Latest News
04/07/11
Excavations are now complete and the team is in the planning stages for studies and publication.
Souskiou-Vathyrkakas Cemetery
Souskiou-Vathyrkakas, 2.5 km inland from Palaepaphos, modern Kouklia, in the southwest of Cyprus, is widely acknowledged as a remarkable pre-Bronze Age necropolis. The site substantially pre-dates the time when cemeteries regularly served as venues for burial on the island, in the Bronze Age and later. Its tombs are typically deep, bell-shaped shafts, whereas contemporary graves at other sites are shallow pits. Its fame rests especially on the abundance and quality of objects allegedly looted from the site and now in private collections. They include remarkable cruciform figurines, the ideological hallmark of the Erimi culture, and outstanding works such as a stone sculpture in the J. Paul Getty Museum and a seated ceramic figure in the Pierides Collection.
Vathyrkakas is located to the south of an 80 m deep ravine, on the edge of a flat rocky scarp that forms its southern lip. The cemetery was investigated by four missions, mostly in an effort to pre-empt looting. They were:
1. The British Kouklia Expedition in 1950–1;
2. The German Archaeological Expedition in 1972;
3. The Cyprus Department of Antiquities first mission in 1972;
4. The Cyprus Department of Antiquities second mission in 1991, 1994-97.
The results of these investigations were published in scattered preliminary by the excavators. This unsatisfactory situation was partly resolved by a study of the archives of the four missions and the publication of all the results in E. Peltenburg ed., The Chalcolithic Cemetery of Souskiou-Vathyrkakas, Cyprus. Results of the Investigations of Four Missions, from 1951 to 1997. Nicosia: Department of Antiquities.
The four expeditions investigated what we can now see as a 30 x 60m area of a linear cemetery known as Souskiou-Vathyrkakas Cemetery 1. Tombs cluster unevenly in a c.30m wide funerary zone along the southern lip of the ravine, opposite the contemporary settlement on other side of a stream. It may be part of a larger cemetery comprised of a number of foci. The excavated portion of Cemetery 1 comprises some 100 rock-cut features in a c. 1800 m2 exposure, but it is important to appreciate the varied chronology and purposes of human activities at the locale.
In terms of Cypriot funerary practices, the chief innovations at Vathyrkakas are the existence of a cemetery, more spacious facilities for a multiple inhumation burial system, the elaboration of tomb types, and the disposal of objects as part of the funerary rituals. These mark a considerable break with preceding and succeeding customs, one that the current project seeks to understand. Within the spectrum of tomb types, there is one that stands out as truly exceptional.
Tomb 73 (see image at the top of text), placed near the centre of the exposed cemetery area, is a remarkable monument designed for public display. Its creators mobilised labour in a manner not seen for any other tomb to fashion a large-scale facility that much exceeded the practical requirements of burial. This was an assertive act, one that symbolised and fostered new notions of identity, ancestral ideologies and status hierarchies. One way to appreciate the singularity of T. 73 is to compare it to other tombs. There is no gradual fall-off in sizes between it and the next largest tombs in the cemetery. It is seven times as large as the largest of the other tombs, suggesting the existence of a very exceptional group(s) in Cyprus at the end of the 4th millennium BC.
Tomb diggers not only quarried out an impressive rectilinear area 4.50 x 4.30m, but also continued to cut down the same square area below the hard rock and for some 0.30-0.50m into the softer havara to a total depth of 2.50m. While both initiatives are unique, it is the depth of the upper pit that especially sets T.73 apart. The likely result was that it formed a spacious setting to impress and for public ceremony since a great deal of effort was expended for effect. It possessed glistening white facades, deep and smooth, not seen elsewhere in the cemetery. Concealed near the top of one of two shafts was a very large capstone with two hourglass perforations near the edges. Presumably these unusual features were required to hoist the capstone into place. The walls of the shaft were thickly plastered and lined with stones set on edge. A large boulder may have been placed on the floor, like two others in the adjacent shaft. The special status of T.73 was possibly also signalled by a kerbed tumulus of unknown height.
With the exception of the chipped stone, needles, and a flask with the earliest painted depiction of a human on pottery in Cyprus, grave goods are unremarkable, even unprepossessing. However, the contents of one shaft had been emptied and strewn across the base of the upper pit before being sealed in antiquity. This is the only instance of disturbance in Chalcolithic times in the cemetery. The objects were clearly not taken away but smashed, so the evidence indicates deliberate interference with the dead, but not for the purposes of looting. Such action further emphasizes the unusual status of Tomb 73 and the possibility that not everyone agreed with the ostentatious behaviour exhibited by the tomb.