Archaeology & Chronology
NEOLITHIC: 10,000 - 3900 B.C.

		The Proto-Neolithic, the period of earliest human settlement, is known so far only at the site of Akrotiri Aetokremnos located on the south coast of the island. Charred bones of now extinct pygmy hippopotami and elephants suggest that hunters killed and cooked these animals along with an assortment of birds, fish and shellfish; however the people disappeared without trace. Perhaps they abandoned the island after hunting the native fauna to extinction.
	In the Aceramic (pre-pottery) Neolithic humans returned to Cyprus. The newcomers (whether from Anatolia or Syria-Palestine is uncertain) settled at sites throughout the island including Cape Andreas Kastros on the Karpas peninsula and Khirokitia and Kalavassos Tenta and Parakleshia Shillourokambos (the earliest site so far known) near the southeast coast. They built circular houses of mud and stone, buried their dead beneath the floors, herded cattle (at least initially), sheep, goats, and pigs, hunted fallow deer, and cultivated cereals, all practices imported from the mainland. For unknown reasons, their settlements ended and an enigmatic 1000-year gap ensued.
	In the Ceramic Neolithic immigrants reoccupied Khirokitia and founded new sites at Philia Drakos, Ayios Epiktitos Vrysi, Sotira Teppes, Kandou Koufovounos, and Ayia Napa Nissia . Like their predecessors, they cultivated cereals and herded animals, but buried their dead outside their settlements. Their innovation was pottery - predominately Combed Ware at Sotira, Red-on-White at Vrysi - all hand-built in a limited range of shapes. Olive and grape remains from Vrysi indicate the colonists introduced specialized horticulture to Cyprus soon after it had originated on the mainland.

CHALCOLITHIC: 3900 - 2500 B.C.

	The Chalcolithic, a period of growing social complexity and technical sophistication, is best known at Erimi Pamboula on the south coast and at Kissonerga Mosphilia and Lemba Lakkous in the west. The first metal artifacts, small tools of hammered copper, occur, but whether metalworking was an indigenous discovery or an external one, possibly Anatolian, introduction is unclear. Characteristic Red-on-White pottery continued in a wide repertoire of shapes.
	Storage jars in dwellings indicate that surplus food was acculmulated and stored, suggesting that increasingly efficient agriculture supported an expanding population. Intramural burial predominate but cemeteries of rock-cut funerary chambers were also prepared for the dead, and human representations (small cruciform statuettes in picrolite, limestone and terracotta) are characteristic of this time period.