Bairaktar Bastion, Nicosia: Department rescue of a Late Cypriot III site (1958)

In 1958 workmen digging a trench a few metres outside the Venetian walls of Nicosia, near the Bairakdar Bastion, came upon a Late Cypriot III site¹. The Department of Antiquities investigated immediately, collected sherds from different layers and observed the stratification. Levels associated with wall debris indicated several superposed buildings, covered in turn by medieval buildings, chiefly kilns¹. The pottery was described as characteristic of Mycenaean IIIC:1 and Rude Style. The report records a jug fragment with a band of spirals and birds on its shoulder, which Karageorghis compares with jugs and stirrup vases from Ialysos on Rhodes¹. A further fragment decorated with a fish is dated by the author to Mycenaean IIIC:1¹. The collected sherds were then in the Cyprus Museum, and the report illustrates Mycenaean IIIC:1 sherds as figure 19 under inventory number 1958/IV-7/2¹.