Kythrea-Skafto: Department tomb excavations

At Kythrea-Skafto, on the south-west edge of the village in the plain beside the Nicosia road, the Department of Antiquities excavated three tombs of an early Iron Age cemetery¹. V. Karageorghis, who reported them in 1963, describes the necropolis as known for a long time¹. The Department opened Tomb 2 in 1954 (inventory no. 1954/X-11/1) and Tombs 3 and 4 in 1962¹.

Tomb 2 held White Painted I-III, Bichrome I-III, Red Lustrous I (III) and Black-on-Red I (III) pottery, among other fabrics¹. The 1962 work was under K. Nikolaou (Kyriakos Nicolaou)¹. Tomb 3 contained nearly 125 vases, many of them Black Slip Bichrome I plates, and a skeleton found in situ with two bronze fibulae on the shoulder¹. Tomb 4 had pottery broadly similar to Tomb 3 and an iron spearhead with a tubular socket¹. Karageorghis gives one inventory reference for the finds of both tombs, 1962/X-30/1¹.

Karageorghis dates the three tombs to the beginning of Cypro-Geometric III, which he specifies as the second half of the ninth century BCE¹. A. H. S. Megaw's report for 1954 records a Geometric cemetery revealed by a tomb near the police station at Kythrea, with pottery assigned to Cypro-Geometric I and II².