Dhekelia

Dhekelia is the name under which six Late Bronze Age tombs and one building on the north shore of Larnaca Bay are known. They lie at two localities, Steno and Koukouphoudhkia, on the coastal plain below the plateau of Pyla-Kokkinokremos, and were dug in 1956 when the British garrison at Dhekelia was built. The tombs were in use from about 1500 to about 1190 BC and held Cypriot wares of the period together with Mycenaean pottery and locally made three-handled jars in the Mycenaean manner [1, p. 685; 2, pp. 288–289]. None of this has been published in full.

The two localities and their names

Steno lies "on the Pyla coastal plain immediately below and to the east of Kokkinokremos" [2, p. 288]. Koukouphoudhkia lies south of the plateau [3, p. 109]. Both lie near the village of Pyla, and since 1960 both have been inside the Eastern Sovereign Base Area, which Britain kept when Cyprus became independent. The older literature, including the Swedish Cyprus Expedition's account of the period, names the tombs after Dhekelia: Dhekelia "Steno" and Dhekelia "Koukouphoudhkia" [1, p. 685]. More recent studies use the village name, Pyla-Steno and Pyla-Koukoufouthia, and the second name is also spelled Koukoufouthkia or Koukouphoudka [2, p. 288; 3, p. 109]. We keep the familiar name Dhekelia for the page.

Michael Brown counts Steno and Koukoufouthia, with the tombs at Pyla-Verghi and Pyla-Stavros, as part of "a wider network of dispersed rural occupation" on the Pyla plain in the Late Bronze Age, before the fortified settlement on the plateau above was founded in the late 13th century BC [2, p. 288; 4]. Hala Sultan Tekke lies on the western side of the same bay, and the later city of Kition about 10 km to the south-west.

Rescue excavation in 1956

The tombs and the building came to light during construction of the Dhekelia garrison. In Brown's words, at Steno "a substantial structure was excavated in 1956 during rescue operations concurrent with construction of the Dhekelia Garrison military facility". Four tombs were found beside it. Two more tombs were excavated at Koukouphoudhkia, where there were also traces of a building [2, p. 288; 3, p. 109]. The Steno tombs were found when the ground was levelled for a rifle range, and Porphyrios Dikaios and Vassos Karageorghis excavated them for the Department of Antiquities. One tomb had three distinct burial layers; another had held at least 19 burials, but its contents were disturbed. Besides pottery, among it three-handled piriform jars and other Mycenaean IIIA vases, the tombs held "bronze bowls and knives, cylinder seals and ivory plaques". The finds went to the Larnaca Museum, together with those of a contemporary tomb at Koukouphoudhkia, about half a mile nearer the sea. That tomb held a Mycenaean IIIA amphoroid krater with panels of wave pattern alternating with a plant motif flanked by small birds, which A. H. S. Megaw, then director of the Department, counted "in form and decoration among the earliest of its kind"; its local pottery dated the tomb to about 1400 BC [5, p. 25]. Pezzi adds that the Mycenaean vases were mainly piriform jars, stirrup jars and shallow bowls [3, p. 109].

No final report followed. Paul Åström studied the tomb groups for the Swedish Cyprus Expedition's volume on the Late Bronze Age and wrote in 1972: "The tombs have not been published and can only be mentioned as secondary evidence" [1, p. 685]. Part of the pottery has since been lost. In his catalogue of three-handled jars, Giampaolo Graziadio lists four of the Steno jars as "possibly" or "probably disappeared in 1974"; Åström had examined them before they were lost [6, pp. 31, 65, 139].

The tombs and their dates

Åström dated each tomb group by its pottery, and Brown has turned his periods for the Steno tombs into approximate dates in years BC [1, p. 685; 2, p. 289]. The earliest burials, at Steno, go back to Late Cypriot IB, about 1500 BC. Most of the tombs were in use in Late Cypriot IIA and IIB, in the 14th century BC, and Åström judged that Dhekelia "was a flourishing site in Late Cypriote IIA, to judge by a number of tomb-groups attributable to this period" [1, p. 685]. Steno Tomb 3 received a second burial in Late Cypriot IIC [1, p. 692], and may still have been in use around 1190 BC, while people were living on the plateau above. Brown takes this as a sign that the settlement at Steno and the one at Kokkinokremos may have overlapped [2, pp. 288–289].

