Pyla-Kokkinokremos: Karageorghis and Demas's excavations

In 1981 the Department of Antiquities excavated about 140 m² of Pyla-Kokkinokremos south of Dikaios's 1952 Sector II, and exposed two rows of rooms with a thick eastern wall that may have been part of a perimeter defence¹. Vassos Karageorghis and Martha Demas directed the work, in 1981 and 1982². The 1981 aim was to find material comparable to that from Maa-Palaeokastro¹.

The eastern rooms contained pithoi and were interpreted as storage rooms, the western rooms as workshops. The rooms were built directly on bedrock, and hollows in the cut floor were filled with stones and earth¹. Karageorghis dated the floor pottery to the end of Late Cypriot II and reported no Mycenaean IIIC:1b pottery; it included a Mycenaean IIIB bell krater with two chariots and a charioteer on each face, and a large Late Minoan IIIB pithos with a stylized octopus¹. Symons reports that occupation began toward the end of Late Cypriot IIc and seems to have lasted only 25 to 30 years, with only LH IIIB and LM IIIB sherds and no trace of LH IIIC:1².

The 1982 notice describes groups of houses along the plateau perimeter and records a bronze axe incised with Cypro-Minoan signs, found on the floor of one house³. Brown notes that the short occupation, western imports and casemate boundary wall have supported readings of an immigrant Aegean community, while others stress local precursors and a predominantly Cypriot material culture⁴. Karageorghis and Demas published the results in Pyla-Kokkinokremos: A Late Thirteenth Century B.C. Fortified Settlement in Cyprus (Nicosia, 1984)⁵.