Alain Le Brun

Alain Le Brun directed the French mission that re-excavated Khirokitia from 1976, the Neolithic settlement that Porphyrios Dikaios had excavated between 1936 and 1946^13,17. His dates of birth and death are not recorded. He was a researcher of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), and little is known of his career outside Cyprus.

He first appears in 1970 as "Alain Le Brun, attaché au CNRS", conducting the fieldwork of the French mission at Cape Andreas-Kastros on the Karpas peninsula¹. The Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique names J. Perrot as head of that mission and places the work within the research of Perrot and H. de Contenson on early villages of the Near East; Archaeology in Cyprus describes the expedition as headed by Le Brun¹¹. The site is aceramic Neolithic. The first season found circular stone houses about 4 m across inside and stone vessels, and no pottery¹. The Bulletin reports further campaigns directed by Le Brun in 1971 and 1972, and a fourth from 16 July to 31 August 1973^2,3,4. He published the results as Un site néolithique précéramique en Chypre: Cap Andreas-Kastros (Paris, 1981)¹⁵.

Reopening Khirokitia

Le Brun's own account of the later work begins with 1974: the Turkish invasion forced the Cypriot authorities to reorient archaeological activity, and Khirokitia was reopened under a new research programme¹⁷. Cape Andreas lies in the occupied north.

In August and September 1976 a preliminary joint campaign took place at Khirokitia, run by the CNRS and the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem and directed by N. Stanley Price and A. Le Brun. It aimed to establish the extent of the settlement through surface collection, geophysical prospection and soundings, and to re-study the structure Dikaios had taken for a road^5,13. From 1977 the French mission, supported by the CNRS and the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, worked under Le Brun's direction, opening a new trench in zone D on the summit^6,17. His 1997 guide gives him as director of the mission since 1976¹⁷. Campaigns are reported in the Bulletin for 1977, 1978, 1980, 1981 and 1983^6,7,8,9,10. Odile Daune-Le Brun drew the illustrations in his 1997 guide¹⁷.

According to the summary in Archaeology in Cyprus for 1981 to 1985, the excavations showed that the north-south "street" was a wall, Wall 100, marking the western limit of the early settlement and preceded by earlier walls. In a Level III building, S.85, the team found pisé roof debris bearing impressions of branches and reeds, which that summary takes to disprove Dikaios's theory of domed (tholos) roofs. A red ochre wall painting was also found in Level III¹².

Publications

The excavation reports appeared as Fouilles récentes à Khirokitia (Chypre): two volumes for 1977 to 1981 (1984), followed by volumes for 1983 to 1986 (1989) and 1988 to 1991 (1994)^16,17. In 1997 the Bank of Cyprus Cultural Foundation published his guide Khirokitia: A Neolithic Site, in an English edition of 5,000 copies translated by Louise Steel, with an appendix by Sophocles Hadjisavvas on the archaeological park. The guide describes the Department of Antiquities visitors' centre and the replicas at the foot of the site, among them part of the enclosure wall and its entrance and units S.117 and S.125¹⁷. The guide says the finds are not held by the mission¹⁷.

In 2000 he published Nouvelles données sur le Néolithique de Chypre, and in 2003 he edited with Jean Guilaine Le Néolithique de Chypre,^18,19. With Odile Daune-Le Brun he published an article on Khirokitia in Paléorient in 2009²⁰. The date his fieldwork ended is not recorded.