The periods are those of Åström's list of Late Cypriot tomb groups [1, p. 828]. Brown's dates are for the Steno tombs [2, p. 289]; for the Koukouphoudhkia tombs we give only the century implied by Åström's periods. Elisabetta Pezzi dates Steno Tomb 1 more narrowly, to LC IIA2 [3, p. 109].

The building at Steno has no dating evidence of its own. It is assigned to Late Cypriot II only because of the tombs beside it, and "it is not known whether the remains at Pyla-Steno represent an isolated building or part of a larger complex" [2, p. 288]. Pezzi suggests that Steno was "probably an important settlement with tombs within the habitation area" [3, p. 109].

Phases

1. First burialsfrom c. 1500 BC (LC IB)

   Steno Tombs 1, 4 and probably 3 are first used.

2. Main periodc. 1400–1320 BC (LC IIA2–IIB)

   All six tombs in use; Mycenaean IIIA2 vases and local three-handled jars.

3. Last burialsc. 1320–1190 BC (LC IIC–IIIA)

   A second burial in Steno Tomb 3; Koukouphoudhkia Tomb 2 still in use. The plateau of Kokkinokremos is settled at the end of this phase.

What the tombs held

Koukouphoudhkia Tomb 1 contained Base Ring I and II, White Slip II, Plain White Hand-made ware and Mycenaean IIIA2a pottery. Tomb 2 at the same locality held "a number of good Mycenaean IIIA2a and IIIA2b specimens". Steno Tombs 3 and 4 "have rich material of Late Cypriote IIA2" [1, p. 685]. Among the small finds Lena Åström recorded faience beads from Steno Tombs 3 and 4 and from Koukouphoudhkia Tomb 1, now in the Cyprus Museum and the Larnaca District Museum [7, pp. 521–522], and a hemispherical bronze bowl from Steno [7, p. 493]. An owl-headed terracotta rattle from Steno is one of thirteen such rattles with a known findspot in Cyprus [8, p. 205].

The best-documented group is the three-handled jars. These are jars made in Cyprus in imitation of Mycenaean piriform jars (Furumark shapes 46 and 47; see Mycenaean imports and local imitations). Graziadio catalogues five from Dhekelia: one from Koukouphoudhkia Tomb 2, published in the Cyprus volume of the Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum, and four from Steno Tombs 1, 2 and 3 [6, pp. 139, 143]. Graziadio counts Dekhelia Steno among the few sites with three published examples; only Enkomi and Ayia Paraskevi have more [6, p. 160]. Graziadio suggests, tentatively, that the cluster of findspots around Larnaca Bay may point to "some workshops (at Hala Sultan Tekke, Dekhelia or elsewhere in the Larnaca district) which produced and distributed the three-handled jars in this area" [6, p. 160].

A piece in the Drakopoulos collection of a kind found at this site. It does not come from the site.

• Cypriot Three-Handled Jar in the Mycenaean Style with Running SpiralsLate Bronze Age II · 1375–1300 BCDrakopoulos collection

Later finds nearby

Further Late Bronze Age tombs have been found east of Pyla, inside the base area, at Dhekelia-Moutti tou Dhragou in 1976 and Dhekelia-Louma in 1981 [2, p. 289; 9, p. 725; 10, pp. 690–691].

Visiting

The localities lie inside the Dhekelia garrison of the Eastern Sovereign Base Area. There is no public access and nothing is shown on site. The finds that survive are in the Cyprus Museum in Nicosia and the Larnaca District Museum [7, pp. 521–522]; we know of no permanent display of the Dhekelia tomb groups.