Troodos Archaeological and Environmental Survey Project (TAESP)

The Troodos Archaeological and Environmental Survey Project covered a Survey Area that ended at 164 km2 on the northern edge of the Troodos, with six Intensive Survey Zones of 32 km2¹. Its results include a Late Chalcolithic/Philia-phase rural settlement at Phlasou-Koutroullis, an Archaic sanctuary at Katydhata-Pano Limna and Roman slag heaps at Skouriotissa^1,2.

Michael Given, A. Bernard Knapp, Vasiliki Kassianidou and Jay Noller directed the project, with Given also field director¹. The University of Glasgow was the host, with the University of Cyprus and Oregon State University as partners¹. A pilot season in 2000 was followed by summer field seasons in 2001 to 2003, a short season in November 2003, and study seasons in 2004 and 2005¹. The project renamed itself in 2001, from the Troodos Archaeological Survey Project, to recognise its geomorphological and environmental aspects¹. A geomorphologist defined Survey Units typically 25 m wide, which five fieldwalkers spaced 5 m apart walked, counting all artefacts and collecting a sample³.

The 2001 season looked for the Katydhata cemetery excavated by Markides. It found Red Polished scatters at the base of the Laonarka ridge, which the team then read as a settlement of Prehistoric Bronze Age 2 (EC IIIB to MC I) on advice from R. Merrillees³. By 2013 the authors could not decide between a cemetery and a habitational and mortuary complex at Katydhata-Laonarka, saying only excavation could demonstrate structures². At Pano Limna the Archaic sanctuary was followed by a larger Roman settlement and cemetery, and it seems to be the sanctuary Ohnefalsch-Richter investigated in 1882². At Skouriotissa the team recorded two Roman slag heaps near the mine¹; a charcoal date from the Skouriotissa slag heap is 596–645 AD (68.2%), and the authors estimate that most of the two million tons of slag accumulated over about 450 years¹.

The results appeared in 2013 as Landscape and Interaction, two volumes in the Levant Supplementary Series (14 and 15)^1,2. The electronic data are held by the Archaeology Data Service and the paper archive by the School of Humanities at the University of Glasgow¹.