Agios Sozomenos

Agios Sozomenos is a group of Bronze Age sites on and below a steep-sided limestone plateau near the abandoned village of the same name, 13 km south of Nicosia, where the Alykos river joins the Gialias [1, p. 87; 2, p. 104]. On the plateau stand a fortified settlement at Dhali-Kafkallia and two large walled enclosures, the forts of Barsak and Nikolidhes; in the valley below lie a building at Glyka Vrysis and a large settlement with workshops and a pithos storehouse at Djirpoulos and Ampelia, with tombs nearby. The sites were in use from about 1750 BC, late in the Middle Bronze Age, until a destruction in the 12th century BC [1, p. 97; 3, p. 14]. The forts are among the fortifications of Bronze Age Cyprus that have been excavated, and the people of the valley are thought to have moved afterwards to Idalion, about 6 km to the south [3, p. 14].

The plateau and the two rivers

Michel Fortin described the plateau as lying "approximately in the middle of the island", steep-sided, above the Gialias valley and with "a commanding view of the Mesaoria plain" [1, p. 87]. Here the alluvial floors of two well-watered valleys are overlooked by high plateaux capped with a hard limestone known locally as kafkalla [2, p. 104; 1, p. 94]. The two river corridors carried routes north to south and east to west, and the copper mines of Mathiatis lie close by [2, p. 104]. Fortin noted that the forts sit "exactly between the island's main flat plain and a 27 km wide strip of igneous rocks rich in copper ore" [1, p. 101]. Despina Pilides stresses the river itself: the Gialias, "the second longest river in Cyprus", links the inland settlements with the sea, Agios Sozomenos with Enkomi in the Bronze Age and later Idalion with Salamis [3, p. 13].

The valley floors offered farmland with water and pasture for cattle, and the uplands grazing for sheep and goats [4, p. 148]. The plateau-top sites stand above cliffs 40 to 50 m high on its south side [4, p. 148; 1, p. 90]. The names of the localities have been spelled in several ways; the table gives the forms used on this page.

Sources: [1, pp. 90–99; 5, pp. 7, 25; 2, pp. 104–108; 3, p. 14].

Discovery and research

The first recorded digging was by Max Ohnefalsch-Richter in 1894. The chronicle of excavations in the 1899 Catalogue of the Cyprus Museum lists a "Late Bronze Age necropolis with native and Mykenaean vases, half a mile north of Sozómenos village" and "another late Bronze Age settlement and necropolis" at Nikolides, both dug in 1894 for the Berlin Museum [6, p. 2]. Pilides counts his notes, now being studied again, among the sources for both Agios Sozomenos and Idalion [2, p. 104; 3, p. 13].

Einar Gjerstad was the first to record Barsak, Nikolidhes and Kafkallia, and in 1924 he excavated the building at Glyka Vrysis [1, pp. 90, 92, 94, 97]. This was the fieldwork for his doctoral study, Studies on Prehistoric Cyprus [7], three years before the Swedish Cyprus Expedition began work in 1927. Some material labelled as from "the fortress" at Nikolidhes is in the Medelhavsmuseet in Stockholm [1, p. 99].

Hector Catling visited Barsak in 1952 and came back in the later 1950s during the Cyprus Survey of the Department of Antiquities; he visited Glyka Vrysis in 1957, and his surface finds went to the Survey collections [1, pp. 90, 99]. He wrote on the sites in his study of Bronze Age settlement patterns and in a paper on the ancient topography of the Gialias valley [8; 9]. John C. Overbeck and Stuart Swiny surveyed Dhali-Kafkallia, published an accurate plan of it and cleared Tomb G in its cemetery [5, pp. 7, 25; 1, p. 94]. Fortin surveyed all the plateau sites in early summer 1975, "just before the militarization of the zone", for a London doctorate supervised by J. N. Coldstream, and his 1995 article is still the fullest description of them [1, pp. 87, 90].

