Khirokitia: the 1972 trial trench (Stanley Price and Christou)

A 2 x 2 m sounding at Khirokitia in 1972 went down 4 m without reaching bedrock, and four charcoal samples from it were dated for the Neolithic settlement^1,2. The work was done for the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus by N. P. Stanley Price and Demos Christou, who is identified as Assistant Archaeological Officer^1,3.

Stanley Price's sounding was meant to clarify the ceramic and aceramic stratigraphy and to collect more radiocarbon samples bearing on how long the aceramic occupation lasted². The Department's annual account adds that bones, shells and plant remains were also sought¹. It reports 1.50 m of topsoil, with combed and Red Lustrous ware, above a pisé stratum and an aceramic deposit¹. The structure sampled was Tholos XLVI, and the four charcoal samples (BM-852 to BM-855) came from aceramic contexts². Stanley Price set the four new determinations beside three older dates from the site. He argued that the seven formed a homogeneous group placing Khirokitia's floruit at about 5500 radiocarbon BC, with a median of 5495 BC, and cautioned that the calendar date awaited reliable calibration tables². He regarded the fourth-millennium pottery as the product of a reoccupation of the site in the fourth millennium BC².

Christou worked separately, clearing the other half of a tholos excavated earlier¹. Beneath its floor lay the almost complete skeleton of an adult woman, with two stone axeheads, two bone needles, three small stone vessels and many seashells¹.