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The results from a 1.3-hectare GPR survey in 2012 were confirmed during the 2013 excavation of a limited area (200 m(2)). Three phases of occupation were partly exposed. The most recent phase, Stratum 1, contained living and working facilities, e.g. for spinning, weaving and purple dyeing. Textile production also took place in the older Stratum 2,...
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The results from a 1.3-hectare GPR survey in 2012 were confirmed during the 2013 excavation of a limited area (200 m2). Three phases of occupation were partly exposed. The most recent phase, Stratum 1, contained living and working facilities, e.g. for spinning, weaving and purple dyeing. Textile production also took place in the older Stratum 2, wh...
In the course of the rescue excavations at the sites of Rit and Nad Klepečkom near Viminacium, which were carried out between 2010 and 2016, remains of a La Tène settlement were recorded. Portable finds from the settlement are mostly represented by potsherds and scarce metal finds, of which painted pottery and two bronze fibulae of Middle La Tène s...
Although the Archaic Greek site of Pithekoussai was discovered as early as the late 18th century, it was not until the 1950s and 60s that its importance was fully realized. Dated to the early 8th century BCE by the immense quantities of pottery and well-preserved funerary goods found at the site, this large settlement on the Italian island of Ischi...
Ten years ago, west of Prague, in connection with a series of excavation campaigns, a Late
Imperial single burial of a young woman with unusual grave goods was discovered. Among
the high-quality jewellery and special clothing accessories were two shield fibulae, a pin,
numerous pearls, a bracelet, a comb, a small bronze knife, spindle whorls, spind...
Ten years ago, west of Prague, in connection with a series of excavation campaigns, a Late Imperial single burial of a young woman with unusual grave goods was discovered. Among the high-quality jewellery and special clothing accessories were two shield fibulae, a pin, numerous pearls, a bracelet, a comb, a small bronze knife, spindle whorls, spind...
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... The Bronze Age city of Hala Sultan Tekke is situated on the south-east coast of Cyprus on the shore of the Larnaca Salt Lake (Fig. 1). Following a long period of illicit diggings and badly recorded excavations in the 19 th century AD (Fischer 2012), regular excavations were carried out starting in the 1970s (Åström 1976). After a break, excavations were resumed in 2010. ...
... The Bronze Age city of Hala Sultan Tekke is situated on the south-east coast of Cyprus on the shore of the Larnaca Salt Lake (Fig. 1). Following a long period of illicit diggings and badly recorded excavations in the 19 th century AD (Fischer 2012), regular excavations were carried out starting in the 1970s (Åström 1976). After a break, excavations were resumed in 2010. ...
... This modern name for the ancient city was taken from the homonymous famous mosque of Hala Sultan Tekke, which was originally built in the seventh century CE in an area where, according to a local tradition, Umm Haram, a relative or nurse of the prophet Mohammed, died (Fischer, 2019a). The ancient city has suffered from a long period of illegitimate digging and extremely badly recorded excavations especially in the nineteenth century CE Fig. 1 Overview of the site with the four partly exposed city quarters (CQ1-4), and the cemetery (Area A) just in front of the mosque on the shore of the Larnaca Salt Lake (Fischer, 2012a). It was not until the 1970s that a Swedish team started regular excavations (Åström, 1976). ...
Thirteen seasons of Swedish excavations at the Bronze Age harbor city of Hala Sultan Tekke on the southern coast of Cyprus confirm far-reaching trade contacts during the lifespan of the city, i.e., Late Cypriot I to IIIA or approximately 1630–1150 BCE. Commodities were imported from an area which comprises at least Sardinia to Afghanistan/India, and the Baltic Sea to Egypt/Nubia. Tons of copper slag and ore provide evidence of large-scale urban metallurgy. Tools to produce textiles, together with heaps of murex shells and installations for dyeing, confirm the production of purple-dyed textiles. Owing to the presence of one of the best sheltered harbors, these and other products were traded in exchange for imported commodities including ceramics and their contents, precious metals and stones, and ivory. This paper discusses evidence of contacts with Egypt mainly based on the results from recent field work.KeywordsTradeCyprusEgyptGoldScarabsFaienceIvory
... Following a long period of illicit diggings and badly recorded excavations in the 19th century CE (described by Bailey, 1976;Fischer, 2012), regular excavations were carried out starting in the 1970s (e.g., Åström 1976, 1996). In 2010, after a break in the field work, the author's team resumed research at the site in 2010 aiming to define the complete sequence of occupation, the total extent of the settled area and intercultural relations (e.g., Fischer and Bürge, 2018a). ...
