Korovia-Palaeoskoutella: Swedish Cyprus Expedition

The central mound at Paleoskoutella, Tumulus 7, measured approximately 22.00 by 17.50 m and stood 3.10 m high; its chamber held fourteen burials and numerous ceramic vessels and bronze objects^1,2. Erik Sjöqvist excavated it in autumn 1929 for the Swedish Cyprus Expedition, whose chief was E. Gjerstad^1,3. The report describes a hilltop cemetery thought to comprise about twenty tumuli, with a large central mound and smaller mounds around it; seven were investigated¹. Tumulus 7 was cut by a broad trench along an approximately east-west line and the report also records it in section¹.

Beneath Tumuli 1, 3 and 6 the excavators found rock-cut installations rather than tomb chambers: pits, basins, ash or dark deposits and animal bone, which they interpreted as cult places associated with the dead^1,2. Tumulus 4 covered a rock-cut chamber with two burials and grave goods, between which the report saw no evidence of any great difference in time^1,2. The chamber tombs beneath Tumuli 2 and 5 held no human remains or surviving grave goods, and the excavators inferred that their contents had been removed¹. The Tumulus 7 burials gave the impression of having been brought into the chamber simultaneously, and the report found no stratigraphic evidence establishing their relative order¹. The numbered finds from Tumulus 7 run to more than one hundred, mostly pottery including Red-on-Black vessels, with bronze pins, earrings, rings and a knife¹.

The report assigns the cult place beneath Tumulus 1 to the end of Middle Cypriote III and the installation beneath Tumulus 3 to an earlier stage of that phase; it dates the closing of the Tumulus 7 tomb and the building of its mound to the end of Middle Cypriote III¹. Göransson gives the cemetery a Middle Cypriote III date of 1725–1600 BC³, while Keswani describes the site as Middle Cypriote III or Late Cypriote IA⁴. Sjöqvist proposed that the emptying of smaller tombs, the abandonment of cult places and the collective burial beneath Tumulus 7 were connected, and suggested that the community left the region to avoid the violation of its cemetery by incoming foreigners or invaders¹. Keswani treats the cemetery as evidence for secondary treatment and collective burial, while Steel reads the empty Tumulus 5 as potentially abandoned and purified, or possibly never used for burial^2,4. The excavation is published in the first volume of the expedition's final report, on pages 416 to 438¹.