Kition-Bamboula: the French Mission

On the hill of Kition-Bamboula in Larnaca, the Lyon mission established a stratigraphic sequence from Geometric I to Hellenistic in a sanctuary, and found north of the hill the shipsheds of a harbour, each shed 6 m wide, built at the end of the 5th century BC and reworked in the 4th^1,2. Marguerite Yon directed the mission from 1976, until 2007 according to the 2020 study by Sabine Fourrier, Rabot and Bérénice Chamel^3,4. The 1976 report names Université Lyon II as sponsor and the Institut F.-Courby as partner³; the CNRS appears as a partner in 1987⁵.

Resuming the Swedish sounding

The mission resumed the brief 1929 sounding made by E. Gjerstad and the Swedish mission, after Vassos Karageorghis proposed it^6,7. The 1976 campaign aimed to extend that excavation, investigate earlier buildings and possible religious use, understand the formation of the hill, and locate the city's boundary and its relation to Mycenaean occupation³. In the Classical sanctuary court it exposed altars and a stone-covered drainage channel followed for 28 m, and a deep sounding beneath a wall dated by Gjerstad to about 600 BC produced a Cypro-Geometric figurine fragment³.

A 15 by 5 m trench at the eastern limit of the hill investigated a north-south boundary interpreted as a city limit. Material west of it included Mycenaean, Proto-Geometric and Geometric I levels. A pebble layer against the boundary held Mycenaean IIIB pottery, Rude Style kraters, faience and ivory that the 1976 report took to come from a nearby plundered tomb³.

The sanctuary, 1977 to 1989

Campaigns followed in September and October 1977, in 1978, 1980 (April to June) and 1981 (May to June). The 1977 report allowed that an altar building could have been built in the first part of Cypro-Geometric III, beneath the Archaic sanctuary⁸. In 1978, wall 23 was identified as the limit of the Classical complex, a rectangular range of about 35 by 7 m with rooms, wells, drains and cesspits. The report dates its construction to the late fifth century BC and a drainage reorganisation to about 375–350 BC, and says that no cult was celebrated there after the early years of the third century BC¹.

The 1980 campaign exposed wall 181 over about 20 m, with a nearly square building attached to it. The excavators suggested that the wall and building might have formed part of a city wall and tower overlooking the harbour; a Classical cistern cut the Archaic wall. Street 508, altar 279, the sixth-century hearth-altar 284 and miniature Hathoric stele plaquettes (KEF 557–560, 564) came from the Archaic sanctuary⁹. In 1981 a second Archaic building of roughly 12 by 18 m with a courtyard was excavated, and basin 417 in the Classical area held a late fourth-century deposit of domestic material¹⁰.

The mission spent two years studying the 1976–1981 results and resumed fieldwork in 1984 on the Geometric and Archaic sanctuaries and the Classical sanctuary¹¹. In 1987, from 14 September to 30 October, it excavated Archaic service areas with platforms, hearths, crucibles and slag⁵. Yves Calvet, who was responsible for the levels of the first Phoenician establishment in the campaigns of 1984 to 1989, dates its first building to Cypro-Geometric III, 850–750 BC, and says the evidence does not establish a cult place at Bamboula before the ninth century BC⁷. Fourrier notes that no votive dedication has been found at Bamboula⁶.

The war harbour

North of the sanctuary court, beyond wall 432, the 1987 campaign found small basins and an east-west corridor. The report proposed port installations rather than sanctuary structures and stressed that the reading was provisional^5,11. Yon writes that the identification of buildings of marine character was confirmed in 1988, locating the closed port immediately north of the hill. The shipsheds had slipways 1.8 m wide opening on a basin; seven sheds had been located and were cleared to 30 m by 1997².

Campaigns in 1996 to 1998 worked on the shipsheds⁴. The 1998 work confirmed a seventh row of pillars and a north-south length of about 37 m. Steel reports six bays with ramps and a principal period of use in the fourth century BC¹². West of the harbour, workshops of circular and rectangular basins separated by low sandstone walls overlay a small room dated to Cypro-Geometric III¹².

Jean-Christophe Sourisseau, Goiran and Christophe Morhange combined soundings with 17 sediment cores, 11 at Bamboula and six around it, because a permanent water table limited excavation of the lower deposits¹³. They reconstruct a naturally protected basin opening toward a lagoon, rather than a closed cothon with an artificial exit channel, with water depth not above about 2 m when the sheds entered service¹³.

Fourrier's programme

Fourrier directs the scientific programme of the mission of Kition and Salamis¹⁴. In 2016 a programme began in the north of Bamboula: Sondage 10 extended the 1976 trench to bedrock and Sondage 11 was opened in the former municipal garden⁴. Sondage 10 confirmed the sequence and placed the start of occupation in the Late Bronze Age, with four circular wells cut close together; Sondage 11 reached Hellenistic then Classical levels in place⁴. A Roman oval well (locus 883), found in 2017 and finished in 2018, is read by its publishers as a water-wheel well, and its fill is used to show that Bamboula had become a suburban zone of villas and gardens⁴.

Fourrier reports that she and Annie Caubet re-examined the excavation's material and field notebooks for publication of the sanctuary volume⁶. That volume is Kition-Bamboula VI, Le sanctuaire sous la colline (Caubet, Fourrier and Yon, 2015); the shipsheds appear in Kition-Bamboula VIII, Les néoria du port de guerre (Yon and Fourrier, 2022)^6,15,16.