Lapithos: Myres and Markides for the Cyprus Museum

Between 1913 and 1917 the Cyprus Museum Committee's digging at Lapithos opened Early and Middle Bronze Age tombs at Vrysi tou Barba, on the coastal plain, and tombs with Late Cypriot and Early Iron Age layers at Ayia Anastasia^1,2. The Committee was the sponsor of the first organised excavations there, carried out in the autumn of 1913¹.

John Linton Myres, assisted by Menelaos Markides, excavated at Lefkoniko and Lapithos that season^3,4; the Lefkoniko dig has its own page. The museum's own history says the Keeper invited Myres, his former teacher, to excavate for the purpose of documenting the island's history, enriching the museum and protecting sites such as necropoleis from illicit digging⁵.

Vrysi tou Barba in 1913

At Lapithos the work covered Classical remains at Lampousa and the Bronze Age tombs of Vrysi tou Barba, where L. H. Dudley Buxton, a physical anthropologist, dug and recorded the tombs^1,6. Accounts of who directed differ: Diakou names Myres and Markides, the Swedish Cyprus Expedition's introduction names Myres alone, Webb has Buxton digging for Myres, and Webb's 2017 paper lists Myres, Markides and Buxton^1,2,6,7.

Diakou reports seventy-five tombs of the Early and Middle Bronze Age at the cemetery¹. Webb counts 59 tombs excavated in 1913 in one study, 62 in another, and 75 for 1913 and 1917 together in a third^6,7,8.

Buxton recorded the 1913 tombs in field plans, sketches of pottery and metal, and a field notebook; Webb treats these records as the primary archive for them^6,7. His plans of Tombs 15 and 18 show metal at high percentages in Middle Cypriot II and III⁷. Tomb 201, which the Swedish Cyprus Expedition re-dug in 1927 as its Tomb 321, held in Chamber A three or four burials, one probably a woman with a necklace of over 400 faience beads, together with plank figures and other valuables⁶. Webb infers that Buxton's workmen left much sherd material in the tomb, because the Swedish team found it filled with earth and sherds⁶. A faience pendant from Tomb 51, dug by Myres and Markides in 1913, is in the Cyprus Museum, Nicosia, as M.34⁹.

At Lampousa the dig took in Classical remains and the area known as the acropolis. Myres reported Bronze and Iron Age sherds and read the place as a small coastal town in the Late Bronze Age and Classical times; Diakou notes that it produced very little stratified material because of earlier extensive quarrying and looting¹.

Markides at Ayia Anastasia and Vrysi tou Barba

Markides dug alone in the later years. The Swedish Cyprus Expedition's account gives 1914, 1915 and 1917 for his tombs at Ayia Anastasia without assigning tombs to years; the site lies on flat ground on the plateau, with a ravine to the south². Diakou says he excavated three tombs on the plateau¹. Most of the tombs contained two layers, the Swedish summary dating the upper to the early Iron Age and the lower to Late Cypriot times². The Swedish team searched the plateau and re-investigated two of his tombs, 501 and 502, under their old numbers to obtain new drawings².

In 1917 Markides, then Keeper of the Cyprus Museum, dug at Vrysi tou Barba, and Webb counts 18 tombs dug by him at Lapithos that year^2,7. Webb thinks the Swedish Tomb 310 is likely one of them⁶. His field notes for 1917 survive; Webb cites Åström in praising his notebooks as far above the standard of the time¹⁰. Webb suggests that the 1913 digging may have inspired the looters who cut "A.A. 1913" in the dromos of Tomb 322¹¹.

Finds and publication

The 1913 finds and records are in the Cyprus Museum, which holds Markides's 1915 inventory and Buxton's notebook, and many 1917 objects were located in its storerooms^7,10. Einar Gjerstad writes that Markides left all his carefully excavated material to him for study¹². Eftichia Zachariou found the 1917 field notes, and Webb's data for those tombs is archived in the Department of Antiquities¹⁰.

Diakou describes the excavations as only preliminarily published, the 1913 work in Myres's article in the Annual of the British School at Athens 41, and finds that Markides's Ayia Anastasia digs also lack proper recording¹. Webb put the share of excavated Lapithos tombs formally published at about 15 percent in 2017 and called for the remaining assemblages to be studied⁷. Her 2018 volume, Lapithos Vrysi tou Barba, Cyprus: Early and Middle Bronze Age Tombs Excavated by Menelaos Markides, publishes the 1917 tombs¹⁰.