New light shed on Amathus construct

Despite the abandonment of its large military harbour in the middle of the Hellenistic period, Amathus appears to have maintained its trading activity, remaining in the same league as Cyprus’ other large cities in the Roman period, archaeologists say.
According to the antiquities department, it is expected that 2015 investigations will shed more light on the use of a large structure, which seems to have been part of an important loading and unloading site and storage area for products arriving by sea.
Since 1975, when the French School at Athens began excavations at the ancient city of Amathus, archaeologists interpreted a big flat zone – a kind of depression flowing into the sea – as the location of an internal harbour, perhaps connected to the military port built in the Hellenistic period.
In 2014, a geomorphological study and two archaeological soundings were conducted in the area, located about 80 metres to the south-west of the Amathus Agora. As a result of the investigations, it is now certain that this cove was once linked to the sea, before being separated from its natural environment with the creation of a coastal dam, which resulted in the formation of a lagoon, the department said. At a later time, the gradual accumulation of colluvial deposits of rock and debris from silted-up land filled up the cove with limestone and clay. These natural materials were used at Amathus during Roman times for the construction of buildings.
In 2014, two test trenches were opened: the first one, in the south, seemed to confirm the limits between the constructed area of the city and the cove’s colluvial deposits. No built features were identified in this area and the homogeneous stratigraphy suggests a uniform landfill. The second test trench revealed two imposing structures, (approximate width: 1.80m.) running parallel to each other. The structures seem to run on an east-west axis, but their western limits have not yet been revealed. The team was able to identify two or three phases. A circulation floor was found, on which fifteen, almost complete, amphorae were found, suggesting an occupation of this area in the late Roman period (3rd – 4th centuries AD).

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.