Petra tou Limniti: the Swedish Cyprus Expedition

On the summit plateau of Petra tou Limniti, Alfred Westholm found the remains of huts in four phases of occupation, together with stone bowls and three dolerite idols of a fiddle-shaped type¹. He excavated the site in two summer weeks in 1929 for the Swedish Cyprus Expedition, which Einar Gjerstad directed^1,2. In Gjerstad's memoir the party reaches the island by boat, rowed by two fishermen, Andreas and Panagis, and the workers climb the cliff to the dig; Lazaros called them to work and to meals with a shell³.

The excavated area measured roughly 10 m square and was laid out in 1.50 m squares. The excavators studied the stratification in each square, drew sections and cleared the earth in natural strata¹. They recorded four habitation phases, Petra I to IV: Petra I was associated with a natural rock cavity, Petra II with two later huts, and Petra III with a hut that had a living-room and a kitchen. The report states that the four are periods of habitation and do not represent different chronological epochs¹. The object register lists flint and stone tools, stone bowls and grinding equipment, bone implements and a single obsidian knife. The idols are numbered 27, 42 and 72, and the report describes them as successive developments of the fiddle-shaped type¹. Bones of swine, sheep and cattle, sheep teeth and fish bones were among the animal remains collected¹.

Gjerstad called the culture Pre-Neolithic, placing it before the Neolithic, and wrote that he could give no absolute date¹. Göransson (2012) classifies the finds as pre-pottery Neolithic IA-B, with a range of 8200 to 5900/5600 BC². The expedition's preface records that finds were divided between the Cyprus Museum and the excavators, a considerable number being allotted to the expedition; where the Petra material went is not recorded¹. The excavation is published in the first volume of the expedition's Finds and Results, with topography, stratigraphy, architecture and the object register¹.