From 2001 a French project studied the medieval landscape of Potamia and Agios Sozomenos, with geomorphological work in the Gialias valley [10; 11]. In 2012 the Department of Antiquities began the Agios Sozomenos Excavations and Survey Project under Pilides [2, p. 104]. It ran until 2021 [3, p. 14]. The survey, finished in 2016 with GIS mapping and geophysics, covered five areas of more than a hectare each, among them Ampelia, which had been recorded before as four or more separate sites [2, p. 104]. Excavation followed at Barsak, Nikolidhes, Djirpoulos and Ampelia [2, pp. 105–108; 12; 13].

Dates and phases

The survey showed that the earliest development was the fortified settlement at Dhali-Kafkallia, "succeeded by the establishment of successive forts combined with a settlement in close proximity" [2, p. 104]. Barsak was in use with the early part of the settlement at its foot; as production grew, Nikolidhes replaced it and storage was gathered at Ampelia [3, p. 14]. The end has been dated in two ways. Anna Satraki, drawing on an early report of the new excavations, wrote that the whole group was abandoned before the end of Late Cypriot II [14, p. 228]. The excavations now place the burning of the Ampelia storehouse and the destruction of the Djirpoulos workshops in the 12th century BC, a date supported by radiocarbon [3, p. 14; 2, p. 108].

Phases

1. Dhali-KafkalliaMiddle Cypriot III, about 1750 to 1650 BC

   A walled settlement with houses on the plateau west of Nikolidhes; Tomb G below it is first used.

2. Barsak and the first settlementLate Cypriot I, from about 1650 BC

   The double wall and ditch of Barsak; the first phase of the workshop building at Djirpoulos; the Glyka Vrysis building is built, damaged and strengthened.

3. Nikolidhes and the Ampelia storehouseLate Cypriot I and II

   Barsak gives way to the fort at Nikolidhes, later given an ashlar tower; the settlement grows and stores its produce in pithoi at Ampelia.

4. Destruction12th century BC

   The storehouse burns and the workshops are destroyed. The people are thought to have moved to Idalion.

5. Hellenistic fortHellenistic period

   The fort at Nikolidhes is partly dismantled and rebuilt.

The fortified settlement at Dhali-Kafkallia

Kafkallia lies 500 m north-west of Nikolidhes, across a cleft cut by a seasonal tributary of the Alykos [1, p. 94]. It belongs to the village of Dhali, but it forms part of the same group. On a triangular plateau whose two long sides are cliff edges, a U-shaped wall encloses an area of 135 by 170 m at the base of the triangle. The wall is built of roughly cut limestone blocks in two faces with a rubble fill, 1.3 to 1.8 m thick along its 210 m northern length and 1 to 1.5 m along the 190 m southern length; only one course survives [1, pp. 94–95]. At its end stands a squarish "bastion" with walls 2.5 to 3.2 m thick and 25 to 28 m long. No entrance was found; the gaps either side of the bastion were probably gateways, the southern one, a passage 10 m wide, the more likely [1, p. 95]. A wall 1.2 m thick runs for 250 m below the eastern scarp [1, p. 95].

Kafkallia differs from Barsak and Nikolidhes because house walls can be seen all over its interior of about 4 ha [1, p. 95]. Eilis Monahan and Matthew Spigelman describe "two conjoined enclosures, one of which contains extensive domestic architecture" [4, p. 148]. The surface pottery is mostly Red Polished III and IV and Red Polished Punctured, with White Painted IV, some White Slip II, Black Lustrous Wheel-made and Plain White Handmade, a single Mycenaean IIIB sherd, and saddle querns. Swiny dated the settlement to Middle Cypriot III; Fortin thought it lasted into Late Cypriot I [1, p. 97]. Overbeck and Swiny judged that the walled settlement was empty for nearly the whole time the cemetery below it was in use, so the people buried there must for the most part have lived somewhere else nearby [5, p. 23].

