Palaepaphos-Styllarka: the Department's excavation of the monoliths

In August 1990 Sophocles Hadjisavvas excavated the pair of perforated monoliths at Palaepaphos-Styllarka, southwest of Palaipaphos, for the Department of Antiquities¹. The excavation exposed, around and north of the monoliths, five reservoirs, a shallow basin and a pebble floor partly covered with lime plaster; south of the western monolith lay a crushing bed of large calcarenite slabs, and two cylindrical calcarenite stones were identified as rollers¹. Hadjisavvas read these as an olive press¹. Hellenistic sherds came from the reservoirs, among them Attic Black lustrous pottery that Hadjisavvas placed at the end of the fourth and the very beginning of the third century BC, and architectural fragments were reported as evidence for a Hellenistic Doric temple; the excavation did not uncover the sanctuary, and architectural fragments from the 1990 work were transferred to a museum¹. Hadjisavvas's account of the work appears in F. G. Maier's Guide to Palaipaphos (Kouklia)¹.