New Research at the Middle Bronze Age Site of Alambra

Andrew Sneddon presents the results of four excavation seasons conducted between 2012 and 2016 at Alambra. Following earlier Cornell University excavations of seven buildings in a ravine (Area A), a chance find of storage jars during roadworks 70 metres away prompted salvage excavations by the University of Queensland and La Trobe University, combined with geophysical survey across the site.

In the road cut (Area B), the team excavated the corner of a storage room containing six Red Polished pithoi, smaller Red Polished and White Painted vessels, a bronze chisel, a copper pin, stone tools, a spindle whorl, and a loom weight, buried under 150 millimetres of ash and carbonised roof beams. Geophysical survey in the flat field of Area C revealed looted tombs near rectangular Middle Bronze Age courtyard houses. Trench 10 exposed a house with an incised plaster hearth accompanied by a crudely modelled clay figure, pierced seashells, a copper needle, and a 24-centimetre standing human figure of sun-baked mud and incised plaster. Nearby lay a well with a cluster of wide-mouthed water jars, which Sneddon compares to the Kotchati model.

A second building in Area C held an intramural burial with a faience bead necklace, a copper earring, a copper pin, and two copper ingots on the chest. By the doorway stood a concave plastered mudbrick feature that Sneddon compares to the chair finials on the Vounous bowl, while the next room contained an incised plaster hearth nearly two metres across.

Sneddon compares Alambra with nearby Marki, which overlapped with it between c. 1900 and 1750 BC. Differences in pottery and the scarcity of cattle figurines at Alambra argue against colonisation from Marki, though a pebble-crete pot emplacement in the burial room hints at movement between the two settlements. Combining the new data with Cornell's survey, Sneddon reconstructs Alambra as separate housing clusters with adjacent cemeteries. He contrasts the open ground and built hearths of Area C with the cramped ravine of Area A, suggesting social differentiation, and weighs whether the fire across Areas B and C reflects conflict or a post-abandonment blaze.

In the discussion, Sneddon, Lindy Crewe, Jennifer Webb, Thomas Kiely, and Efthymia Alphas discuss drilled stone objects, tombs at Katolakkos with exterior pot emplacements, and whether the well jars were cooking pots.