Lemba Archaeological Research Centre Project, University of Edinburgh

A selection of cruciforms made of the soft stone picrolite,
together with associated dentalia 'spacers'. The hatched arm terminals
of the most articulated example has small ears.

Striking anthropomorphic figurines in the shape of cruciforms are the hallmark of the Cypriot Erimi Culture during the 4th millennium BC. Carvers achieved the shape by extending outstretched arms, elongating necks and abbreviating and tucking the legs into a squatting posture. Occasional depiction of breasts suggests that at least some were intended to depict the female body. More complex symbolism was effected, for example, by transforming arms into a horizontal figure or balancing one figure acrobatically on the head of another.

There is little contextual information to account for the genesis, florescence and meanings of these stylized representations. They attracted looters once Dikaios published an example sporting a duplicate of itself worn as a neck pendant. A breakthrough came in the 1950s when Iliffe and Mitford briefly investigated a cemetery near Palaepaphos. Three Erimi Culture tombs yielded cruciforms, but the figures from this and subsequent operations remain poorly known. Intensified looting followed and as a consequence our appreciation of the role of these island-wide symbols remains thwarted by the rarity of critical published associations.

To help resolve this issue, the Lemba Archaeological Research Centre (LARC) is conducting excavations at the cemetery of Souskiou-Laona from which figurines had apparently been looted. The highly unusual site is located on a discrete limestone outcrop atop a prominent, narrow ridge immediately east of the Dhiarizos River in western Cyprus. Tombs are cut into the outcrop, which measures approximately 25m E-W and 40m N-S.

Centre of photo shows Souskiou-Laona cemetery outcrop on narrow ridge.
Excavations are taking place at northern limit of cemetery.

During the 2001 - 20032 seasons, over 100 shaft tombs were investigated, approximately three-quarters of the cemetery. The most characteristic type was that of straight-sided shaft graves with a subrectangular aperture belling out to an oval flat-bottomed base and an upper depression for the reception of a capstone. Another distinct type has a small sub-rectangular shaft and a concave oval base.


Double Burial in Tomb 132.	Plans and profiles of two common types of rock-cut graves encountered at the cemetery.

Although many of the tombs had been emptied by looters, we have recovered partially looted tombs with undisturbed burials and intact tombs, complete with capstones. These provide evidence for single and multiple inhumations, and Chalcolithic re-use. Primary interments had been displaced along with associated grave goods, and other burials were subsequently inserted in a crouched position. The small, intact tombs contained grave goods; one a single Red-on-White bowl and the other segmented faience beads from a bracelet or necklace. The only osteological evidence from these sealed tombs was a single infant tooth.

Funerary furniture from disturbed tombs confirm the popularity of cruciforms and the atypical wealth of the cemetery. They include small picrolite pendants of cruciform and other types .A single, large cruciform figurine, measuring approximately 12cm high, was found in situ on a small rock-cut ledge adjacent to Tomb 168.

Well preserved blue glazed segmented faience
beads of the late-4th millennium BC.

Preliminary results provide several new insights into cruciforms in particular and the Erimi Culture in general. First concerns the alleged isolation of the Erimi Culture. However, the discovery of segmented faience beads in the cemetery and the contemporary introduction of metalwork opens up the possibility that their popularity coincided with transmaritime contacts. The distinctive faience bead type, which is known in 4th millennium N. Mesopotamia, is the earliest in Cyprus and has no successors there. Questions about their proliferation, therefore, are part of a wider debate in which exceptional insular production in prehistory is seen as a consequence of isolation or a re- working of contact. Second, given the attenuated style of the figures at Souskiou-Laona, it may now be possible to identify local schools. And lastly, the unprecedented popularity of picrolite at an insubstantial site remote from good agricultural land, readily accessible water and the source of picrolite, poses problems about the role of the site and cruciforms.

Acknowledgements. LARC excavations are carried out under licence of the Department of Antiquities, Cyprus, and with the support of the Abercrombie Fund, the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, the Russell Trust and the University of Edinburgh.