Kourion: the Kouris Valley Survey

In two seasons, 2007 and 2008, the Kouris Valley Project surveyed a 9 sq km transect of the Kouris valley in the hinterland of Kourion, from the Kouris Dam south of Alassa to Erimi and Kantou, and identified 14 sites¹. Anna Margherita Jasink and Luca Bombardieri directed it for the Universities of Florence, Chieti and Pescara, with the University of Turin as a partner^1,2. Jasink says the project chose a river valley running from the Troodos to the sea, with long-lived settlements, and raised the hypothesis that the name Alashiya may be linked to the Kouris valley, where Alassa lies¹.

The survey was intensive surface collection on both banks, combined with satellite and aerial images in a GIS¹. The 2007 season ran from 4 September to 6 October, and the 2008 season from 11 September to 4 October, completing the western bank and revisiting the eastern bank with magnetometry and soil and sediment sampling^2,3. The sites range from the Early-Middle Bronze Age to the Post-Roman and Medieval periods, and the Prehistoric and Bronze Age evidence is described as rather scanty^1,4. On the western bank the only relevant finds go back to the Hellenistic and Roman periods, at two sites on the low terraces in the south². At site 3 on the eastern bank, the density of Red Polished ware and the magnetometer survey indicated a farm of the Early-Middle Bronze Age, which Bombardieri reads as a possible small river landing or rural settlement^1,2.

In 2008 four trenches were opened at Erimi-Laonin tou Porakou, the northernmost eastern-bank site. They revealed a double circuit wall in two phases, possibly Early/Middle Bronze Age and then Hellenistic-Roman, with Red Polished ware the most common. Trench A2 cleared a workshop complex of rock-cut basins and channels, which the report suggests was for processing leather or textiles^1,2. Three rock-cut single-chamber tombs (228 to 230) lay on terraces outside the outer wall; two held many Red Polished vessels, decorated spindle-whorls and picrolite disks, and their pottery dates from Early Cypriot III to Late Cypriot I. Tomb 229 had been looted in recent years^1,2. Jasink and Bombardieri published the preliminary results in Researches in Cypriote History and Archaeology, the proceedings of the 2009 Florence meeting¹.