More from Polis on Cyprus

Last week, I wrote a bit about the area to the south east of the basilica in the area of E.F2 at the site of Polis. This past study season we also turned our attention to the complicated area to the south west of the basilica. Our initial hope was that we could start to understand the diachronic maze of walls, water works, and roads in this area, but after slogging through the notebooks (and more than a little pottery) we conceded any sweeping generalizations and decided to focus on one small area instead.

Just to the south and west of the narthex of the basilica stands a small apsidal well house. This structure appears to sit atop a Late Roman context suggesting that it was more or less contemporary with the basilica. It opens to the east and fronts onto a road that runs north to south more or less parallel with the western wall of the narthex. This road continues through a monumental quadrafons arch (whose footings are just visible at the bottom of the plan below). If one turned to the east through the arch, one would soon pass by the two rooms discussed in the previous post on this topic.

The remains of the apsidal well house do not stand much above the foundation courses leaving little to aide our imagination for how this small, but architecturally interesting structure appeared in to a Late Antique visitor to the site.

At some point, however, the well was filled with rubble and this included glass tesserae as well as significant quantities of roof tiles. The latest pottery appears to be 12th century. The glass mosaic tesserae may hint that the well house had glass mosaic decoration. It is appealing to picture it topped by a half dome with a brilliant multicolored mosaic that flashed in the morning sun.

The infilling of the well at some point during or just later than the 12th century may be consistent with the final destruction of the church, although we know that parts of the church – particularly the narthex – had collapsed earlier. Soon after the well was capped and filled in, the apsidal structure – or whatever part of it survived – became a tomb. A body was placed neatly inside the foundations of the well house just above the now capped well. The east-west orientation ensured that the burial conformed the Christian practices. The re-use of such a delicate and recognizable feature in the local landscape as a tomb suggests that the individual buried there might have been a prominent citizen. It is tempting to even imagine a religious dimension to the burial perhaps making the individual a very local saint or person of sanctity from the immediate community, although this is speculation.

By this time, the immediate vicinity of the well house appears to have been given over to domestic space. The areas to the south of the well house preserved a series of collapsed mud-brick walls and floor surfaces that are Medieval in date and suggest domestic structures. The practice of burial in and around domestic buildings was not unusual in Medieval times and reflects the changing character of the E.F2 “neighborhood”.

Next year, one of our main goals is to unpack the history of the area around this well house and to the south and west of the basilica. Excavations revealed Roman and Hellenistic levels throughout this area allowing us to trace the development of the E.F2 neighborhood from centuries before the construction of the basilica to after its destruction.