Completion of the first excavation season at the prehistoric settlement of the Chalcolithic period at Erimi-Pamboula

From:

Department of Antiquities

03/10/25 16:01 | Press release | Culture

The Department of Antiquities of the Deputy Ministry of Culture announces the completion of the first excavation season at the prehistoric settlement of the Chalcolithic period at Erimi-Pamboula, which took place in July 2025. The excavation was conducted by a team of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA) under the direction of Professor Giorgos Vavouranakis. The team included NKUA adjunct lecturer Ioannis Voskos, postdocs, PhD candidates, master’s and undergraduate students from the NKUA, the Freie Universität Berlin and the Université de Strasbourg, as well as archaeologists from Cyprus. An Erasmus short mobility educational programme by NKUA and the Cyprus Institute was included in the excavation. Associate Professor of Environmental Archaeology Evi Margaritis and her team from the Cyprus Institute cooperated with the mission.

The Chalcolithic settlement, which flourished between 3500-2900 BC, lies within the modern settlement of Erimi. It had been initially excavated by Porphyrios Dikaios, and parts of it are being excavated by the Department of Antiquities today. The NKUA research began at a close distance from the area of the original excavations by Porphyrios Dikaios, intending to create a stratigraphic sequence and reframe what is already known about the site. It revealed the floor of a house with a pit and a built platform, the wall of another round building, part of a rectilinear wall or other built feature, and a pit with burnt deer bones and antler parts. The pottery from the layers that covered the, apparently, last phase of the settlement, includes some monochrome sherds, characteristic of the Late Chalcolithic period, a fact indicating that there was human activity at the settlement within the first half of the 3rd millennium BC.

Moveable finds include a very high number of pottery sherds, among which many decorated with the Red-on-White technique, ground stone tools (axes, adzes, rubbers and querns), parts of chipped stone tools, among which scrapers, significant quantities of animal bones, mainly deer, many finds of picrolite, such as raw material pebbles, half-finished pieces of jewellery, pendants and a partially preserved cruciform figurine.

(EK/KA/NZ)

Completion of the first excavation season at the prehistoric settlement of the Chalcolithic period at Erimi-Pamboula

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