Summer Work at Polis: The 1983 Survey

My summer research leave has been busy and I’m about a week behind at producing anything substantive from my work. That said, I have managed to put together a descriptive report on the 1983 survey conducted by the Princeton Cyprus Expedition in the region of Polis.

This was an extensive type survey focused largely on the fields immediately surrounding the village and with an interest in identifying the most productive area for excavation. Since this survey had as its goal exploration and a short shelf life ending at excavation, the documentation was no where near as rigorous as a larger scale intensive pedestrian survey.

That said, we’re been able to extract some useful information from the survey. For example, it seems that the Iron Age settlement (Marion) was centered to the east of the modern village and the later Hellenistic to Late Roman settlement (Arsinoe). Analyzing all the pottery collected from the survey allowed us to compare it to the material from the excavation of the area E.F2 (around the South Basilica). This produced some unexpected results. For example, despite the much smaller quantity of material from the survey, it produced 3 African Red Slip form 104 rims whereas the excavation (with 10x as much pottery much of it being Late Roman in date) only produced 1 rim of this imported form. In general, it seems that the survey brought in more imported pottery than the excavation. This was a bit unexpected while at the same time realizing that small samples will naturally show greater variation than larger ones. 

If you’re interested in seeing what the survey recovered, you can check out our working data table here. There’s a link to our report below the map!

You can download our preliminary report here.