Site tour·Inside Archaeology·2017
A week of archaeological site visits in Paphos, Kourion and Limassol
Cyprus Archaeology Vlog
Chapters
About the video
The presenter of the Inside Archaeology channel records a week-long holiday in Cyprus with friends, compiled as a casual travel vlog focused on the island's archaeological sites and medieval castles.
After an introduction explaining that they chose Cyprus in part for its archaeology, the video begins in Paphos with a walk around Paphos Castle and the Paphos Archaeological Park. On the ground at the park, the presenter and her companions examine surface fragments to distinguish flat ceramic sherds from stone, view several mosaic floors and walk through the theatre and tunnel areas.
The middle section covers a day trip to Kourion, Kolossi Castle, Limassol Castle and Aphrodite's Rock. At the archaeological site the presenter notes a sign recording a find made by Daniel in 1934, and inside the castle museums the group looks at displayed pottery vessels and human skeletal remains, including a headless skeleton and another accompanied by a skull and what resembles calipers. Brief holiday clips of swimming in the sea at Limassol, searching for pebbles at the beach by Aphrodite's Rock and visiting a Paphos waterpark follow.
The final archaeological stop is the Tombs of the Kings at Paphos, which the video's chapter headings note were the tombs of the rich and powerful rather than royalty. The vlog concludes with a brief sign-off about upcoming channel videos.
From our collection
Pieces in the Drakopoulos collection of the kinds and periods this talk covers: Hellenistic.
The Drakopoulos collection →
Found at the places discussed
Objects in our catalogue, in museum collections, recorded as found at these sites.
Background
Where to read more on this site before or after watching.
The site
Kourion
Kourion stands on a limestone bluff above Episkopi Bay, west of Limassol. It was the seat of one of the Iron Age kingdoms of Cyprus, then a Hellenistic and Roman city with a theatre, baths and houses with mosaic floors, and a great sanctuary of Apollo Hylates to the west. An earthquake in the later 4th century AD destroyed the city; a Christian town with a bishop's church grew up over the ruins and was abandoned in the later 7th century.
In the compendium
Royal and Built Tombs
Tombs built of cut stone in Cyprus, from the ashlar tombs under Late Bronze Age houses at Enkomi to the royal tombs of Salamis and Tamassos and the rock-cut courts of Nea Paphos.
The period
Hellenistic
The Ptolemaic period in Cyprus, c. 310–31 BCE, when the city-kingdoms were abolished and the island was governed as one province from Nea Paphos.
Map of Cyprus
Places discussed in the talk
- Has a page on this site
- Other places
- Ground above 200, 500, 1,000 m
Places
- 1Kourion
- 2Kolossi (approx.)
- 3Limassol (approx.)