Ais Giorkis: the University of Nevada, Las Vegas excavations

At Ais Giorkis in the Troodos foothills, excavators exposed at least six cobbled oval platforms, built on stone cores faced in cobbles and finished with a plaster that analysis suggests was crushed chalk; the platforms have no direct parallels in Cyprus.¹ Alan H. Simmons directed the work for the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.^1,2 The investigations were prompted by the thin, well-made chipped stone that William Fox noted during the Palaiopaphos Survey, which suggested a site type poorly represented in the Cypriot Neolithic.¹ Limited test excavations in 1997 gave a large chipped stone assemblage, a possible wall and small amounts of cattle bone, and annual seasons followed from 2002 to 2008.^1,3 After survey and ground-penetrating radar in 2009 and further radar testing in 2011, a second campaign ran from 2013 to 2015 on the platform area and the pits upslope, guided by radar results from Beverly Chiarulli.^1,4 About 500 m2 were dug over both campaigns.¹ Funders included the National Science Foundation and the National Geographic Society.¹

The excavations recorded 56 features, mostly small pits or artifact concentrations, and a ditch-like feature at the northwest boundary that was recut several times and whose function is undetermined.¹ The chipped stone numbers nearly 300,000 pieces, in Lefkara chert with 67 obsidian bladelets.¹ Other finds include fragments of a large limestone female figurine, a complete vaisselle blanche vessel and two burials, a newborn and a crouched adult.¹ Deer make up 54.5% of the fauna and cattle 1.8%; seven samples directly dated to about 7500 B.C. are among the earliest domesticates found in the Near East¹ The site was dated to the middle Cypro-PPNB, with primary occupation about 7500 cal B.C. (range 7960 to 7358 cal B.C.) from 38 radiocarbon determinations, not to the Khirokitia Culture first thought.¹

Simmons, DiBenedetto and Keach consider house bases the most parsimonious explanation of the platforms, possibly also used for communal activity. They do not believe the site was occupied throughout the year and say it may have partly served as a gathering place for exchange between settlements; they call a 'resort' reading speculative.¹ Simmons published the work in the Journal of Field Archaeology in 2012 and, with DiBenedetto and Keach, in BASOR 379 in 2018.^1,3 The final volume, From the mountains to the sea. Ais Giorkis, an Early Neolithic hamlet in the Troodos Foothills of Western Cyprus, edited by Simmons, appeared in 2023 as Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology 156.⁵