The fort at Barsak

Barsak stands on the crest of the plateau about 750 m north-east of the village, above cliffs 40 to 50 m high to the south and east [1, p. 90]. On the surface Fortin traced a polygonal enclosure of about 250 by 200 m, some 5 ha: a wall running from scarp to scarp in a rough right angle and then along the plateau edge, with a second wall parallel to it across the ridge. Both had footings of undressed limestone in two rows with a core of rubble and earth, and a superstructure of mud brick. At the south angle Catling had seen massive blocks and walls 1 to 1.5 m thick, "most probably" a tower. Fortin found no foundations inside [1, p. 90]. The surface pottery, Black Slip II, White Painted IV Cross Line, Red Polished III and IV, Red Polished Punctured and Plain White, included no Early Cypriot sherds at all; it runs from Middle Cypriot II–III into Late Cypriot I, "the period to which Barsak most likely belongs" [1, pp. 90, 92].

Excavation from 2012 showed a stronger work than the surface suggested. Satellite and aerial photographs revealed drainage lines that pointed to a further wall or ditch. The inner wall is at least 2 m thick, of large boulders with a rubble core, and survives four courses high. The outer wall is founded on bedrock, and outside it a deep ditch is cut into the rock; its bottom was not reached. Between the two walls runs a corridor about 15 m wide with a plastered floor [2, p. 105]. Pilides calls the result "a robust double wall with a ditch, which would have required control of human and material resources" [3, p. 14]. Finds were few: White Painted and Red Polished IV pottery, bowls with piecrust rims, storage jars with an incised band on the neck, a small deer figurine perhaps from a ritual vessel, and incised stone beads [2, p. 105].

The fort at Nikolidhes and its tower

Nikolidhes lies 2 km south of Barsak, south-west of the village, on a headland with escarpments about 30 m high [1, p. 92]. Its circuit wall runs along the east, south and west edges and cuts across the plateau on the north, enclosing a rough square of about 250 by 250 m, "just over six hectares". Along the inside of the east and south walls Fortin saw short partition walls forming rows of rooms about 5 by 3 m; "these dozen or so rooms are the only traces of habitation" [1, p. 92]. His surface pottery belonged to the first phase of the Late Bronze Age [1, p. 94].

The excavations found a circuit wall "at least 3.20 m in width", built of rectangular stones in courses on both faces with a rubble fill, well preserved round the plateau except where a bulldozed road cuts it [2, pp. 105–106]. Against it stands a tower 15 by 7.5 m faced with large ashlar blocks laid in horizontal courses. Its south-west corner does not bond with the circuit wall, so the tower was added later, "perhaps in an effort to both strengthen and embellish the structure". An ashlar staircase led to the top of the tower, with an ashlar ramp beside it, and a fine plaster floor ran between tower and wall [2, p. 106]. The 2018 season report dated the first fort to the end of the Middle Bronze Age and the tower perhaps to the early Late Bronze Age [12]; Pilides places the Nikolidhes pottery later than Barsak, within Late Cypriot I and II [2, p. 106]. Almost nothing was left inside: small sherds of White Painted VI, White Slip I and II, Red Slip, Plain White and some Mycenaean pottery, and a bronze arrowhead found on the surface after winter rain [2, p. 106]. For Pilides, "defence was clearly a fundamental consideration"; whether the builders followed local or foreign models is still open [2, p. 106].

From Nikolidhes one can see Barsak to the north and Kafkallia to the west. Each fort alone has a limited view, but together they command nearly the full circle, "encompassing much of the Mesaoria" [4, p. 148].

The building at Glyka Vrysis

Just below Nikolidhes to the south, on the east bank of the Alykos and named after a spring nearby, Gjerstad excavated in 1924 the foundations of a rectangular building 19 by 8.3 m [1, p. 97]. Its walls had rubble socles under mud brick plastered with lime. The east wall had two doorways flanked by projecting sections, and the west wall was double. Inside, three mud-brick partitions divided four rooms that opened onto a corridor 1.6 m wide along the east front; a pillar base stood in the middle room, and stone socles carried wooden stairs to the roof. A west annexe of five rooms and a partly roofed courtyard of 11.4 by 7.6 m with a round well completed the plan [1, pp. 97–99]. After a destruction the building was strengthened with buttresses and thicker walls, the east wall was encased in a wall 2 m thick with a new gate 2 m wide, and the old doors were blocked [1, p. 99].

