Eleni Procopiou

The Department of Antiquities expected a small rescue operation at Akrotiri and found a basilica 36 m wide. The site is Katalymmata ton Plakoton, on the Akrotiri peninsula near Limassol, and the archaeologist who has directed its excavation since 2007 is Eleni Procopiou^3,10.

Her publications begin with two reports in the Report of the Department of Antiquities, Cyprus: a 1995 study of a 7th-century ossuary tomb in the eastern necropolis of Amathous, and a 1997 report on a rescue excavation she carried out in 1993 in Zig-Zag Street, Limassol^4,5,6. In 1995 and 1996 she investigated cemetery sites along the Akrotiri shore and in the Lania quarries, working with volunteers from the RAF Archaeological Unit and the Western Sovereign Base Area Archaeological Society³. She also excavated a small monastic basilica at Yermasoyia, and in 2005 and 2006 she and Athanasios Papageorghiou reinvestigated the building sequence of the church of Agios Herakleidos at Tamassos³. In 2006 she contributed a survey of the Early Christian, Early Byzantine and Middle Byzantine monuments of Limassol town and district to a volume on the history of the city⁷. Her doctoral research, on the compressed cross-in-square church in Cyprus of the 9th to 12th centuries, was published by the Museum of Kykko Monastery in 2007⁸.

Part of a mosaic at Katalymmata ton Plakoton had been located by Frank and Anthea Garrod of the Western Sovereign Base Area Archaeological Society³. The Department began excavating in 2007 on the expectation of a small rescue job. What emerged was a monumental building³. The annual reports of the Department for 2008 and 2009 name her as director of the excavation and give her title as Senior Archaeological Officer^1,2.

The 2008 season found the north and west limits of an Early Byzantine religious building of the end of the 6th century, 36 m wide, with mosaic floors. The 2009 season ran from 12 October to 20 November and completed the excavation of the western part, the narthex^1,2. Both seasons were supported by the Akrotiri Community Council and the British Sovereign Base Environmental Department. The Department's draughtswoman Mary Chamberlain and the Limassol conservation team assisted, and the dig served as a training placement for postgraduates from the United Kingdom and for Cypriot doctoral students, among them Doria Nicolaou^1,2.

In summer 2010 she lectured on the site at the CAARI conference on Byzantine Cyprus in Nicosia³. Her chapter in the conference volume of 2014 describes a T-shaped transept basilica measuring 36 by 29 m, with a raised podium, mosaic floors and walls built in poured plaster. A larnax burial contained bronze coins of Heraclius that give a terminus ante quem of about 617; a coin of 616 gives the earliest date, and coins from the 2012 season show the building in use until 641¹⁰. She published fuller accounts in 2015, as "The excavations at Akrotiri-Katalymata ton Plakoton", and in 2018, in a volume on church building in Cyprus from the fourth to the seventh century^11,12.