Palaepaphos: the Canadian Palaipaphos Survey Project

Between 1979 and 1991 the Canadian Palaipaphos Survey Project recorded 579 sites over four river drainages around Palaepaphos: the Ezousas (251), Xeros (138), Dhiarizos (171) and Kha (19), from about 245 km2 of a 643 km2 research zone¹. David W. Rupp directed it from 1979, Lone Wriedt Sørensen was assistant director from the start, and William A. Fox was field director in 1980 and 1982². Brock University sponsored the work³, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada funded it². Rupp and Sørensen conceived it in 1978 to find what they presumed would be the secondary and tertiary settlements of the Iron Age kingdom of Paphos within a 7.5 km radius of Palaipaphos¹. From 1980 the aim widened to occupation of the whole zone from the Neolithic onward, with environmental data, copper mining and smelting, and chert sources^1,2.

A 14-day pilot season in 1979 surveyed areas chosen for water, landforms and arable land and found 23 new sites^2,3. From 1980 the project used a stratified random sample of 1 km square quadrats, walked by crews of four or five^1,2. The 1983 season recorded 291 sites by Rupp's table, and the last season, in 1991, made systematic surface collections at 17 early prehistoric sites^1,4. The 102 sites of 1980 ran from the Aceramic Neolithic to recent times, with the densest and most uniform occupation in the 11th to 16th centuries A.C.². Chert and ground-stone assemblages at Kritou Marottou-Ais Yiorkis and Kannaviou-Kochina appeared to be the first securely identified Aceramic Neolithic components in Paphos District². Of the chert localities that could be assigned to a culture, 92% related to flints from threshing sledges².

Rupp concludes that south-west Cyprus was occupied and exploited extensively from at least early in the Aceramic Neolithic, against the older view of an empty inland district¹. Simmons credits Rupp's systematic surveys with setting a new standard for survey on the island⁵. The second preliminary report, on 1980 to 1982, appeared in 1984 in Journal of Field Archaeology 11². All the finds are stored in the storerooms of the Kouklia Archaeological Museum¹.