Maroni and Vasilikos valleys: KAMBE and Kearns's Iron Age re-survey

At Maroni-Vournes, a surface collection of 990 pottery fragments gathered in 2016–2017 contained no Cypro-Geometric material, and Catherine Kearns and Anna Georgiadou therefore describe Cypro-Archaic I as the earliest known Iron Age occupation there. Of the sherds, 33% were Iron Age, 40% Hellenistic, Roman and Late Roman, and 17% Late Bronze Age¹. The work belonged to the Kalavasos and Maroni Built Environments Project, with the University of Cyprus as partner, and Kearns and Georgiadou published it in 2021 as a comparative investigation of small Iron Age sites¹.

At Maroni-Vournes the aims were to ask whether settlement or built environments were associated with the sanctuary and the Iron Age surface collections, and to compare rural production, consumption and habitation in the valleys¹. Survey began in 2016 at Maroni-Vournes and Kalavasos-Vounaritashi, in units of 20 x 20 m or 40 x 40 m walked at 2 m spacing, and magnetic gradiometry was run at Kalavasos-Vounaritashi¹. The surface assemblage was dominated by plain utilitarian wares, transport amphorae, mortaria, pithoi and cooking wares, with one Iron Age figurine fragment, an upper torso with raised arms in "snow man" technique¹. In 2017 test units in fields southeast of Maroni-Vournes sampled magnetic anomalies and exposed stone arrangements, possible low field walls or drainage ditches, and gravel-and-pebble features. Mixed finds and agricultural disturbance prevented secure dating, and the authors suggest that several features may relate to later irrigation, drainage or agricultural development¹.

In 2019 a pilot excavation at Kalavasos-Vounaritashi opened three test trenches, which were backfilled at the end of the season. They exposed part of a stone building, Building I, with a room, a cross-wall and other disturbed wall remains¹. The lowest reported loci produced 70 pottery fragments, which the authors describe as stylistically affiliated with Amathus production¹. For the building activity Kearns and Georgiadou propose a preliminary terminus post quem in the Cypro-Classical period, roughly the fourth century BC, and call for further excavation¹.