Architecture and Stratigraphy at Polis on Cyprus

Over the past month I’ve once again been spending time at the site of Polis-Chrysochous in Cyprus. My work there over the past two years has focused on documenting the architecture and archaeology of the area called E.F2. The main building in the area of E.F2 is a Christian basilica built in the 6th century and standing at least as late as the 11th. Other features include a kiln, a road, the remains of a complex system of water pipes, wells, and drains, and a other buildings some of which appear to be workshops while others seem to be related to the function of the church. Last summer, a small team of scholars worked to understand the stratigraphy and architecture of the church at E.F2.

This summer, we began to turn our attention to some of the other buildings in the area of the church. Our primary goals were to describe the stratigraphy and the architecture of the area to the southeast of the main basilica. In particular, we were interested in understanding the history and function of two rooms situated some 7 or 8 m from the southern wall of the basilica.

These rooms opened onto a road that ran parallel to the south wall of the basilica and probably framed the southern edge of a small open courtyard located just to the south of a porch on the south side of the basilica.

The standing outer walls of these two rooms sits atop earlier walls dating, it would seem to the 1st c. BC – 1st c. A.D. This earlier building originally had a single large opening facing the street, but sometime during those two centuries, the middle wall was build closing the single large door and dividing the one large room into two smaller rooms.

These earlier walls supported later walls that date to no later than the middle of the 5th century. We were able to say this because of a small deposit of fine ware discovered under a bench on the east side of the central wall had a nice assemblage of early 5th c. fine ware. Since this bench rests against the latest phase of the central wall, the latest artifacts in the deposit under the bench provides a terminus ante quem for the wall. In other words, the wall against which the bench rests has to date to before the latest sherd in the deposit under the bench. To make matters more convenient, we were also able to determine that the latest phase of the central wall predates the latest phases of the wall to its north. 

At some point in the 6th or perhaps early 7th century the rooms appear to have suffered some significant destruction, and this resulted in the rebuilding of the north wall of the two rooms. A deposit post-dating the reconstructed north wall contains no material later than the early decades of of the 7th century. Thus we can say that the central wall of the building dates to between 450 and, say, 750, when the north wall was rebuilt and the material resting again it was deposited.

Finally, at some point after the deposit against the north wall, the entire structure collapsed and was replaced by a building of uncertain size that was built atop a layer of rubble effectively sealing the ruins of the earlier two-roomed structure.

The west wall of this building is labeled as Wall 4 in the picture above. This wall sat atop deposits of pottery that appear to date no earlier than the 7th century. It also rests against the eastern wall of the south portico (an addition to the south side of the basilica that dates to the sometime in the late 6th or early 7th century). So it would seem that this later building was constructed after the 7th century. A level of rubble overlying the walls has Medieval (12th?) material in it, so we know that by the Medieval period wall had gone out of use.

While it is speculation, it seems plausible to image that Wall 4 was built at the same time that the south portico underwent some significant modifications. At some point after its 7th century construction date, the arches of the south portico were walled up perhaps to create an enclosed space for burials (although this is uncertain since burials began before the portico was modified). A similar process took place in the narthex which we assume to be nearly contemporary with the south portico. 

So stratigraphy and architecture allows us to reconstruct the history of these small rooms and follow the use of this space from the 1st c. BC/AD to the end of antiquity.