Kormakiti-Panayia: Department rescue excavation (1958)

At Panayia, near Kormakiti, a silver coin naming Artavasdus and his son Nicephorus, dated 742/3 and not known before in the Cypriot series, came from a rescue excavation in 1958¹. Hector W. Catling carried out the work at Kormakiti-Panagia as a brief summary exploration before building began, prompted by the threat that village expansion would engulf early Christian remains¹. The annual account gives no season dates, areas or field methods¹.

That account dates continuous occupation of the site from the fifth century BCE to the middle of the eighth century CE, with a period of great prosperity in the early Christian period¹. A single-chamber hypogeum cut in soft rock yielded a group of vases dated to the first half of the first century CE; the report gives no tomb number¹.

Catling later reported that the coin was found in destruction debris from an Early Byzantine building, and he took it to show that the site remained occupied in some fashion until at least about 750 CE². The excavation is reported in Vassos Karageorghis's annual survey of discoveries in Cyprus for 1958 in the Bulletin de correspondance hellénique¹.