Kissonerga-Mylouthkia: the Glasgow and Edinburgh pit excavations

Between 1976 and 1981 Edgar J. Peltenburg investigated Kissonerga-Mylouthkia as the first phase of the Lemba Archaeological Project, and the pits he dug there proved to be earlier than the nearby settlement of Lemba^1,2. The work was survey and excavation, recorded as Units 1 to 89, and the aim was to decide whether the contrast with Lemba was functional or chronological. Radiocarbon dates resolved the question, and work was curtailed in 1981 because of commitments at Lemba¹.

In 1976 a limited sounding on a terrace about 150 m from the sea found square pits and extensive deposits of ash, flint, bone and shell, with no architecture or stone food-preparation equipment; the chronicle interpreted the place as a temporary camp³. In 1977 one of twenty large square pits was fully excavated. It had been recut several times, reached 6 by 6.75 m and 2 m deep, and held abundant bones, burnished bowls, a disarticulated skeleton and steatite and clay figurines⁴. Three more pits followed in 1978, out of twenty-nine then known. The fill of F16 included ash, heat-damaged grinding stones, red ochre, Basket ware, figurines and ivory objects, and a radiocarbon determination placed F1 and F16 in the early third millennium BC⁵. That chronicle also described a copper hook from another pit as potentially among the earliest worked metal found in Cyprus⁵. In 1979 F16, 1.60 m deep, yielded notched deer antlers, and Sue Colledge confirmed rye and grape in its plant remains⁶.

Elliott later gave calibrated ranges of 3620 to 3490 BC for Feature 16 and 3650 to 3500 BC for Feature 1, about 1,000 years before Lemba Area II². The 2003 final report states that the datable material from the 1970s pits was virtually all Early Chalcolithic¹. Material from the project is mainly in the Paphos Museum, with a few display objects in the Cyprus Museum, and the site records are held at the University of Edinburgh¹.