Pyla-Koutsopetria: Department excavations at the Early Christian basilica

At the Early Christian site of Pyla-Koutsopetria, excavation exposed the apse of a basilica and, about 40 m to the south-west, an annex with a vaulted two-storey room, wall paintings, marble revetment, carved marble capitals and gypsum floors¹. Maria Hadjicosti of the Department of Antiquities conducted trial excavations in 1993, on land where deep cultivation had exposed architectural remains². Herscher and Steel date a second season to 1997; Caraher, Moore and Pettegrew date the two small excavations to 1993 and 1999^1,2,3.

In the annex, parts of three large rectangular rooms were excavated. Room 1 had a wide west entrance and a ceiling carried on a double arch and wooden beams; incised on the base of the arch were Christian symbols, among them animals and birds on ships and crosses². A layer of ash with bronze coins sealed a gypsum and hydraulic plaster floor, and a pit held a spouted terracotta container, a strainer and amphora necks³. Finds from the annex include bronze coins of the early seventh century³. Steel reports the building as apparently destroyed in an earthquake; Herscher writes that the settlement appears to have been violently destroyed around the middle of the seventh century, perhaps in the first Arab raids on Cyprus^2,3. In the basilica, marble fragments indicate an original opus sectile floor inside the apse, where ploughing had destroyed the surface³. Caraher, Moore and Pettegrew say material from the excavations dated construction to the sixth century AD and abandonment a century later¹.

Georgiou states that the basilica excavation first revealed the importance of the settlement that the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project later surveyed⁴. Caraher, Moore and Pettegrew write that the two seasons were to be published separately, together with studies of the architecture, wall painting and molded gypsum, and that the excavated area is now covered and enclosed behind a fence¹.