Larnaca: Department rescue excavations along the sewerage network (2012–2018)

Between 2012 and 2018 the sewer trenches of modern Larnaca cut through Kition, exposing part of the city wall and, in the last phase, more than 110 tombs from the Early Bronze Age to the 4th century AD. The rescue excavations were carried out by the Department of Antiquities in conjunction with the construction of the sewerage network^1,2.

The first phase came in 2012, with ten tombs excavated on Grivas Digenis Street². From May 2014 the work continued in the eastern cemetery, where 28 earth-dug chamber tombs of the Cypro-Classical to Roman periods were excavated, mostly unlooted, especially the ten on Gordios Desmos Street; the goods were mostly ceramics and bronze jewellery. On Teukros Street part of the defensive wall was exposed, described as the first extensive stretch exposed since Karageorghis's Kathari excavations. Other trenches found eight parallel walls, possibly Cypro-Classical, on Konstantinos Zachariades Street; Roman-era houses and a monumental structure of undefined use, perhaps Roman, on Ephrosynis Tarsi Street; and a rectangular building with a pebbled floor and terracotta water pipes, possibly part of an aqueduct, on Orpheos Street. Sewerage works resumed after excavation and recording, with route adjustments preserving remains that could not be removed².

A further phase ran from 27 June 2016 to 31 October 2018. The tombs it recorded were mostly rock-cut chamber tombs with a sloping corridor or stairs, sealed with gypsum slabs or stones, and held vessels and gold, bronze and semi-precious jewellery. Two tombs on Archbishop Kyrillos II Street date to about 2500 BC, and two Geometric chamber tombs on Empress Theodora and Esperidon streets gave unusual finds. More than 47 mnima-type cist tombs of the Hellenistic period, a type attested in Kition for the first time, held single burials with few or no finds. In the Chrysopolitissa quarter the work produced Hellenistic and Roman street plans, and statuettes on Tefkrou Street suggest a sanctuary used from the Archaic to Hellenistic periods. Underground water channels cut into bedrock on Michali Partella Street extend for several kilometres. A monastery of the late 15th to 16th century, likely Franciscan cells, lay on St Francis of Assisi Street, and an Ottoman clay-pipe water system in a stone channel came from St Constantinos Street¹.

On St Francis Street, near the Terra Santa convent, road works found linear structures of the late 13th to early 14th century in a strip 50 m by 5 m. In 2016 the Cyprus Institute recorded them by photogrammetry before they were covered with about 500 cubic metres of sand and asphalt, following Department of Antiquities policy³.