Palaepaphos 2018: Preliminary data on the archaeo-environment and the builders of the polity of Ancient Paphos

In this conference paper given in Greek, Maria Iacovou of the University of Cyprus presents the 2018 results of her team's research at Palaepaphos, focusing on the environment, economy and building craft of the ancient polity during the Cypro-Classical and Hellenistic periods.

Iacovou begins with macro-scale landscape findings developed since 2006. She argues that Paphos was founded as a port at the start of the Late Bronze Age, five centuries before its megalithic sanctuary, drawing its wealth from trading copper and timber from its catchment basin rather than from pilgrims. Geophysical surveys in 2007 and 2010 disproved a long-assumed city wall around the sanctuary, redirecting excavation to the plateaus to the north and east. Since 2017 the project has worked from a laboratory in Kouklia provided by the Department of Antiquities, with funding from the A. G. Leventis Foundation.

On the Hadjiabdullah plateau, adjacent to the palace excavated in the 1950s, the team has uncovered 290 square metres of an industrial and storage complex built in the early 5th century BC. Amphorae from Unit 1 show use from the 5th to the late 2nd century BC. In 4th-century BC Unit 2, flotation directed by Dimitra Mylona recovered 275 kilograms of murex shells (over 30,000 individuals, nearly half the deposit), reused here for plasters, alongside sedge and palm phytoliths and incised scapulae used for divination. Fish bones from the workers' diet include picarel, red mullet, pandora and catfish, the last confirming an inland marshy lagoon used as an anchorage.

Across the complex, phytoliths show a complete absence of cereals and a widespread presence of palms and olives. Archaeobotanist Anaya Sarpaki identified olive stones of three types, with grape, almond, fig and caper seeds, while anthracologist Maria Ntinou showed that hearths burned olive prunings and Calabrian pine branches, indicating pine forests grew closer to the coast along the Diarizos river than today. For copper metallurgy, a Paphos Forest survey with Dr Zomeni, Vasiliki Kassianidou and Athos Agapiou mapped twelve slag heaps for lead-isotope comparison with copper-working slag confirmed by Andreas Charalambous on a Unit 3 floor.

Seventy metres away at Laona, a 3rd-century BC tumulus studied by Takis Karkanas covered and preserved to six metres an early 5th-century BC mudbrick fortification. Analyses by Dr Lorenzon and Charalambous show that several teams made standardized mudbricks from slightly different recipes mixed when laid. Consistent with the absence of grain at Hadjiabdullah, the bricks contain no straw, using sand instead as temper.