Kandou-Kouphovounos: University of Athens excavation

At Kandou-Kouphovounos the University of Athens excavated a Ceramic Neolithic settlement of about 2 ha with approximately 39 buildings in successive building phases¹. Eleni Mantzourani directed the work, which Kloukinas, Mantzourani, Marda-Stypisianou and Georgotas date to 1992–2001¹; the publisher's page for the 2019 volume says it began in 1992 and was completed in 1999². The settlement is of the Sotira culture^3,4. Kloukinas and colleagues write that radiocarbon dates and material culture show its main occupation largely overlapping that of Sotira, and that two dates suggest earlier activity and a later occupation that may reach the onset of the Chalcolithic¹.

A geophysical survey covered 3,800 square metres on the south side of the hill and found that the settlement extends north, south and west with no sign of a surrounding defensive structure; excavation the following year revealed features the survey had located⁵. By the 1995 report the dig had found stone foundations of large sub-rectangular structures like those of Sotira Teppes, plaster hearths, low partition walls and up to four successive floor levels in some structures⁶. In phases I to III the buildings were mostly sub-rectilinear and shared walls; phase IV buildings were smaller, curvilinear and detached¹.

Building 5 of phase III held the richest food-processing assemblage on the site, with a mud-platform hearth and about six querns¹. A small cavity in Building 2 held more than 630 jasper pebbles and debitage¹. Two burials lay in pits cut into the floor of Building 15⁷. Other finds include Combed and Red-on-White pottery, an unusual picrolite figurine and many picrolite ornaments of unusual forms^4,6.

Preliminary reports appeared in RDAC in 1994 and 1996³. Part A of the final publication, on stratigraphy and architecture, was issued in print in 2009 by the Department of Antiquities, and Part B, on the moveable finds, appeared digitally in 2019².