The Iron Age

After the IId destruction the Stele Building may have been abandoned and the area was in any case flattened in Hellenistic and Byzantine times, but some later Iron Age occupation persisted in phase IIe to the SE and SW of the building itself where the external ground-level was lower. Subsequent building in phase IIf was associated with a couple of rudimentary kilns, one of which contained a mass of very homogeneous ceramics in the style known in Cyprus as "White-Painted IV" and "Plain White IV". Petrographic analysis by Carl Knappett confirmed that these ceramics were made on site. Current estimates for the date of this style hover around 700-650 BC. The stratification here is very compressed – about 50 cm for 500 years – and to explore what went on at the site in the obscure half-millennium before 650 BC we needed to look elsewhere, and turned our attention to the centre of the site.

In 1995-1996 a sounding into Iron Age deposits south of the church foundations had encountered no architecture for a depth of 1.5 m, but rather an open space into which large storage pits had been sunk. Assuming that some associated building could not be too far away, we decided to enlarge this sounding to the east, to tie the sequence into some architecture. In the event the architecture remained elusive. The work in 2007-2011 has revealed four main stages in the formation of this part of the site. The latest stage of pre-Classical occupation is represented by an open space (called by us Surface 1) which hosted two or three small ovens, two or more deep circular storage pits, one very much larger rectangular storage pit in K14d with a capacity of about 35 cubic metres, and an even larger storage facility near the western edge of the tepe, which had previously been called a "ditch" but was now clearly a deep rectangular pit.

The ceramics indicate that this occupation is roughly contemporary with phase IIf in the NW corner, so around 700-650 BC. It was preceded by an intermediate stage lasting some centuries in which the area of J-K14 was an open space, broken by an occasional small pit but no other features: this space stretched for over 20 m from west to east, and at least 6 m from north to south. Within this stage at least three consecutive surfaces are recognizable, separated by bands of packing, and together making a depth of some 1.5 m.

The date of these surfaces is hard to pin down, for want of enough good ¹⁴C samples from primary contexts. In these levels the ceramics are predominantly local, but also increasingly as time passes there are occasional imports or imitations of exotic wares, such as Black on Red or Bichrome, bearing witness to the re-establishment of cultural relations with the Mediterranean region. At present both Surfaces 3 and 4 seem likely to belong to the centuries immediately before Surface 1, so provisionally 900-700 BC.

Going further down, the third stage is a sequence of architectural phases sealed by the packing for Surface 4. The latest of these (Phase 5) is only present towards the west, and largely consists of a sequence of open air living areas, at times with storage pits or an oven, and probably protected from the sun by temporary shelters for which we found numerous post-holes. There are scrappy stone or mud-brick walls at different times, but for the most part the associated architecture must have been over towards the western edge of the mound, where part of a contemporary house was discovered in the 1990s. The connection between the two areas was entirely removed by the excavators of the massive rectangular storage pit much later at the time of Surface 1.

Phase 6 Immediately before the Phase 5 house and open area the whole area had been flattened except for a wall running across the space from north to south. East of this in the latest phase (6a) an oven had been in use against the wall, and before this the space was largely open though with a few scrappy walls; but the surprise was in phase 6c where rather than the expected stone wall foundations, we came across a double ring of post-holes, appearing to belong to a structure some 8 m in diameter.

Regrettably, the continuation of this ring eastwards, where we hoped to follow it, had been cut away by pits of different periods, including the immense Surface 1 grain facility in K14d, so that we cannot say if it was really circular (or for instance, apsidal).

The ceramics indicate that this Phase 6 is approximately contemporary with the later phases of the Stele Building (IIc/d). It may not be coincidental that the Eastern Building there was not rebuilt in phase IId, leaving an open space, and over this, spreading west to the space immediately overlying the destroyed eastern rooms of the IId Stele Building (Rm d5) there was a surface with numerous post-holes.

In K14a and the west half of K14b our excavations were taken down below Phase 6 only in the space to the west of the post-hole ring. Here there was a tight sequence of occupational phases (Phases 7 down to 15), associated with the eastern side of a building that was either part of or contemporary with the Level 3 Late Bronze Age house which lay beneath the Iron Age house in I14.

Like the Iron Age house, much of this building had been removed by the excavators of P11/11, but just as in I14 the LBA house walls still stood unusually high, and whole pots were lying on the floor before the rooms were back-filled and the whole area was levelled for Phase 6. While this building was in use, the space to the east saw the sequence of occupation surfaces, with associated storage pits (one back-filled with at least three grindstones) and fire installations, and, in the earliest phase reached, with a patch of stone paving. There is a clear similarity here to the later set of surfaces in Phase 5, and indeed with the Stele Building itself, where the floors of some of the IIa/b rooms remained at their original level while a deep accumulation of occupation layers built up outside in the courtyard area.