Cyprus Survey: the Cape Krommyon area

In 1955 H. W. Catling surveyed about 100 square miles of representative terrain in the Cape Krommyon area in the first campaign of field work of his survey for the Department of Antiquities. He located some 400 sites, about two-thirds of them previously unrecorded¹. The survey was part of the making of a new register of archaeological sites, indexing those previously recorded and registering additional settlements and cemeteries by systematic surface exploration¹.

The survey recorded twelve Neolithic settlements, mostly of the Erimi stage. Early Bronze Age successors were few, although cemeteries indicated their presence, and Middle Bronze Age evidence was found around Kapouti. It recorded an extensive Late Bronze Age settlement at Toumba tou Skourou together with 21 other sites of that period¹. For the Cypro-Classical period the report records two new sanctuaries and identifies Palaiokastro near Ayia Irini as a substantial township; no inscription found disclosed its name. Most of the identified sites were Hellenistic or Roman, many no more than farmsteads, with several associated with olive culture. Early Christian basilican churches and a quatrefoil font, ruined Byzantine churches, numerous medieval habitation sites and a medieval sugar-pot kiln-site at Morphou were also noted¹. The results appeared as a notice in A. H. S. Megaw's Archaeology in Cyprus, 1955¹.