Kalavasos: Department of Antiquities rescue tombs

Between 1961 and 1983 the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus cleared a series of tombs at Kalavasos, some of them found during building, road and motorway works, ranging from an Early Cypriot III cemetery to a family chamber at Kafkallies used from Cypro-Archaic II to Hellenistic I^1,2. In 1961 rock-cut tombs were cleared during foundation excavation in the modern village and yielded Red Polished pottery of Early Cypriot III¹. The annual report records seven further tombs of the same cemetery, numbered 15 to 21, whose material was reported at the Larnaca Regional Museum under inventory numbers 1585–1588 and 1890³.

In 1969 a large early Classical tomb at Kafkallies produced pottery from Cypro-Archaic II to Cypro-Classical I, a group of silver ornaments, glass-paste beads and a steatite seal; a village tomb of the same year held pottery only, including two White Painted VI hydriai⁴. At Manikia a tomb reported in 1975 as partly looted contained Base Ring II and White Slip II pottery, some Mycenaean IIIA-B vessels, alabaster vessels, faience beads and boat-shaped earrings⁵. A tomb reported in 1976 as partly looted, in a newly located Late Cypriot II cemetery, held a large Base Ring I jug and White Slip II bowls⁶. In 1982 road construction at Kafkalies exposed a Cypro-Classical I tomb with Plain White VI jugs of the Amathus-region type and two local alabaster jugs⁷.

The last discoveries came in 1983, when two intact tombs found during motorway works at Kafkallies were excavated by the Department. Tomb 3 was a family chamber with more than thirty burials and 263 objects, ten of them gold; Tomb 4 was a loculus holding one burial, silver bracelets, a cooking pot and a Hellenistic I lagynos². The tomb material from 1983 was acquired by the Larnaca Regional Museum².