Parekklisha-Shillourokambos: the French mission

At Shillourokambos a cat, about eight months old, was deliberately laid in a small pit or grave in the same stratigraphic unit as a human burial and 40 cm away from it¹. Jean-Denis Vigne and his co-authors read the pair as evidence of an early close relationship between people and cats, and probably of taming, while presenting this as an interpretation and not as morphological proof of domestication¹. The burial is one find from the Aceramic Neolithic settlement at Parekklisha-Shillourokambos, excavated by the École française d'Athènes from 1992 to 2004 under Jean Guilaine^2,3.

The mission

The site was discovered by the Amathus archaeological survey project⁴. CNRS was a partner and the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (the Ministère français des Affaires étrangères) a funder; the authors acknowledge the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus for the excavation authorizations^5,6. François Briois and Isabelle Carrère co-authored the 2000 synthesis. Vigne, the archaeozoologist, reports taking part in every season from 1995 and excavating most of the contexts rich in animal bones^3,6.

The investigators framed the work around how Neolithic subsistence was transferred from the mainland and whether cultural traits could identify colonisation⁷. Sector 1 was dug extensively, over nearly 1,500 m² by the time of the 2000 synthesis, alongside sondages at several points of the settlement⁶. The first preliminary account reported two Aceramic occupation phases followed by a ceramic (Sotira) phase⁸.

Sector 1: enclosures, wells and pit 23

Sector 1 held extensive negative features: pits, wells and trenches³. Early Phase A included curvilinear enclosure trenches, wells, pits and post-holes, and the excavators proposed that some enclosure spaces may have served as animal pens or domestic activity areas⁶. In 1998 four cylindrical wells were excavated in the western zone, with obsidian, ground stone and a plaster human head among the finds⁹.

Pit 23 was used as a collective funerary facility and later as a rubbish pit⁹. Steel's account reports fifteen individuals, thirteen adults and two infants, in the centre of the pit, with deeper levels holding further burials, some with traces of burning; a picrolite object from the pit was interpreted as representing a boat⁹. Work in 1997 in pit 23 and well St. 66 produced human remains, lithics, obsidian and a serpentine feline head, and further burials were found in pit 23 in 2000⁹.

Sector 3 and the last campaigns

In 1999 the excavators identified in sector 3 three very distinctive zones of activity, including three circular buildings and several successive floor levels⁹. By 2000 the sequence there ran from ephemeral early architectural remains to later stone-built structures and grinding installations⁹. Sector 3 preserved the remains of approximately fifteen buildings³. Steel's survey lists as finds grinding stones, polished axes, chipped stone, obsidian, stone vessels, picrolite and limestone beads, and stone representations⁹.

The 2003 campaign worked mainly in the south-west of the settlement, in sector 3, and finished well 181 in sector 1. It was aimed at the study of several wells (227, 238, 387 and 181) and dug about 140 m² of habitation within a cleared area of 300 m²¹⁰. Its finds included a series of 463 heavy stone tools and 538 stone vessels¹⁰. In well 181 the team also studied storage silos of the Sotira reoccupation, which the authors place two or three millennia after the Aceramic abandonment¹⁰.

The 2004 campaign concentrated on sector 1, in Early Phase A deposits, over a cleared area of 700 m²¹⁰. It studied wells 431 and 433, trench segments, combustion features, plastered storage pits and a damaged infant burial¹⁰. It found a cache of nine bipolar blades of translucent flint, 75 further pieces of Cappadocian obsidian and the remains of a newborn burial, and trenches 13 and 14 appeared to bound a sub-rectangular "building 16" of Early Aceramic date¹⁰.

Dating and interpretation

The 2000 synthesis distinguished five occupation phases: four Aceramic Neolithic phases and a later ceramic Sotira phase. It dated Early Phase A to about 8200 to 7800 BC, Early Phase B to about 7800 to 7500 BC, the Middle phase, with question marks in its table, to about 7500 to 7200 BC and the Late phase to about 7200 to 7000 BC⁶. Vigne's 2017 review gives four phases, Early A, Early B, Middle and Late³.

In that synthesis Guilaine, Briois, Vigne and Carrère argued that the early Aceramic Neolithic had much in common with the northern Levantine PPNB and pushed back the appearance of the Neolithic in Cyprus by a millennium⁶. Peltenburg and colleagues argued instead that the Cypro-PPNB evolved from as yet undetected west Syrian populations, and noted that Guilaine and colleagues derive the Cypriot Aceramic Neolithic from PPNB cultures in the Upper and Middle Euphrates valley¹¹. The 2000 synthesis also reported more than 6,200 identified animal remains. Pig, fallow deer, sheep, goat and cattle appear in the Early Phase A assemblages, and the authors called sheep, goats and possibly cattle "predomestic", since husbandry was proposed without detectable skeletal modification⁶. Translucent flint was used almost exclusively (98%) in Early Phases A and B, with Cappadocian obsidian making up about two percent⁶.

Publication

Guilaine, Briois and Vigne edited the final volume on sector 1 (2011) and the volume on sector 3 (2021, CNRS Éditions)^12,13. Bailly's review of the sector 1 volume calls it a reference publication detailing an extensive excavation, with 4,000 m² cleared, of a stratified open-air site¹⁴. He criticises the radiocarbon chapter: its 37 dates are presented by topographic and stratigraphic origin, but no information is given on the dated sample or measurement, and the calibration curve and probabilities are not mentioned¹⁴.