Inland Cyprus in the Late Bronze Age: Survey and excavations in the region of Agios Sozomenos

Despina Pilides, Curator of Antiquities at the Department of Antiquities, presents the results of the archaeological project she has directed since 2012 in the region of Agios Sozomenos in central Cyprus. Situated at the junction of the Alykos and Yialias rivers between the Troodos copper mines and eastern coastal ports such as Enkomi, the area saw tomb excavations by Max Ohnefalsch-Richter in 1894 and a valley survey by Hector Catling and Kyriakos Nicolaou in 1957, which recorded fortifications on the plateaus of Kafkalia, Barsak and Nikolides and a major settlement at Ampelia. The 2012 project began with an intensive GIS survey conducted with Cornell University to resolve conflicting toponyms and chronologies before moving to targeted excavations.

On the Barsak plateau, trenches dug in 2015 and 2016 revealed a massive double enclosure wall with an exterior rock-cut ditch, but no internal architecture or storage vessels. The small repertoire of worn White Painted and Red Polished IV sherds indicates that the fort served for surveillance rather than storage and was occupied only briefly. At the Nikolides plateau, excavations between 2015 and 2020 investigated the circuit wall and a rectangular tower dressed with ashlar masonry that had long been dated to the Late Bronze Age from surface finds. The 2020 season uncovered a foundation deposit between an older wall and the ashlar phase containing five intact vessels of the Hellenistic period, including a lagynos, a skyphos and two Megarian bowls. Pilides shows that the ashlar tower and circuit wall were built in the Hellenistic period after the abolition of the city-kingdoms, reusing stones from an earlier Late Bronze Age Cyclopean wall preserved on the eastern slope.

In the valley below the plateaus, excavations at Djirpoulos exposed a two-phase Late Bronze Age building containing plaster floors, hearths, clay basins, a stone-lined cistern, kiln or furnace remains, metal slag, a stone mould for pins, loom weights, wall brackets, White Slip ware, a Canaanite jar and a bronze axe inscribed with a Cypro-Minoan sign identified by Massimo Perna. About 350 metres away on the hillock of Ampelia, part of the same settlement, excavation uncovered a large building holding at least thirteen to sixteen large pithoi on stone bases, destroyed by a severe fire radiocarbon-dated between the mid-15th and early 12th centuries BC. Wet sieving recovered grape seeds, raisins, figs and barley. Pilides argues that Djirpoulos and Ampelia formed a specialized system of craft workshops and centralized agricultural storage overseen by a local elite, which collapsed at the start of the 12th century BC through internal social and economic pressures, possibly exacerbated by arid climatic conditions, rather than external invasion.