Project summary

This travel grant enabled me to conduct analysis of ceramics found during an initial survey (2017) of a Chalcolithic-Bronze Age site – at Makounta-Voules in the Polis area – one of the last unknown territories
from prehistoric Cyprus is the north-west of the island.

Project details

Location: Cyprus

Year(s): 2019

Project director(s): Lisa Graham (University of Edinburgh)

Lead institutions and funding:

• CBRL

Project description

This travel grant enabled me to conduct analysis of ceramics found during an initial survey (2017) of a Chalcolithic-Bronze Age site – at Makounta-Voules in the Polis area – one of the last unknown territories
from prehistoric Cyprus is the north-west of the island.

This survey revealed stone tools, coroplastic art and metal slag from a large Chalcolithic and Bronze Age settlement. However, due to the lack
of excavated prehistoric sites in the region, the ceramics are rather difficult to align to other known assemblages. During the 2017 season, I completed a basic sherd count and assigned very general dates. To fully make sense of this new assemblage, I undertook a detailed study and recording of the 2,000 diagnostic sherds and made comparisons to existing assemblages. By using the same recording techniques and classification system that I developed at other sites to record the Makounta ceramics, I was able to tie the Makounta assemblage into the larger, Cyprus-wide corpus, allowing for greater understanding of site activities, regionality and chronology. This collection represents the first major prehistoric ceramic assemblage ever studied from this quarter of the island.

This grant enabled me to prepare this assemblage for publication and lay the groundwork for future work at the site and in the region.

Project bibliography

Graham, Lisa. 2020. The Makounta-Voules archaeological project. Bulletin of the Council for British Research in the Levant 2018-2019, p 21.

Published:26 November 2021