Maroni-Vournes: the Cincinnati and British School at Athens excavations (Cadogan)

At Maroni-Vournes the excavators found a Late Cypriot settlement that began in LC IA and a monumental Ashlar Building of LC IIC, the late 14th and early 13th centuries BC, whose central court was reused as a sanctuary established about 750 BC^1,2,3.

Seasons at Vournes

Gerald Cadogan directed the project from 1981 to 1993⁴. It began with a trial season in 1981, and the first full season followed in 1982, under the University of Cincinnati^4,5. In 1985 the excavation resumed as a joint enterprise of the British School at Athens and the University of Cincinnati⁴. David Smyth surveyed and drew the map and plans¹. After study and conservation seasons in 1990–1992, a field season followed in 1993⁶. Two brief study seasons with limited excavation took place in 1994 and 1996, to clarify the early (LC I-IIB) stratigraphy north of the Basin Building and to re-examine the sequence of construction and modification of the large LC I-II building at the southern edge of the site⁷.

Cadogan stated that the excavations aimed to establish the occupation sequence of Maroni-Vournes and relate it to sequences at other major Late Cypriot sites¹. The agenda included dating the ashlar masonry, establishing when the Late Cypriot settlement was founded, and investigating whether occupation continued into LC III. Cadogan described a wider goal for the Maroni valley, using survey as well as excavation to investigate settlement change and Maroni's foreign relations, daily life, architecture, economy and industry¹.

The Late Bronze Age buildings

In trench N11 the earliest habitation was reported by Cadogan as LC IA, with Red-on-Black, Red-on-Red, White Painted, Composite and Proto-White Slip wares associated with a hearth floor above sterile soil. His 1984 discussion revised the MC III suggested in Maroni I¹. The second season, in September to November 1983, confirmed an LC IA floor and hearth on bedrock and explored LC II building phases. It also found a roughly square paved room with a rectangular basin about 1.85 by 1.50 m and about 1 m deep; its function was unresolved, and a later floor covered the basin during LC II⁸.

Driessen describes the Ashlar Building as a sequence in which an original ashlar core was enlarged with north and east wings². By the mid-1990s the LC IIC building was reported as completely cleared, and Steel describes it as a tripartite-plan building, with well-stratified floors from LC IA to LC IIC elsewhere in the excavated area^6,9. Driessen's review of the excavated evidence has the Ashlar Building abandoned before the end of LC IIC². The West Building was a second large Late Bronze Age building. Driessen thinks its four-wing arrangement was probably a storehouse, but the 1986 report said its function was not yet established^2,10. The same report stated that copper and bronze working and olive-oil production were well attested, and it reported clay spindle-whorls bearing pre-firing marks and a substantial quantity of Mycenaean pottery. A large press found inside the West Building in 1985 was reassessed as seemingly of recent date, probably medieval or later¹⁰.

Sturt W. Manning interprets the LC IIC complex as consistent with a complex regional polity and specialist production based at the Ashlar Building¹¹. Driessen characterizes the building as a power building, while noting that the precise interpretation of its functions remains difficult².

Kapsaloudhia and the later sanctuary

In 1983 two LC IA tombs at Maroni-Kapsaloudhia were discovered accidentally and excavated at the request of the Department of Antiquities. Each had a vertical dromos and two large chambers with small loculi, and the finds included a broken faience bead, a bronze spiral ring and pottery of several wares⁸. Emergency work along water-pipe trenches, reported in 1986, recovered material from an early LC II tomb, including pottery, a bronze ring and an undecorated Syrian-Palestinian jug¹⁰.

Ulbrich dates the use of the sanctuary in the Ashlar Building's central court and adjoining rooms to the end of the third century BC and reports 72 limestone statuettes, mostly Late Classical or early Hellenistic, including images of female and male deities³. She argues that the images indicate worship of a divine couple, identified as Cypriot Aphrodite and a male counterpart³.

Publication and finds

Cadogan's preliminary reports appeared as Maroni I to VI in the Report of the Department of Antiquities, Cyprus between 1983 and 1992^12,13. Four clay vessel fragments bearing Cypro-Minoan inscriptions were published in 2009 ahead of the excavation report, and are in Larnaca Museum¹⁴. Catalogued materials from Maroni-Vournes are deposited at the Larnaca Archaeological Museum¹⁵. Ulbrich reports that work on the publication of the sanctuary had stalled, and the preface to the 2015 volume says the final publication of Maroni-Vournes was still to come^2,16.