White Painted III–V and Black Slip pottery under the first floor and a White Slip sherd in the foundations date its construction to Late Cypriot IA. It was destroyed towards the end of that phase, restored at the start of Late Cypriot IB and went out of use at its end [1, p. 99]. Gjerstad called it a fortress, a station for the soldiers who manned the plateau enclosures. Fortin rejected this: the name is "a misleading appellation", the building is comparable to the houses at Alambra-Mouttes, and it "does not deserve the designation of a fortress" [1, p. 100]. Monahan and Spigelman still call it a fortified outpost beside a spring [4, p. 148], while Pilides counts it, "possibly", as part of the large settlement in the valley [3, p. 14].

The settlement below: Djirpoulos and Ampelia

Catling had already picked up Canaanite jars, other Levantine pottery, Late Helladic IIIA–B vases and fragments of faience, ivory and bronze at Ampelia, which he called "the major Middle and Late Bronze Age settlement in the valley, a position it subsequently yielded to Idalion" [14, pp. 227–228; 9, p. 231]. The new survey found a large settlement at Djirpoulos, at the foot of Barsak, about 350 m from Ampelia; the two are parts of the same settlement [2, p. 107; 14, p. 228].

At Djirpoulos the excavators uncovered part of a large building with intensive workshop activity in two phases, from the beginning of Late Cypriot I to Late Cypriot II. It had stone foundations, mud-brick walls and plastered roofs, a large ashlar threshold with sockets for a wooden door, limestone architectural fragments that may come from mouldings round doors or windows, and a fine gypsum plaster floor with a hollow for a pithos; a cobbled courtyard lay to the south [2, p. 106]. The finds include a broken Canaanite jar, a stirrup-jar handle with an incised pot-mark, many storage jars, pithoi, basins and hearths, and a mould, slags and a bronze axe engraved with a Cypro-Minoan sign, the evidence of small-scale metalworking [2, p. 106]. The last season, in 2021, cleared two large rectangular rooms with a stone trough lined with waterproof plaster, stone cisterns, vats and a drain, with White Slip, Base Ring and Plain White pottery, grinders, querns, copper objects and gaming stones. The rooms seem to belong to "separate complexes rather than one continuous unit, possibly dedicated to different activities", and "the last phase suffered a severe destruction before its abandonment" [13].

Pieces in the Drakopoulos collection of kinds found at this site. None of them comes from the site.

• White Slip II Hemispherical Bowl with Wishbone HandleLate Bronze Age II · 1450–1200 BCDrakopoulos collection
• Base Ring II Bilbil Juglet with White-Painted BandsLate Bronze Age II · 1450–1200 BCDrakopoulos collection

On a hillock at Ampelia stood a storehouse. Its main room, 11.6 by 3.3 m, had a fine gypsum plaster floor and a door on the south to a cobbled courtyard. Stone bases along the east side, with more on the west, held at least 13 to 16 large pithoi for storing produce [2, p. 107]. The building burned: the roof fell onto a floor covered by an ash layer 6 cm thick. Wet sieving recovered grape seeds and raisins, figs and cereals, mostly barley. Almost nothing portable was left, and "everything else seems to have been taken away on abandonment, prior to the fire destruction" [2, p. 108]. The 2018 season found superimposed pebble floors set in plaster, a stone basin with White Slip I bowl sherds, Base Ring juglet fragments and weights [12].

Pilides reads the forts and the valley as one system. Barsak protected the first workshop complex; as farming grew, Barsak was given up for Nikolidhes, and with storage concentrated at Ampelia the whole formed "part of an organised élite system with a strong hint for an imminent danger of conflict" [2, p. 108]. Satraki saw in the results evidence for "the accumulation of wealth" and for "supra-regional political organization" [14, p. 228].

Tombs

Ohnefalsch-Richter's tombs at Nikolidhes are known mainly from the 1899 catalogue, which notes a wheel-made ware with a red clay and dark slip that had then been studied only in his Late Bronze Age tombs at Nikolides [6, pp. 2, 38]. A cylinder seal in the Ashmolean Museum, bought in 1896, is recorded as from a tomb at "Dali, Nikolides"; it shows three ornamental trees alternating with two ibexes [15].

