Kalopsidha: Myres for the Cyprus Exploration Fund

In April 1894 John Linton Myres spent seven days at Kalopsidha, which lay far east of any Bronze Age site then known in Cyprus. He found a settlement with signs of a pottery factory and a cemetery of at least two distinct periods¹.

A week in April 1894

A report of the site reached Myres while he was digging at Agia Paraskevi, and he took it up at once¹. Work ran from 17 to 23 April 1894¹. Kalopsidha was one of several small excavations whose principal object, in Myres's words, was to test certain theories current in Cypriote archaeology¹. The catalogues name the Cyprus Exploration Fund as the sponsor². Myres writes that the Fund's committee offered the balance of its 1891 money to the British School at Athens, which applied it to several small excavations¹. Ann Brown says he excavated for the School with the Fund's support³.

Myres recognised the settlement in the road cutting, from masses of hand-made pottery and a layer of cockle shells about 18 inches below the surface, and tested it with a little trenching north of the road¹. The Ashmolean catalogue describes this part of the work differently, as the collection of artefacts visible on the surface⁴. Tombs were opened on sites lettered A to E, on a day-by-day schedule: Tombs 1 to 5 on 17 April, 6 to 9 on the 18th, 10 to 19 on the 19th, 20 to 25 on the 20th, 26 to 28 on the 21st and 29 to 31 on the 23rd⁵. Åström names a foreman, Nikolakis, and prints the names of the workmen from Myres's notebook⁵. Webb counts 32 tombs where Keswani and the Ashmolean catalogue give 31^4,6,7.

The settlement and the tombs

On the settlement Myres found broken hand-made pottery, a fragment of stone wall bound with mud, a saddle quern, loomweights, stone saucers stained with red pigment, a warped clay saucer and furnace slags. He concluded that these indicated a local factory of the red and the painted white wares¹. Myres called the warped saucer a crucible; Åström thinks it a lamp⁵. Webb finds it unclear on what basis Åström posited a pottery factory at Site C, beyond two red-stained stone saucers⁶.

The tombs of Site A (Tombs 1 to 5) were shaft-and-chamber tombs holding only polished red ware, some with relief snakes and crescents or incised ornament¹. Myres took Site A to be the earliest part of the necropolis^1,5. For Tomb 5 Webb suggests an earlier date, EC I or EC II⁶. Tomb 5 produced part of a ring-vase and a bent slab of polished red ware with four shallow panels, which Myres thought might be a primitive shrine or a copy of furniture¹. Sites B, C, D and E held degenerate brown or smeared red ware, painted white ware, bronzes (daggers, pins, rings, tweezers), a silver ring, whetstones and Egyptian-type porcelain beads, with three examples of black punctured ware from Tombs 11, 13 and 26¹.

Tomb 9 held part of a human jaw and several horse bones, among them worn horse teeth that Myres thought had been used as polishers for red ware¹. Tomb 28 contained a thick layer of unburnt bones, apparently all human; three skulls were taken out, one fell apart, and two were left in the Cyprus Museum as too fragile to send to England¹. Tomb 29 at Site D was the only untouched tomb opened there, found about 7 ft down with its door in place; it gave one plain red bowl and a number of porcelain beads¹. Tombs 30 and 31 at Site E yielded nothing, as the earth filling them was cemented by lime¹. South-west of Site A ran a line of large unhewn limestone blocks that Myres thought a very rude temenos; Åström says the blocks are still visible^1,5. One or two fragments of Mycenaean pottery lay on the denuded surface of the necropolis, not in undisturbed tombs¹.

Dating

Myres argued from the black punctured ware and the porcelain beads that the necropolis was pre-Mycenaean and probably close to the beginning of the second millennium BC, on the commonly accepted reckoning¹. Åström equates the two Bronze Age periods Myres identified at the settlement with the Early and Middle Cypriot periods⁵. In Webb's summary of Åström, Site B tombs fall mostly in MC II-III or MC III and Site C tombs in MC I-III⁶. Tomb 11 was dated by Stewart to MC III-LC I and by Åström to the latter half of MC III, and the Ashmolean catalogue gives ca. 1725–1650 BC^4,6.

Where the finds went

The finds were shared between the Cyprus Museum Committee, the Ashmolean and the British Museum⁴. The 1899 Cyprus Museum catalogue lists tomb groups from Kalopsida and notes that some tombs were split with the Ashmolean². Tomb 11, the richest tomb at Site B, was divided in this way^2,5. Myres gave his share to the University of Oxford, where it forms the nucleus of the Ashmolean Museum's Cypriot collection; fifty-three vessels and objects from Tombs 2, 8, 9, 11, 19, 20, 21, 26 and 27 are catalogued there^3,6. The share kept in the Cyprus Museum is poorly traced: Åström could identify only a few pots, Webb says only a small number of the objects could be traced, and Crewe says the tomb material is now lost^5,6,8. The shrine-model slab from Tomb 5 is later cited as Cyprus Museum A1923⁶.

Publication

Myres published his account as "Excavations in Cyprus in 1894" in the Journal of Hellenic Studies 17 (1897)¹. His notebook of tomb lists and sketches is in the Cyprus Museum, and Åström printed entries from it tomb by tomb in 1966⁵. Crewe judges that most of the tombs were poorly excavated and incompletely described⁸. Webb reported in 2012 that Kalopsidha lies in the occupied area of Cyprus and is currently inaccessible for further excavation or survey⁶.