Apliki-Karamallos 1997 Overview

ABSTRACT OF PROPOSAL
This proposal requests funding in the amount of $24,000 over a period of two years (January 1998 to December 1996) to support the preparation for publication of the excavations at the site of Apliki-Karamallos in Cyprus.

This site, excavated in 1938 and 1939 by Joan duPlat Taylor (1952), is the only known primary center for the mining and smelting of copper in the Late Bronze Age, a time when Cyprus was a primary supplier of this vital metal to the eastern Mediterranean. In the context of greatly expanded knowledge of the Late Cypriot Bronze Age that has resulted from numerous excavations and studies since Taylor's work at Apliki, the present study comprises a reassessment of the site, the mining activities occurring there, and its place in the political and economic organization of Late Bronze Age Cyprus.

The site itself has been completely destroyed by modern mining activity. Our study, therefore, has had to be based entirely on the material recovered from the site by Taylor, and any documentation prepared by her during the course of its excavation. The majority of the material from Taylor's excavations has been preserved in the Cyprus Museum in Nicosia and a small amount in the Institute of Archaeology in London. Also of great importance is the collection of Taylor's original notes and drawings of the excavation, only recently (fall of 1996) discovered in the Cyprus Museum. This proposal seeks funding for completion of study of these finds, which have been in progress for several years. The final publication will include a transcription of the notes and drawings made by the excavator; selected examples of the 100 photographs of the site and finds that have been kept in the Cyprus Museum; and detailed studies of several categories of material by specialists. These studies will include composition analysis of slags (H-G. Bachmann); discussion of the tuyeres, furnace linings, crucible fragments and other remains associated with the smelting of copper (J.D. Muhly); study of the large collection of stone tools found at the site, which may have been used for preparing ore for the smelting furnace, in preparing food, or in pottery manufacture (L. Kassianidou); typological, comparative and contextual study of the pottery (B.Kling); Carbon 14 (S. Manning) and dendrochronological analyses (P. Kuniholm) of charcoal samples; and discussion of the significance of the results of these various analyses for understanding the nature of Late Cypriot society and Cyprus' role in the international scene at the end of the Late Bronze Age.