This paper presents the results from extensive and intensive field work at Hala Sultan Tekke, Cyprus, supported by scientific analyses. They shed light on the scope of interregional trade in which this Late Bronze Age harbour city participated from the 15th to the 12th centuries B.C. Although the results from older excavations suggested the city’s engagement in interregional trade, these preliminary conclusions were based on chronologically and geographically restricted material and only a few scientific analyses, which have since been complemented and partly revised. It is now clear that long-distance exchange, based on the large-scale intra-urban production and distribution of copper, involved regional and more distant suppliers of coveted goods, and resulted in the transition of the settlement from a late 17th century B.C. village to a trade hub with a minimum extent of 25 ha.
... It would be logical to assume that traders and merchants would have been among the most numerate and literate individuals in Bronze Age society, since their work involved complex transactions and the use of special technologies like weights and perhaps writing tablets (Boyes 2021; Monroe 2020, 2021). It is not entirely unusual to find prestige goods deposited alongside contexts or tools of production (Fischer and Bürge 2014), though of course interpreting such assemblages is necessarily a complex process. Although such actors operated outside the boundaries of state administrations, status as an institutional outsider may have been appealing and advantageous for a variety of reasons, as has often been the case in human history (Scott 2009). ...
In the Bronze Age Mediterranean, trade was a key mechanism that defined the era’s political, social, and economic dynamism. This paper reviews recent methodological and empirical developments in the study of trade in the Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean, with a focus on the Late Bronze Age. The complexity of the relevant evidence presents nontrivial interpretative challenges, and a variety of schools of thought concerning the methods and approaches best suited for enlightening economic exchange through the study of archaeological remains co-exist. New insights based on empirical study of archaeological evidence have primarily coalesced around topics that have long been central to the study of trade, especially the sources and destinations of metal resources and the distribution of ceramic containers and their contents. Developing areas of emphasis, such as the roles of merchants and traders, have simultaneously emerged. Both novel methods and recent empirical insights highlight the difficulty inherent in attempts to relate artifacts to commercial exchange due to the variety of human and material mobilities apparent in the archaeological record. The path forward for understanding Bronze Age trade economies will require carefully tailoring research questions that may be answered in concrete ways with the evidence available and developing interpretative frameworks that can accommodate both bottom-up views emphasizing individual agency and generalizing models that facilitate comparison through space and time.
... Room 18 in City Quarter 1, which is interpreted as a sacral room with a house altar built of ashlar blocks, contained the so-called "Creature Krater" of White Painted Wheel-Made Pictorial Style (Fischer 2012) with a volume of 19.6 liters ( fig. 3:1). ...
... In this period, numerous Cypriot sites were destroyed and/or abandoned (Fischer 2017). No doubt Hala Sultan Tekke prospered throughout most of LC IIC and to some extent into the first half of LC IIIA. ...
... Assuming that Hala Sultan Tekke had parts of its commercial fleet intact after the final blow or that the remainder of the population was able to build new ships if their fleet was destroyed or confiscated during a possible attack by seaborn people, it could be that groups of people left the island on ships. This hypothesis supports the theory that groups of Sea Peoples who attacked Egypt originated from Cyprus (Fischer 2017). Another possibility is that parts of the population were forced to join their attackers during their continued journey southeastwards. ...
... The existence of a large ancient settlement has been known since at least the 19th century when unprofessional "archaeological" excavations and intensive illicit looting took place (Fischer 2012). From the 1970s on, the exploration of the city became a Swedish project, which since 2010 has been directed by Peter M Fischer from the University of Gothenburg. ...
