Karavas and other villages: Department emergency tomb excavations, 1953

A large Cypro-Geometric I-II tomb group from the cemetery of Vathyrkakas, between Karavas and Lapithos, was among the finds from emergency tomb discoveries that the Department of Antiquities excavated or recovered in 1953, as Megaw reports in Archaeology in Cyprus, 1953¹. It joined material already in the Cyprus Museum from the discovery of the cemetery during road works in 1940¹. Near Philia, two small tombs with White Painted II pottery were excavated at Aéras tou Vasilikoti after an outbreak of tomb-robbing, and at Alónia near Ephtakómi an intact tomb found in quarrying gave Cypro-Geometric II-III pottery¹. At Grotrí the Department followed up illicit excavation; a Bichrome IV amphora lay in the dromos of a looted tomb, and a Bichrome IV model chariot, possibly from the same cemetery, was acquired by the Cyprus Museum by confiscation¹. Two tombs found in building work at Dhekélia cantonment were secured for the Larnaca Museum, among them a much-defaced Bichrome IV jug of a bowman followed by a horse¹. Building at Ayios Dhométios, near Nicosia, produced two small Archaic tomb groups, including a black-on-red amphora¹.