Pyla: Dikaios's trial excavations at Kokkinokremos and the Verghi tomb

In 1952 Porphyrios Dikaios made a trial excavation at Kokkinokremmos after a group of Late Cypriot gold jewellery was traced to it¹. He exposed a house with one floor on bedrock, with Mycenaean IIIC:1 pottery; the site was described as extensive but ill-preserved¹. Cultivators had dug debris out and dumped it at the plateau edge, and from it came fragments of a painted Mycenaean-style amphora, 73 cm in diameter, decorated on both sides with a bucranium between two birds, which the report describes as presumably locally manufactured¹.

At Verghi Megaw's report states that Dikaios cleared a disturbed tomb after information was received about the looting of a rich tomb there. The report records Late Cypriot II pottery, including forty restorable Mycenaean-style vases, among them a crater with four chariots, jugs with Cypro-Mycenaean characters on their handles, and several two-handled Syrian jars; a crater was identified by Professor Wace with grey Minyan ware.¹. The tomb had been said to be the source of three cylinder seals, one with a Cypro-Mycenaean inscription¹.

Karageorghis reports that Dikaios worked at Kokkinokremos for a week and dated the settlement by two skyphoi that he considered Mycenaean IIIC:1b. Karageorghis argues that they were local ware following Mycenaean IIIB:2, and proposes a date of about 1230 to 1200 BC for the settlement².