More Bronze-Age Pottery and Architecture from Excavations at Kalavasos-Ayios Dhimitrios, Cyprus

Greetings again from the Cypriot Late Bronze Age site of Kalavasos-Ayios Dhimitrios. The weather was kind to us on the first week, with relatively cool temperatures for this time of year. This has been helpful, as a great deal of soil had to be moved out of Unit 3, pictured below. As previously mentioned, this area was opened in hopes of following the road leading up to Building X and exploring more of its adjacent buildings. Unit 7 — the room with its enigmatic stone feature — has us working carefully, as it is abounding in interesting cultural materials. Most exciting for me is finding locally made White Slip II ware, a ceramic type typical of the Late Bronze Age. Cypriot White Slip ware was exported around the Mediterranean, so I suppose it’s not only me that finds this handmade ceramic attractive. Also pictured is a sherd in situ and an analogous hemispherical bowl with a wishbone handle from the Larnaka District Archaeological Museum. 

The excavations at Kalavasos-Ayios Dhimitrios are part of a broader, interdisciplinary study of urban landscapes between sites in two adjacent river valleys. Through the KAMBE (Kalavasos and Maroni Built Environments) project, teams from the University of British Columbia, Cornell University, The University of Chicago, and the University of Southampton work to understand the varying trajectories the neighboring sites undertook towards urbanization and their implications on the social structures of the inhabitant cultures during the Late Bronze Age. More detailed information on the projects that KAMBE is involved in can be found here: https://kambe.cnrs.ubc.ca.  Pictured below are two of the co-directors of KAMBE, Dr. Kevin Fisher of Kalavasos-Ayios Dhimitrios at his “branch office” on the ashlar steps of Unit 3, and Professor Stuart Manning from Cornell University giving us a tour of the monumental entrance to the Ashlar Building at Maroni-Vournes. Thanks for following along!