• Cylinder seal, three ornamental trees alternating with two upended ibexes and footLate Bronze Age I · 1650–1050 BCAshmolean Museum

Tomb G at Kafkallia, cleared by Overbeck and Swiny, is a rock-cut chamber entered by a shaft. It had been looted, but a bronze battle-axe and a bronze belt lay in a shallow pit in the floor under a flat stone [5, p. 7]. The excavators thought the pair, "so strikingly similar to tomb furniture from Palestine", could "hardly date later than the 17th century"; they showed "considerable wealth at Kafkallia" and contact with the outside world before the end of the Middle Cypriot period. They thought such goods reached Kafkallia by way of eastern Cyprus, from Kalopsidha or Enkomi, and noted that the prominence of Red on Black ware in the tomb points the same way [5, p. 23]. Most of the pottery was of the 14th and especially the 13th century, and the tomb was in use for "a good four hundred years", into the transition from Late Cypriot II to III [5, p. 23]. The axe is in the Cyprus Museum [5, p. 21]. More on these weapons: Bronze Age weapons and Bronze Age chamber tombs.

Pieces in the Drakopoulos collection of kinds found at this site. None of them comes from the site.

• White Painted III-IV Amphora with Lozenge Chains and Hatched TrianglesMiddle Bronze Age II · 1850–1650 BCDrakopoulos collection
• Jug with Flaring Neck, probably Black Slip WareMiddle Bronze Age II · 1850–1600 BCDrakopoulos collection

What the forts were for

Fortin saw Barsak as "a fortified settlement, impossible to attack from the plain", probably manned permanently but occupied by the people of the plain "only in time of imminent danger"; Nikolidhes was ideal for watching the valley and withdrawing to [1, p. 100]. He also tied the forts to the copper industry and external trade [1, p. 101]. Catling suggested that the settlements benefited from lying on a copper supply route [5, p. 23], and that the valley may have been in contact with the port towns of the Larnaca region [14, p. 228]. Satraki discusses the idea that the sites were secondary centres of Enkomi on a route that began at Analiondas-Palioklichia, at the source of the Alykos [14, p. 228]. Monahan and Spigelman treat the different sites as complementary parts of one system, with a shared view over the plain, for "housing, monitoring, or managing the movement of people, raw materials, and processed goods" [4, p. 148]. Pilides stresses an organised elite and the threat of conflict [2, p. 108].

Destruction and the move to Idalion

The storehouse at Ampelia was burnt and the workshops at Djirpoulos destroyed "in the 12th century BCE, possibly in relation to climatic changes and periods of aridity" [3, p. 14]. Radiocarbon dates from the burnt floor at Ampelia "indicate a XII century BC as the possible terminus ante quem" [2, p. 108]. Pilides thinks the population moved to Idalion, which grew into the main centre of the region, and that the pithos workshops there "most probably continued the tradition of the workshops at Djiropoulos" [3, p. 14]. Satraki likewise links the rise of Idalion with the decline of settlement in the Gialias valley [14, p. 229].

Map of Cyprus

• Ground above 200, 500, 1,000 m

N

50 km

Sites on this map

1. 1Agios Sozomenos
2. 2Idalion
3. 3Alambra
4. 4Enkomi
5. 5Kalopsidha (approx.)
6. 6Salamis

The Hellenistic fort and the later village

Long after the Bronze Age the fort at Nikolidhes "was partly dismantled and rebuilt in the Hellenistic period, by another regime this time but for very similar reasons" [3, p. 14].

The village of Agios Sozomenos below the plateau is much later. The hermitage of Agios Sozomenos is the oldest Christian monument of the area, and the church of Agios Mamas is "the only known Cypriot example of a Gothic church in a rural area" [16]. The village is now abandoned. None of the photographs on this page shows the Bronze Age sites; they show the later village and its churches.

Visiting

The plateau with Kafkallia, Barsak and Nikolidhes lies inside a military zone and cannot be visited; it was closed in 1975 [1, pp. 87, 90]. The abandoned village with the ruined church of Agios Mamas, below the plateau, can be approached. The finds from the excavations are with the Department of Antiquities; we know of none on display.