Lofou-Koulaouzou: Department excavation, 2010

In 2010 Y. Violaris of the Department of Antiquities excavated 16 rock-cut chamber tombs at Koulaouzou, near Lofou, after the Department was informed that tombs had been exposed during illegal road-construction operations¹. The authors of the published study report clandestine digging, looting, recent bulldozing, erosion and terracing as sources of disturbance¹. Paraskeva describes Tombs 8, 15, 20 and 21 as probably looted². The tombs were generally single-chambered and irregularly rounded or ovoid; finds included two Red Polished III bird-shaped askoi from Tombs 18 and 23, decorated spindle-whorls from five tombs and three picrolite disks from Tomb 23¹. Violaris, Scirè Calabrisotto, Fedi, Caforio and Bombardieri proposed use of the cemetery from the start of the Early Bronze Age to the end of the Middle Bronze Age (EC-MC II/III)¹. Of 11 bone samples, six had enough collagen for AMS dating at INFN-LABEC in Florence; the authors discarded both Tomb 8 dates and the Tomb 21 sample, and found the accepted results consistent with the archaeological evidence, between EC II/III and MC I¹. They published the study in 2013¹.