 report puts the site after the Ceramic Neolithic of Khirokitia, Sotira and Tenta and before Erimi². South gives calibrated dates of 3645, 3610, 3635 and 3285 BC for them³. Clarke, reviewing the final volume, states that five of six determinations fall between 3990 and 3000 cal BC, at the start of the Early Chalcolithic⁸.

One aim of the project was to test whether the pits served as subterranean dwellings¹. Karageorghis reported in 1980 that reading the large deep pits as dwellings seemed improbable and that it was premature to speak of a village⁶. Todd concludes that the site is most likely a settlement of lightly built huts whose traces eroded, with the pits as hearths, stores and occasional work areas, not long-term pit-dwellings, and that the purpose of the tunnels remains unknown¹.

Publication and the site today

The final volume is Vasilikos Valley Project 8: Excavations at Kalavasos-Ayious by Todd and Croft (2004)⁹. Clarke, reviewing it, calls Ayious one of only two well documented, fully published Early Chalcolithic sites on the island⁸. South states that the catalogued objects are stored in the Larnaca District Museum³. Much of the site has been destroyed by the new road, and Clarke's review says what is left lies under the highway^3,8.