Embedded Files
The first excavation season of APEP at the Chalcolithic settlement of Erimi Pamboula took place in July 2025. The excavation is conducted by a team of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (henceforth NKUA) under the direction of Professor Giorgos Vavouranakis. The team included NKUA adjunct lecturer Ioannis Voskos, postdoctoral researchers, PhD candidates and master’s students and also undergraduate students from the NKUA, the Freie Universität Berlin and the Université de Strasbourg, as well as archaeologists from Cyprus. An Erasmus short-term mobility educational programme, organised by the NKUA and the Cyprus Institute, was also included in the excavation. Associate Professor of Environmental Archaeology Evi Margaritis and her team from the Cyprus Institute co-operate with the NKUA mission.
Photogrammetric mapping of trenches 002 and 003
The Chalcolithic settlement of Pamboula lies within the modern village of Erimi. On current evidence, it flourished during the 2nd half of the 4th millennium BC and perhaps also at the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC (i.e. between 3500-2900/2800 BC). The earliest excavations there were conducted by Porphyrios Dikaios (1933-1935), while some unexcavated parts are currently being investigated by the Department of Antiquities today. The NKUA research started at a close distance from the area of the original excavations by P. Dikaios, with the aim to create a stratigraphic sequence and re-frame what is already known about the site.
During the 2025 season the floor of a built structure, a pit and a raised platform were revealed. Our excavations have also unearthed the wall of another round building, part of a rectilinear wall or other built feature, and a pit with burnt deer bones and antler parts. The pottery from the layers that covered the, seemingly, last phase of the settlement, includes some monochrome sherds, perhaps of the Late Chalcolithic period, a fact indicating that there was human activity at the settlement within the first half of the 3rd millennium BC.
Moveable finds include a very high number of pottery sherds, many of which are decorated with the Red-on-White technique. Numerous ground stone tools (axes, adzes, rubbers and querns), lithics (tools, including scrapers, and debitage) significant quantities of animal bones, and many picrolite objects including pebbles (raw material), half-finished jewellery, pendants and a fragmentary cruciform figurine were also collected. Among the finds were also some marine shells, and fragmentary material (plasters, pieces of burned daub etc.) coming from the superstructure of buildings.
Trench 003: fragmentary picrolite cruciform figurine
Trench 003: sea-shell pendant
Red-on-White ware sherd
Stone bead
Ground stone tool
Page updated
Report abuse