SouskiouVathyrkakas 2002 Overview

The Chalcolithic Cemetery of SouskiouVathyrkakas, Cyprus. Results of the Investigations of Four Missions, from 1951 to 1997.
Professor Edgar Peltenburg

Souskiou ( 34° 44' North 32° 35' East), located in the hills immediately behind the Temple of Aphrodite at Palaepaphos, is a unique prehistoric site in Cyprus. It is the only known cemetery of the chalcolithic period (c. 3800-2400 BCE), a time when the dead were normally buried inside villages, and it is extraordinarily rich in terms of stylised human representations, bizarre zoomorphic vessels, necklaces of dentalium shells and pendants, and metalwork. In spite of its acknowledged special status and terminated fieldwork, there is no final report. Results of extensive scientific excavations have only appeared in preliminary notes, and this significant site unfortunately remains best known from objects in private collections (Larnaca, Famagusta, Nicosia, Los Angeles).

In accordance with a policy of publishing unpublished excavations, Dr. Sophocles Hadjisavvas, Director, Department of Antiquities of Cyprus, requested that I assemble a team of specialists to study and prepare final publication of data from excavations conducted at Souskiou from 1951 to 1997.

The excavations, which have yielded some 125 tombs, were conducted by four missions:
1. British Kouklia Expedition (1951)
2. Department of Antiquities, Cyprus, rescue excavations (1972)
3. Swiss-German Paphos Project, rescue excavations (1972)
4. Department of Antiquities, Cyprus (1991-97)

A team of internationally respected scholars has been gathered to accomplish this task. All recognise the continuing harm done to a proper evaluation of the prehistory of the East Mediterranean by the absence of a systematic, detailed, final publication. They are also keen to undertake analysis and dissemination of their results by publication because the often-stated significance of the site rests largely on uncontexted evidence: "extreme importance for the study of the chalcolithic period in Cyprus" (Karageorghis); "unprecedented ... connections with similar figurines that are found in the Mediterranean in the same period" (Vagnetti); and "the largest statuette known so far in [prehistoric] Cyprus" (Maier).

The report will appear as a monograph published by the Department of Antiquities, Government of Cyprus .Publication of Souskiou excavations will at last provide a firm basis on which to evaluate the remarkable achievements of people associated with this exceptional burial ground. Apart from providing information on who (age/sex) was buried with what kind of funerary goods and hence how wealth or prestige was apportioned in these earliest metal-using societies, publication will for the first time detail mortuary practices and funerary associations. Unpublished finds, including remarkable figurines, anthropomorphic vessels and technologically precocious items like vitreous beads (`faience') will be analysed and set in their archaeological context. The nearby (unexcavated) settlement was too small to account for all these burials, let alone the richness of the funerary inventory; hence, the site has regional dimensions that will cast a challenging new perspective on Cypriot prehistory of 4 `h millennium BCE Cyprus and, perhaps, its foreign relations.