Kissonerga: A Bronze Age settlement, established around 2500 BC and characterized by its craft-based nature, has been uncovered in Kissonerga-Skalia, north of Paphos. This discovery comes following the completion of the 2025 season of archaeological excavations at the site, directed by Dr. Lindy Crewe, director of the Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute (CAARI).
According to Cyprus News Agency, the Department of Antiquities released a statement highlighting the significance of the site, indicating a long Bronze Age sequence with evidence of earlier Chalcolithic occupation. This period began before 2500 BC, succeeding the neighboring Neolithic-Philia phase settlement of Kissonerga-Mosphilia. The site was eventually abandoned around 1600 BC, at the dawn of the Late Cypriot Bronze Age, illustrating a time when large structures were built, and goods were produced on a larger scale amid flourishing seaborne trade in the Mediterranean.
The press release emphasized that the abandonment of the site shortly after the construction of a complex allows for detailed examination of this phenomenon. It further revealed that Kissonerga-Skalia was initially established as a village during the Philia phase of the Bronze Age and thrived until around 1750 BC. At this stage, previous domestic structures were abandoned, and a large-scale building program ensued, involving the demolition of earlier structures in the northern upslope area to create a flat building area measuring at least 1,200 m².
A new network of large walls, up to 1.2 meters wide, was constructed, forming a complex of open courtyards and roofed areas linked by trampled mud or plaster floors. The complex seemed to have been occupied for only a few generations before its final abandonment around 1600 BC. The site lacked evidence of domestic occupation, suggesting that activities were craft-related, such as grinding and processing materials, supported by large fire-related installations and storage vessels.
The Department of Antiquities noted that during the 2025 excavation season, the team further exposed features associated with the complex’s use. Earlier excavations revealed a 1.5-meter diameter domed oven in a plaster-floored courtyard, along with cooking pots and ground stone tools. Recent findings showed the courtyard was ‘L-shaped,’ and a new oven was discovered, considered one of the site’s most intriguing features.
This new oven, measuring about four meters in diameter, was constructed as a concave hemisphere of hard-baked mud-plaster with low mud walls but without a roof. Excavation of the oven unearthed disused ground stone tools, plaster chunks, pottery shards, and animal bones. The oven was filled in and covered with a floor before the construction of the smaller domed oven in the same courtyard.
The exact purpose of the oven remains uncertain. However, through systematic wet-sieving of the soils within it, food remains of terebinthus and wheat were retrieved, suggesting Cypriots might have been consuming a type of food made with wheat and terebinth seeds during the Bronze Age.