Hala Sultan Tekke is a large Bronze Age city located on the southeastern littoral of Cyprus. The city flourished from approximately 1650 BC to 1150 BC according to the archaeological evidence. Since 2010, Swedish excavations have exposed four new city quarters (CQ1–4) with three occupational phases, the ¹⁴ C dating of which is of highest importance also for other contemporaneous cultures. The finds demonstrate vast intercultural connections in the Mediterranean and even with southern Scandinavia. In 2014, roughly 500 m to the east of CQ1, one of the richest cemeteries on the island was discovered. According to the archaeological evidence, the finds from the city date mainly to the 13th and 12th centuries BC. However, many of the wealthy tombs and the offering pits from the cemetery are considerably older with the oldest finds dating to the 16th century BC. This raises the question where the city quarters belonging to the oldest finds from the cemetery are situated. The radiocarbon ( ¹⁴ C) dates from Hala Sultan Tekke have much influence on the dating of related sites because of numerous imports from a vast area. We present here new ¹⁴ C data obtained in the course of the current excavations, which add to sets of already existing data.
... The results of this expedition were published in a series of twelve volumes (see the latest: Åström and Nys 2007). Fieldwork at the site was resumed by the New Swedish Cyprus Expedition (Fischer and Bürge 2014). ...
Hala Sultan Tekke is a Late Bronze Age (ca. 1650–1100 bce) harbor town established on the southeastern coast of Cyprus.
... Finds from this room include the upper part of a Plain White wheel-made krater (L398-1), a WPGS rounded bowl (L398-2; Fig. 7a:2)-the shape and decoration of which recalls White Slip bowls-, a fragment of a WPPS krater (L398-3), a fragment of a closed vessel of WPGS (L398-6), a fragment of a limestone bowl (L398-5), a part of a decorated limestone basin (N218; Fig. 7a:8), a cubi- cal stone tool (N219) and three loom weights: two of stone (N226, N227) and one of fired clay (N228). A deformed ring of bronze (N223) and a bronze needle (N222) come from the 7 For the terminology of WPGS (White Painted wheel-made Geomet- ric Style) and WPPS (White Painted wheel-made Pictorial Style) see Fischer 2012. These two terms are substitutes for the ill-defined White Painted wheel-made III; see also P. Åström area east of R39/40. ...
The initial aim of the project-the search for the oldest city of Hala Sultan Tekke-continued in 2014. Geophysical methods were used, which led to the discovery of new city quarters, and a broadening of the research objectives, to include revealing the total extent of the city. The GPR survey indicated a huge stone compound of at least 50 m × 40 m to the west of a probable street. Excavations continued in Area 6 West, where in 2013 a domestic and industrial compound was excavated as part of a hitherto unknown city quarter. The 2014 field work exposed stone-built structures and rich find contexts with locally made and imported pottery, numerous tools and several items of gold and silver jewellery. The violent destruction of the most recent layer of occupation, Stratum 1, which had been observed during previous seasons, was once again confirmed. Another georadar and magnetic survey west of the mosque of Hala Sultan Tekke indicated numerous circular anomalies. Five of these were excavated and turned out to be four wells and an offering pit. One of the wells was reused for human burials. Another well contained the skeleton of an equid, a complete bull figurine and a cylinder seal of haematite.
Dated to the Late Bronze Age (Late Cypriot II: 1450–1200 BC and Late Cypriot III: 1200–1050 BC), the site of Hala Sultan Tekke brought to light interesting evidence of textile production and possible fabric dyeing. Finds of loom weights and spindle whorls together with remains of dyer’s croton (Chrozophora tinctoria), field gromwell (Buglossoides arvensis syn. Lithospermum arvense), and shells of murex allow opening a discussion over the methods and reasons for undertaking the time and cost-consuming procedure of dye production. The present article, through an examination of finds and an analysis of plant macrofossils and molluscs, tests a hypothesis of textile dyeing at the Late Cypriot city of Dromolaxia Vizatzia.
