Kythrea: the Swedish Cyprus Expedition's Chalcolithic settlement

Hut IV B at Kythrea had been destroyed by fire, and flint-working and grinding equipment and pottery lay where they were left beneath the roof debris¹. The Swedish Cyprus Expedition found it in spring 1930, when Alfred Westholm conducted the excavation of the settlement for the expedition's chief, Einar Gjerstad^2,3.

The settlement lay east of the new school at Ajios Dimitrianos, about 200 m south of Kephalovryso, on the eastern bank of a small river¹. Gjerstad gives the aim as comparative material for the expedition's Chalcolithic settlement excavations at Lapithos³. Digging began where a circular wall showed at the surface and the layers beneath appeared to be in situ, and was extended on both sides of that point¹. The final report names stream erosion as a major reason that only parts of the settlement remained in situ¹.

Five circular huts came to light. The report grouped them into two main architectural periods, Huts IV and V in the lower group and Huts I, II and III in the higher^1,2. In Hut IV the earlier floor had burnt and a rebuilt floor lay above it¹. A small Red Polished jug, object 390, stood upright on the floor of Hut IV B, but its fragments crumbled to powder within minutes of exposure¹. Other finds were flint tools and chips, stone tools and grinders, pottery, and object 412, a seated idol of green steatite with horizontally projecting arms and a pierced, disc-shaped head¹.

The 1934 report headed its Kythrea chapter "Neolithic settlement" and dated the settlement by comparison with Lapithos, whose pottery it assigned to the end of the fourth millennium BC; later sources call the settlement Chalcolithic^1,2. The account is in volume I of the final publication, pp. 277–301¹.