At the send of each season, the PKAP team prepares a press release that accompanies the final report submitted to the Department of Antiquities. The press release also gets sent out (in slightly modified form) by the various collaborating universities.
Here it is:
From May 20th to June 21st the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project conducted a study and field season in the coastal zone of Pyla Village on the south coast of Cyprus. An international team of scholars under the direction of William R. Caraher (University of North Dakota), R. Scott Moore (Indiana University of Pennsylvania), and David K. Pettegrew (Messiah College), have worked in this area since 2003 documenting a sprawling Archaic to Late Roman settlement at the site. This year, the PKAP team took low altitude blimp photographs of the entire site, sampled the subsurface remains using ground-penetrating radar, and conducted several experiments to calibrate the results of earlier fieldwork. This work will allow the PKAP team to correlate more accurately the relationship between material on the surface of the grond and material still safely buried. Another part of the PKAP team worked in the Larnaka District Archaeological Museum to document the nearly 13,000 finds collected since 2003. The ceramic, architectural, and stone artifacts have revealed a vibrant community through most of antiquity with trading ties spanning the Mediterranean basin. The study of these finds has revealed that a site on the coastal height of Vigla was a fortified settlement from Archaic to Hellenistic times complete with a fortification wall and significant quantity of domestic ceramics. This is an unusual type of settlement on Cyprus and may have served as the base for a garrison protecting the eastern flank of Kition and the Larnaka bay. In Late Roman and Early Byzantine times, the town of Pyla-Koutsopetria stretched across the coastal plain below Vigla. This settlement appears to have been a bustling, cosmopolitan town during at the end of antiquity and may have met its demise after a series of earthquakes. The ceramic evidence demonstrate economic and cultural ties to Asia Minor, North Africa, Egypt, and Aegean. Preparations for publication are now under way.
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In more exciting news, stay tuned to Archaeology of the Mediterranean World for a special guest blogging experience! David Pettegrew and I are going to collaborate to produce a series of posts reporting on some archaeological experiments conducted this past summer on the Koutsopetria plain. Curious? Stay tuned!
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