Kalavasos Prehistoric Project (Kokkinoyia and Pamboules)

At Kalavasos-Kokkinoyia the University of East Anglia found chambers linked in three dimensions by tunnels and apertures¹. On the floor of chamber F70 stood a Combed ware bottle placed inside a spouted bowl². Joanne Clarke directed the work from 2002 to 2009 for the University of East Anglia³. Renewal was judged important because Dikaios's 1940s excavations were limited in scope and Kokkinogia was unusual for a Late Neolithic site on account of its underground features¹. The 2002 objectives were to determine whether the site was a settlement and to compare the subterranean features with other Late Neolithic and Early Chalcolithic underground complexes¹.

The first season, in 2002, found ten subterranean features along the ridge edge, seven of them pits². In 2003 two soundings at Kalavasos-Pamboules exposed cobble-built walls with a plaster surface and Late Chalcolithic pottery in one, and a small rectilinear stone feature with nearby human bone in the other². In 2005 trenches opened on the plateau as Area T, placed where a resistivity survey of a 40 x 40 m area had shown anomalies¹. Area Q was a pit field with ground stone and broken pottery deposited haphazardly; Area U held the chamber and tunnel complex^1,4. In Area T, Feature 136 was an oval cut with successive floors and a small fire pit, interpreted as a possible structure, and in Feature 199 Burial 229 was an intact burial in a shallow bedrock pit 1.20 m in diameter and 0.59 m deep^1,4. The final season, in April 2009, completed the first phase of the Kalavasos Prehistoric Project and found at least six individuals interred in pits and chambers around the structure³.

Clarke identifies the pottery as representing the end of the Late Neolithic, with Early Chalcolithic secondary use in some features, and argues that the site was used across the transition with no discernible break^1,4. She calls the use of the underground features an enigma and considers that the evidence strongly suggests purposes other than the normal day-to-day activities of Late Neolithic settlements⁴. The report on the 2004 to 2007 seasons appeared in 2009, edited by Alexander Wasse, and states that whether Kokkinogia was a genuine settlement is still not clear¹. Publication of Kokkinogia was pending when the 2009 annual report appeared, with future research planned at Pampoules³.