Marion region: the SUNY Albany survey

At Ayios Sergios in the Akamas peninsula, a group from the State University of New York at Albany under P. W. Wallace collected a large quantity of Chalcolithic sherds from the surface, at a site where stone tools had been found long before¹. The group surveyed the Marion region in 1982, 1983 and 1984. In 1982 the mission under Wallace carried out archaeological prospection there^2,3.

In 1983 the group continued exploring the Akamas, including Ayios Sergios, Ayios Konon, the Baths of Aphrodite and the medieval tower of Pyrgos tis Rigenas. It planned the tower, collected local legends and traditions about it, and consulted geologists of the Geological Survey about the physical geography of the region¹. The extent of the surface remains at Ayios Konon suggested that the site was worth excavating; their date is not recorded¹. The work was done in collaboration with the Princeton mission, which ran its own survey and trial trenches around Polis¹.

The group's other research was prompted by Wallace's conviction that the prehistoric settlement did not lie on the same site as the Iron Age city. It searched near the village of Magounda, east of Polis, where H. Catling had collected Late Bronze Age material, described as the only known Late Bronze Age material in the immediate vicinity of Polis¹. A second Albany mission in 1984 aimed to locate the Bronze Age settlement that must have preceded the historic city³. No find of that settlement is reported.