PHOENICIAN WATCH:
Completion of excavations at Kition-Pampoula, 2022 (gavriella, in-cyprus).
The Department of Antiquities, of the Ministry of Transport, Communications and Works, announces the completion of the 2022 archaeological excavations of the French Archaeological Mission at ancient Kition (Larnaka-Pampoula).
The French archaeological mission conducted a four-week campaign at Kition-Pamboula in October 2022. The objectives were two-fold: firstly, to complete the excavation of a possible pit, which had been identified in 2021 and which, although partially excavated, had yielded a series of Phoenician ostraca of the Classical period; secondly, to enlarge the excavation of the corresponding Classical floors, in order to better understand the context of the supposed pit.
... The supposed pit containing ostraca was a constitutive part of this layer, characterized by a more greyish and sandy soil matrix: additional pieces were found, the total amounting to 99 by the end of the campaign (fig. 3). The new ostraca are similar to the ostraca found during the 2021 campaign: short texts written in black ink on pottery sherds and, more rarely, on stone fragments; they present the same word sequence and contain many numerals that point to accounting operations. They all date to the Classical period, more precisely the 4th century BC.
For more on the excavation at Kition-Pampoula and the Phoenician ostraca recovered there, see
here. It appears that the social context of the large collection of Phoenician administrative ostraca from the site remains to be clarified. Kition-Pamboula seems also to be known as Kition-Bamboula.
A cople of older posts also involving the Phoenicians of Kition are here and here.
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