Korovia-Nitovikla: Swedish Cyprus Expedition

At Nitovikla, Erik Sjöqvist cleared a fort in the south-west corner of a fortified plateau and found no object in it other than potsherds, about 125 boxes of them; the dating of the fort rests entirely on that pottery¹. The work was done in autumn 1929 by the Swedish Cyprus Expedition, led by Einar Gjerstad, with Sjöqvist in charge of the archaeological work and the author of the Nitovikla chapter in the first volume of the Expedition's report, published in 1934¹.

The plateau and the decision to dig

Gjerstad had noticed the place in spring 1928 and made observations only. He was drawn by its unusual features and by a small burial ground whose robbed tombs, according to villagers, had yielded rich finds. Excavation was deferred because the Expedition's programme was fixed in advance¹. The site is Korovia-Nitovikla: a walled plateau about 400 m long and 100–200 m wide, with a single gate, a half-ruined well flanked by winch supports, the fort in its south-west corner and a small walled necropolis at the east end. Surface sherds and hand-mill fragments are Middle and Late Cypriot¹. The plateau enclosure, the well and the western entrance received only superficial examination. Sjöqvist gave the reason that trial trenches near the well and gate showed the area had not been densely inhabited, which made a total excavation of the enclosure not worth the effort; they found no house foundations and about 1 m of almost sterile clay over rock¹.

The cemetery

Work began at the cemetery, where trial pits were sunk all over the area¹. Outside the two great eastern bastions it was surrounded by rubble walls. Twelve tombs had been opened and rifled in modern times and were said to have held Late Cypriot pottery and a few scarabs and cylinders; three intact tombs were excavated, all small and poor¹.

Tomb 1 was a chamber tomb with dromos, stomion and chamber, filled by roof collapse. It held the remains of three bodies, buried more or less simultaneously, with Red-on-Black jugs, a leaf-shaped bronze knife, bronze needles and pins, spindle-whirls and a stone mace-head, and was dated Middle Cypriot III¹. Tomb 2 was a chamber tomb whose dromos had been recently dug by robbers who did not reach the chamber. Its layers 3 and 5 are two burial periods separated by an artificial filling: the first group, exclusively Middle Cypriot, dates to the end of MC III, and the second, with Base-ring I, to the beginning of Late Cypriot I. The tomb gave 73 numbered finds, among them bronze knives, pins and bracelets, faience beads and stone mace-heads¹. Tomb 3 was a shallow rock-cut shaft tomb, more than three quarters dug out and refilled in modern times; its intact section had a burial layer on the floor, no skeletal material and few finds, among them White Painted IV and Red-on-Red jugs and a bronze pin. It was dated Middle Cypriot III¹.

The fort

The fort was then cleared by trenching. Two main trenches 2 m wide were cut at right angles across it down to natural rock, with a shallow third trench, and the entrance was excavated in two halves so that the central earth wall could be studied¹. Joan du Plat Taylor's notes and observations underlie the report's description of Walls 19–33¹. Architecture and stratigraphy were combined, by bonding analysis and stratigraphic analysis, to allot walls and floors to building periods¹.

Beneath the fort lay thin remains of an earlier settlement (Period I, "Pre-Fortress"): a trodden white limestone floor on a levelling layer, covered by ash-rich debris that Sjöqvist took to show destruction by fire¹. The first fortress (Periods II A-II B) had massive ramparts with shell-walls and ashlar corners and ends, and an entrance flanked by two towers, one with a rock-cut cistern 7.40 m deep. It also had Northern Casemates, a kitchen with hearth and stone jar, a long storehouse and, in the courtyard, a free-standing square rubble base with ash around it, thought probable to be an altar¹. After a catastrophe the fort was rebuilt on the old plan (Periods III A-III B), and fire seems to have completed the destruction. The Northern Casemates were divided into seven small rooms and the floors raised about 0.90 m¹. An Iron Age sherd and a Hellenistic cup in the cistern show that it stayed open long after the fort was destroyed¹.

Red-on-Black and Red Polished IV lay below the Period I floor, and Monochrome, Base-ring and White Slip appeared in Period III A¹. Sjöqvist read the large enclosure as a refuge and fortified camping-place (a Fluchtburg) rather than a permanent settlement, and cited the small cemetery in support¹.

Dating the fort

Sjöqvist dated Period I to MC III A, Periods II A-B to MC III B and C, and Periods III A-B to LC I A and B, and judged the fort abandoned before Late Cypriot II¹. Gjerstad, in Ages and Days in Cyprus, puts the construction in the 17th century BC, with destruction and rebuilding soon after 1500 BC and decay in the 15th century BC². Crewe reports that Åström lowered the dates to MC III to LC IIA, and that Gunnel Hult, in her restudy Nitovikla Reconsidered (1992), proposed initial occupation in MC III to LC IA1, construction in LC IB and abandonment in LC IIB, and reinterpreted the circular stone floor of Period III A as a Roman threshing floor³. Hult elsewhere writes that the fortress was probably built around 1500 BC to protect the trading route from Cyprus to Syria, in the first place to Ugarit, and was deserted, probably peacefully, in the fourteenth century BC⁴. Merrillees concluded that the stronghold was built in LC IA, first destroyed in LC IB and abandoned in LC IIA, and Crewe judges construction in LC IA2 likely³. Crewe adds that the fort's first construction shows the earliest known ashlar masonry on Cyprus, citing Hult 1983, and reports Hult's finding that most of the excavated fort material came from arbitrary spits of mixed deposits³.

The finds today

The Expedition's finds as a whole were divided between the Cyprus Museum and the excavators, with a considerable number allotted to the Expedition¹. The Expedition's sherd collection, 5,000 boxes in all, is in the Medelhavsmuseet in Stockholm⁵. The report records heavy erosion of the western side of the fort¹.