Maroni: the Maroni Valley Archaeological Survey Project (Manning)

The Maroni Valley Archaeological Survey Project made a partial salvage excavation of a Late Roman church at Petrera, and its offshoot uncovered fourteen tombs, part tombs or possible tomb deposits and recorded stone anchors on the seabed at Maroni Tsaroukkas.^1,2,3

Survey of the lower valley

Sturt W. Manning and D. H. Conwell founded the project in 1990, with the University of Reading as host,; Conwell was co-director in 1990 and 1991, and Manning assumed sole direction from 1992. The sponsors named in the Petrera report are the Faculty of Classics at Cambridge, the McDonald Institute, the British Academy, the Society of Antiquaries of London and departments at Reading, and the authors thank the Department of Antiquities for permission to work in the valley.¹

The survey set out to document settlement and land use in the valley, to give a regional setting to the excavations at Maroni Vournes, and to record evidence before agriculture and construction destroyed it.¹ Field-walkers covered 50 m transects, and units were organised on a 50 × 50 m basis within the survey grid.¹ The 1990 season was a review of the survey area; at Petrera it laid out a 50 × 50 m square, walked two 10 × 50 m transects and counted 665 sherds. Systematic pedestrian survey began in July and August 1991. Field-walking ended in 1995.¹

The report records Neolithic traces at Maroni Vouni, a Middle Chalcolithic settlement at Karayiannidhes (since largely destroyed by house building), and Cypro-Archaic occupation at Maroni Village, Tsaroukkas, Viklari, Vouni, Vournes and Yialos. It notes very little between the end of Late Cypriot IIC and the Cypro-Archaic period, and a return to a conspicuous human and artefact presence in the Late Roman period.¹ At Maroni-Aspres field-walking identified a Late Cypriot settlement, and the report notes first-century AD Roman lamps from the site.^1,4 Kearns reads the survey as a small, intensive collection that found two Cypro-Archaic scatters (Maroni Vouni, a settlement, and Viklari, tombs), almost no Cypro-Geometric material, and a coastal sanctuary at Yialos that produced figurines.⁵ Iacovou cautions against representing the Maroni Bronze Age remains as one settlement over 25 ha, arguing that the locations were functionally combined but relatively discrete areas.⁶

The church at Petrera

In 1991 the team saw architectural stone being removed from Petrera and recorded the damaged site, its surface material and material in dumps.¹ In 1992 newly exposed paving and walls prompted limited salvage work, agreed with the Department of Antiquities.¹ Partial salvage excavation continued in 1993, 1994, 1995 and 1997, which was the last field-study season, and the work established that the main building was a church. M. J. Ponting and A. Manning served as field directors; the report's acknowledgements give 1992 to 1994 for Ponting and 1995 to 1997 for Manning.¹ Because the damaged site could not be excavated in full, the team dug test trenches, typically 2 to 3 m by 2 m, to clarify building details and record surviving stratigraphy.¹ A geomagnetic and resistivity survey by John Creighton in 1995 gave no satisfactory results, which the report attributes to the nature of the site.¹

In Area A the excavators recorded a Paved Building of about 11.70 × 8.80 m with an adjacent room to the west. The authors considered its function unclear; a water source close to the building may suggest an early phase baptistery, but there is no firm evidence.¹ In Area B an earlier three-apsed church of about 11.5 × 12.5 m lay beneath a later three-aisled basilica of about 12 × 27.5 m in its original form, with a narthex. The apses of the earlier church were sealed by flooring and bedding of the later one. A cist (Burial 1) in the apse of the church held a single adult, and a second cist cut into the infill of the later bema held infant burials.¹

The excavation produced 4,202 sherds, weighing 82,521 g, from Trenches 1 to 26 and 92 contexts. Nineteen coins came from the 1992 to 1994 seasons; two of Constans II dated AD 643/4 give a terminus post quem for the courtyard group, and the report proposes abandonment in the mid-seventh century.¹ Manning and his co-authors date the earlier church and earliest occupation to the early to mid-fifth century AD and the later church's construction and alteration to around the turn of the sixth century. They interpret the church and its buildings as a focal point for Late Roman ritual and possibly civic power in the lower valley.¹

The coins were studied after cleaning and conservation before handover to the Cyprus Museum, and the human skeletal remains are housed in the Larnaka District Archaeological Museum.¹ By 1999 the area outside the church had been ploughed (1998) and bulldozed again, and the nearby Roman site of Maroni Phoubes was found almost totally destroyed. The authors state that no further fieldwork is planned at Petrera.¹

Tsaroukkas on the coast

In 1993 the Tsaroukkas, Mycenaeans and Trade Project was founded as a successor or offshoot of the survey, also directed by Manning.^1,3 It aimed to find, define and study the greater Late Bronze Age settlement of the lower valley and to place the Tsaroukkas cemetery in context.² Exploratory trenches in 1993 covered about 2 ha.² The project funders included the Institute for Aegean Prehistory.²

Fourteen tombs, part tombs or possible tomb deposits, labelled MT Tombs 1 to 14, were uncovered in fields 58, 51 and 50 and on the sea scarp. The authors suspect that two or three had been dug by the British Museum in 1897 and that the cemetery may cover many hectares.² MT Tomb 3, on the scarp, was the best preserved and richest: a roughly round chamber of about 2.20 × 1.80 m, found in 1993, opened wider in 1994 and finished in 1995. It held disarticulated bone from more than one body, a copper-alloy dagger (MT.550) and mostly early White Slip II pottery, and the authors judge it severely disturbed and probably robbed.² Two extensive Late Cypriot IIC building complexes were also uncovered, and four of the tombs (11 to 14) lay within that settlement area. The annual notice reports spindle-whorls and loom-weights in Building 1 and slag and carbonised olive pits in Building 2.^2,4 Manning and Monks propose that building over and destroying Late Cypriot IIA-B tombs in LC IIC marked a significant political development at Maroni.²

Underwater survey ran from 1993 to 1996 on a 50 × 50 m grid extended from the survey grid, with divers swimming transects and finds recorded in situ.³ At MTSB Site 1 thirty-five anchors were recorded and five lifted, with eleven at Site 2. The authors date the Site 1 pottery deposit to the seventeenth century BC and read the finds as evidence for a port or anchorage in the Tsaroukkas area.³ The Petrera report appeared in 2002 as The Late Roman Church at Maroni Petrera from the A. G. Leventis Foundation, and the tombs and the seabed survey were published in the Annual of the British School at Athens in 1998 and 2002.^1,2,3