Souskiou Vathyrkakas

Souskiou-Vathyrkakas is a Copper Stone Age (pre-Bronze Age) necropolis of the late 4th millennium BC. BC, which lies 2.5 km from Palaepaphos, today's Kouklia , in the southwest of Cyprus in an 80 m deep gorge. It comes from a time when cemeteries were not yet regularly established.

Most of the grave goods have fallen victim to grave robbers, so that they can be found in various private collections and in the J. Paul Getty Museum . This also includes a seated figure in the Pierides collection and cross-shaped figurines from the Erimi culture .

The graves are relatively deep and bell-shaped. The Souskiou Vathyrkakas Cemetery 1 was excavated on an area of 30 × 60 m . The graves clustered in a 30 m wide zone around the steep promontory on which the necropolis was located, which was perhaps part of a larger system. It is on the other side of a stream, across from today's location.

For the first time, a cemetery can be found on the island, plus more spacious facilities for a multiple burial system, different types of graves and grave goods as part of the burial process. Grave 73, which stood near the center of the cemetery, is exceptional. A great deal of work was put into this tomb, which was apparently erected for a kind of public, which allows conclusions to be drawn about new approaches to questions of identity, an ideology that was directed at the ancestors, and questions of hierarchy within society. The tomb is seven times as large as the next larger. The foundations were excavated over an area of 4.5 × 4.3 m, with a depth of 2.5 m. The facade was glossy white and smooth, which otherwise did not occur in the cemetery either. Next to needles was a container with the oldest representation of a person in Cyprus. A few traces indicate that the monumental tomb may have encountered resistance in an early period.

Four excavation campaigns were intended to forestall attempts to loot the site, such as the British Kouklia campaign from 1950 to 1951, the German archaeological campaign from 1972 or the two excavations by the Cypriot Department of Antiquities from 1972 and 1991 and 1994 to 1997. The excavation results were in published scattered publications, which in turn Edgar Peltenburg 1997 summarized.

literature

Demos Christou: The chalcolithic cemetery I at Souskiou-Vathyrkakas , in: Edgar Peltenburg (Ed.): Early Society in Cyprus , Edinburgh University, Edinburgh 1989, pp. 82-94.
Lucia Vagnetti: Figurines and minor objects from a chalcolithic cemetery at Souskiou-Vathyrkakas (Cyprus) , in: Studi Micenei ed Egeo-Anatolici 21 (1980) 17-72.

Web links

Souskiou-Vathyrkakas Cemetery

Remarks

↑ Edgar Peltenburg, Demos Christou, Diane Bolger, Paul Croft, Elizabeth Goring, Adam Jackson, Dorothy A. Lunt, Carole McCartney, Zissis Parras, Janet Ridout-Sharpe, Andrew Shortland, Mike Tite, Marie E. Watt (Eds.): The Chalcolithic Cemetery of Souskiou-Vathyrkakas, Cyprus. Results of the Investigations of Four Missions, from 1951 to 1997 , Nicosia 2006.

[1] Edgar Peltenburg, Demos Christou, Diane Bolger, Paul Croft, Elizabeth Goring, Adam Jackson, Dorothy A. Lunt, Carole McCartney, Zissis Parras, Janet Ridout-Sharpe, Andrew Shortland, Mike Tite, Marie E. Watt (Eds.): The Chalcolithic Cemetery of Souskiou-Vathyrkakas, Cyprus. Results of the Investigations of Four Missions, from 1951 to 1997 , Nicosia 2006.