Rantidi Forest: the University of Indianapolis excavations at Lingrin tou Dhigeni

The University of Indianapolis team that worked in the Rantidi Forest found a 41 cm terracotta female figure, fragmentary, with spread legs and an incised vulva, in the topsoil at the mouth of a rock-cut chamber at Lingrin tou Dhigeni. Georgia Bonny Bazemore, who led the project, thought it unparalleled in Cyprus¹. The University of Indianapolis sponsored the work, and the Department of Antiquities took part in the survey^2,3. Karnava dates the start to 1996, when Bazemore's survey proceeded into a small excavation⁴. Young gives the exploratory excavations as 1997 to 2000, with Philip H. Young as Bazemore's assistant³. By 2000 the project had completed three seasons of excavation and survey concentrated on the hilltop¹.

The stated goals were to document the site, to survey nearby antiquities on land about to be transformed by tourist hotel installations, and to rediscover the foundations that Robert Zahn unearthed in 1910, so as to give the inscriptions an archaeological context³. The survey identified more than 19 sites from the Chalcolithic to the late 19th century AD, among them a chert quarry at Katakomorotsos, a ceramic Neolithic temporary camp at Vrysi tou Rantidiou and Chalcolithic material at Asprokremnos². At the sanctuary the ground had been ploughed to bedrock and virtually all walls destroyed, and no building plans could be recovered; Young judged the primary aim largely unsuccessful, though much was learned about the site and its vicinity³.

Two seasons of excavation exposed a small building east of the site, a favissa 1.3 m deep and a series of rock-cut chambers, possibly associated, Steel records, with a chthonic cult of Adonis. Pottery from the sanctuary dates its use from the 6th century BC to the Hellenistic period, and many Cypro-Archaic snowman figurines were recovered². Further Cypro-syllabic inscribed stones came to light, including a votive offering table found down the hill, but nothing showing where such stones had originally stood^2,3. Two of the several rock-cut dromos tombs at the edge of the sanctuary were excavated, but millennia of looting had removed useful finds³. A large natural cave was excavated, and Bazemore argued that it was the setting of oracular ceremonies³. Karnava reports that Bazemore could not connect her excavation site with Zahn's, and that the Department of Antiquities later excavated further and recovered more inscribed material⁴. Bazemore's preliminary report for 1996 to 2007 appeared in RDAC 2007 (pp. 175–192)⁵, and the first part of her study of the syllabic inscriptions in RDAC 2010 (pp. 249–272)⁶.