Kourion: the American excavation of the Sanctuary of Apollo Hylates

In 1981 the American team at the Sanctuary of Apollo Hylates at Kourion excavated a rectangular pit that contained at least 4,000 polychrome terracotta figures and fragments of figures¹. In 1982 the excavation of a votive deposit in the north-east of the Archaic sanctuary was completed: about 10,000 fragments, estimated to make up roughly 1,000 figures, among them 700 horsemen and 300 chariots².

The work began in 1978 under two co-directors, Diana Buitron-Oliver and David Soren^3,4. Soren thanks Vassos Karageorghis, Director of Antiquities of Cyprus, for permission to begin the new excavations in 1977⁴. The project was conceived to continue and extend the earlier excavations of the University of Pennsylvania Museum, interrupted by George McFadden's death^3,4; those are the Penn Museum excavations. Soren describes the new work as problem-solving archaeology, designed to test hypotheses about the sanctuary's development⁴. The excavations ran from 1978 to 1985⁴.

Sponsors are given differently. For the May 1981 campaign the Chronique names the Walters Art Gallery, the University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins University, and gives the University of Missouri as sponsor of Soren's campaign¹. Soren lists Missouri and the Walters for 1978 to 1981 and the University of Arizona from 1982⁴.

Method and the first seasons

Excavation used the balk-debris method: discrete deposits were removed in small areas while balks were left for section recording, and the earth was generally dry-sieved through quarter-inch mesh⁴. In June and July 1978 the team opened five squares and examined the Archaic enclosure, an earlier wall, the foundations and monumental stair of the first temple, and the latest enclosure wall^3,5. In 1979 they worked in the previously unexcavated West Enclosure, where they exposed a circular structure about 18 m in diameter with a pebble-paved ring and pits cut into bedrock, and excavated the temple cella and pronaos to bedrock⁶. Robert Scranton studied the fallen temple blocks and proposed a reconstruction of the north and west walls⁶.

In 1980 Buitron's work in the Archaic Precinct systematically excavated the circular pebble altar. Beneath the last course of its stones she found a small gold bull, 3.1 cm high, and a small silver bull, 5.1 cm high⁷. The altar's foundation pottery was dated to the late seventh century BC, where the 1979 report had suggested the sixth^6,7. The final Archaic Precinct volume, as reviewed by Tatton-Brown, dates the altar's construction to the transition from Cypro-Geometric III to Cypro-Archaic I, around 700 BC⁸. Soren's volume has the sanctuary developing from an open-air site with an altar in place by the sixth century BC, and calls these conclusions hypotheses⁴.

The Archaic Precinct and the Round Building

In May 1981 Buitron found a second, semicircular altar, a rock-crystal scarab in a gilt-silver setting, and an inscribed statue base recording a dedication by Diagoras, priest of Apollo¹. I. Nicolaou dated the inscription by its letter forms¹. In 1983, her last reported excavation campaign, Buitron examined a building north of the Archaic sanctuary. Its Hellenistic lamps and cooking pottery with traces of fire suggested to the excavators that it may have been part of facilities for feeding visitors. Inside the Archaic enclosure an earlier wall followed the same line as the Roman north temenos wall⁹.

The Round Building was examined as a circular structure with seven pits, interpreted provisionally as a sacred garden with a processional or dancing route⁷. The excavators read the pits as planting places and the building as a possible sacred-grove or tree-cult setting; Soren cautioned that his interpretations of tree worship and the Round Building were provisional^1,4. A ramp was found at the building in 1981¹. A University of Arizona campaign in 1984 showed the West Enclosure in use as a sacred precinct from at least the later sixth century BC⁴.

The Temple

At the Temple of Apollo, Soren's 1981 campaign dated the building to AD 50 to 100¹. An inscribed block found in 1980 had suggested to Buitron and Soren that the second temple might prove Neronian⁵. J. Rutherford showed that the surviving fragments belonged to a single building, the second temple⁵. Soren suggests, tentatively, that the second temple dates to AD 50 to 75, since the glass evidence dated only the cheek walls⁴.

The reports differ on the earthquake. The Chronique for 1979 put it around AD 370, the 1982 Chronique records the numismatist J. MacIsaac dating it to AD 367 to 368, and Soren's synthesis dates the destruction of the site to an earthquake on July 21, 365^1,4,6.

Finds and publication

The 1978 bronze plaque of two lions attacking a griffin among stylised trees, found in disturbed fill in the eastern Archaic Precinct, was to be shown at the University of Missouri-Columbia, the Walters Art Gallery and Dartmouth College before going to the Cyprus Museum¹⁰. Where the other finds went is not recorded.

Study seasons for publication were reported in 1984 and 1986^11,12. Soren's The Sanctuary of Apollo Hylates at Kourion, Cyprus appeared in 1987 and notes that Buitron was preparing a detailed work on her own discoveries⁴. Buitron-Oliver's The Sanctuary of Apollo Hylates at Kourion: Excavations in the Archaic Precinct (1996, Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology 109) is described by Tatton-Brown as a publication of five years of excavation (1978 to 1983): the circular altar with its western half newly recognised, a semicircular altar, the eastern and northern boundaries of the Archaic sanctuary, and more of McFadden's votive pit north of the precinct⁸.