Issues of Continuity in Cypriot Prehistory: The Case of the Roudias Terrace in Upland Cyprus

Nikos Efstratiou, Emeritus Professor at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, and archaeologist Dimitris Kyriakou present their excavations on the upland terrace of Ayios Ioannis-Vretsia-Roudias near the Xeros River valley in the Paphos district. Given in Greek, the lecture examines what the two prehistoric sites on this mountain terrace contribute to questions of settlement, insularity, and continuity between the Late Epipalaeolithic and the Aceramic Neolithic in Cyprus.

Efstratiou begins by questioning the long-standing focus of Cypriot prehistoric research on coastal settings and sea-going foragers, arguing that the earliest hunter-gatherers on the island also moved into the mountainous interior in search of game, plant foods, and raw materials. At the lower site of Roudias, excavated since 2009, a stratigraphy of around twenty layers exceeding five metres in depth has yielded an idiosyncratic chipped-stone industry studied by the late Carole McCartney. In the absence of collagen-bearing bone and charcoal, optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating has provided a sequence of dates spanning from 12,800 ± 1500 to 6,900 ± 1200 BC.

In 2019, excavation on the northern, upper part of the terrace uncovered a second site, Upper Roudias, dating to the mid-seventh millennium BC (around 6400 BC). By November 2021 the team had exposed astone building over five metres in diameter, comparable to the circular houses of the Khirokitia phase, along with traces of further stone structures and a possible southern enclosure wall. Many ground-stone tools, querns, and stone vessels were built into the walls in secondary use, suggesting earlier structures nearby. Finds include picrolite ornaments and a well-preserved faunal assemblage studied by Angelos Hadjikoumis, in which deer remains occur in unusually low proportions.

Efstratiou considers whether the two sites on the Roudias terrace, separated by some three thousand years, represent a palimpsest of long-term upland occupation from seasonal hunters to semi-permanent farmers. He discusses problematic claims of earlier Palaeolithic finds on Cyprus, including surface material reported from the Morphou area in the occupied north and coastal sites at Akrotiri-Aetokremnos, Nissi Beach, and Aspros, and contrasts the local, inward-looking Epipalaeolithic lithics of Cyprus with the Levantine-style industries of Aegean sites such as Ouriakos on Lemnos. The talk concludes by comparing the transition from hunting to farming at upland Roudias with sequences at Shillourokambos, Klimonas, and Ayia Varvara-Asprokremnos.