Ancient urban space finds by investigation in city of Kourion

Cyprus Department of Antiquities, Ministry of Transport, Communications and Works, announces the completion of the 2018 excavation season of the "Kourion Urban Space Project" (KUSP) under the direction of Dr Thomas W. Davis of the Tandy Institute for Archaeology at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth Texas, USA; Dr Davis was formerly the Director of the Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute in Nicosia from 2003-2011.

Since 2013, the KUSP has been excavating the remains of a large building (Building 4) just west of the Earthquake House on the Kourion acropolis, as a part of a long-term archaeological investigation within the ancient city of Kourion at the Lemesos District. The excavation has so far exposed what is believed to be the east and west exterior walls of the structure, and several walls that divide the building internally.  The team has isolated at least four different internal rooms, a possible covered courtyard, and an outside space that includes access to cisterns that once held water.

The 2018 excavation season has revealed that Building 4 had a unique-use life.  The structure was built, extended and internally divided, destroyed, robbed, and buried by human and natural forces over time.  Continuing its life, Building 4 finally re-emerged in the archaeological record piece by piece in the last five years.  Though we cannot exactly date the construction of Building 4, it must have been built sometime before the end of the 4th century A.D.  Due to the fact that some walls of the building are constructed from large limestone blocks and others are composed of smaller field stones, it appears that this building underwent alterations and additions during its use. Like its neighbor, the Earthquake House, Building 4 appears to have been catastrophically destroyed, perhaps in the series of earthquakes that laid waste to much of Kourion in the last half of the 4th century; walls composed of small field stones collapsed, large blocks were shaken off walls and broken, and some walls were pushed out of alignment giving them an S-shaped appearance. In what might be a roofed courtyard, large stones, some carved with acanthus leaf patterns and other designs, were toppled from the surrounding walls.  This action collapsed the roof and left a layer of roof tiles on top of what remained of the once standing surrounding walls.  Following the catastrophic event, Building 4 appears to have been abandoned.  Wind-blown sand from the beach below began filling in the spaces between the collapsed wall stones, burying the building.  This did not end the life of Building 4, however. It appears that once the building was destroyed, people still living on the Kourion acropolis dumped their refuse on the decaying building.  This created a thick ribbon of discarded, broken pottery on top of the remains of Building 4, which the excavators now arduously try to piece back together to form near-complete pots.  Building 4 continued to decay over time and, at some point in the past large cut-blocks were removed to form parts of walls for use elsewhere. The re-use of stone can be seen in multiple buildings on the Kourion acropolis, as well as elsewhere in Cyprus throughout history. 

As the KUSP team excavates Building 4, we learn about the people who used this building.  In several of the rooms of this structure, the inhabitants imported marble and calcite to decorate the floors and the lower portions of the walls.  They adorned the upper portion of the walls with plaster painted with stripes or casual brush strokes of red, turquoise, black and yellow.  The inhabitants also imported other goods, likely at a great expense.  A partly recovered green and yellow mosaic glass plate made in the Kharga Oasis in Egypt was imported and used by the inhabitants of this building.  A storage jar also from Egypt was uncovered in another room and was probably imported for its contents.  During the 2018 season, the excavators have found fragments from imported marble statues representing both human and animal forms.

KUSP partners include the Australian Institute of Archaeology, the University of Cyprus, Cyprus Technical University and the Western Sovereign Base Area Archaeology Society.  Students from the Seminary were joined by students and volunteers from the consortium partners and from the University of Cincinnati, Stanford University, and the University of Cyprus.  More than twenty local volunteers also assisted in the excavation of the site and the processing of the material remains.

About the Kourion Urban Space Project

The Kourion Urban Space Project (KUSP) is a multi-national effort, committed to working in partnership with local Cypriot archaeologists and students. It is under the direction of Dr. Tom Davis.

Kourion is located at Episkopi Bay, on the southwest  coast of Cyprus. While it has settlements from the Neolithic to the Medieval periods, the emphasis of the Tandy excavation project is on the later Roman and Early Byzantine Periods, the world of the New Testament and the Early Church.

The fourth century AD marked a watershed change for the development of Cyprus’ cultural identity.  Transformed by both internal and external factors, the Cyprus that emerged by 400 AD is recognizably the forerunner of modern Cyprus (Davis 2011). Because the ancient sources are largely silent concerning ancient Cyprus, archaeological evidence and its accurate interpretation is crucial for reconstructing this period of transitionfrom paganism to Christianity.  During the late 4th c. AD, a massive earthquake occurred off the southwest coast of Cyprus which devastated the cities located on this part of the island.  One of the cities most affected by this catastrophic event was Kourion, which appears to have been almost completely abandoned for a short period of time, before being reoccupied at the beginning of the early 5th c. AD.  Despite this reoccupation, the site never completely recovered, resulting in a large portion remaining abandoned leading to the preservation in the archaeological record of the destruction. This was made manifest in the excavations led by David Soren of the University of Arizona (1984-1987). Soren unearthed a domestic structure which came to be known as the Earthquake House. Dr. Davis, the Principal Investigator of the current project, served as field director of those excavations in the first two seasons.  

The excavations confirmed the destruction of this building by the earthquake and its lack of subsequent disturbance by revealing not only a complete artifact assemblage in situ, but also the remains of five victims that had been killed during the event. Such sudden and complete destruction makes Kourion one of only a few sites around the ancient Mediterranean to provide archaeologists with the opportunity to analyze artifact assemblages in the context of their daily use rather than after they have been discarded.

The Kourion Urban Space Project (KUSP) seeks  to gain a better understanding of the urban space of Kourion and by extension late Roman Cyprus.  KUSP is under the direction of Dr. Thomas Davis who served as the Principal Investigator of the KMP after the untimely death of Dr. Danielle Parks.

Photo Source: Tandy Institute for Archaeology