Nea Paphos (Cyprus)
Dates of work: 21 August – 18 September 2012
Team:
Director: Dr. Henryk Meyza, archaeologist (Institute of Mediterranean and Oriental Cultures, Polish Academy of Sciences)
Archaeologists: Prof. Wiktor A. Daszewski, emeritus (Institute of Archaeology, University of Warsaw), Jakub Brochocki (independent), Dorota Mazanek (PhD candidate, Antiquity of Southeastern Europe Research Centre, University of Warsaw), Rozalia Tybulewicz (Institute of Mediterranean and Oriental Cultures, Polish Academy of Sciences)
Ceramologists: Dr. Dobiesława Bagińska (Archaeological Museum in Poznań), Monika Więch (PhD candidate, PCMA UW grant holder)
Architect: Dr. Aleksandra Brzozowska (Faculty of Architecture, Wrocław University of Technology)
Photographer: Katarzyna Bajerowicz-Dolata (freelance)
Documentalist: Agnieszka Dzwonek-Kozieł (freelance)
Graduate student trainees: Agnieszka Kaliszewska, Maria Tyszkiewicz, Katarzyna Żebrowska
Archaeology student trainees: (2012) Rafał Bieńkowski, Marcin Gostkowski, Jacek Hamburg, Kinga Kopańska, Marcin Okniński, Katarzyna Pawłowska (University of Warsaw); Magdalena Załuska (University of Poznań)
(Joint description of seasons 2012 and 2013)
Excavation at the site of the so-called Hellenistic House in Nea Paphos in 2012 and 2013 was focused on the main courtyard (1) and the southern portico (R.3). The architecture collapsed in an earthquake in the 2nd century AD. Blocks and architectural elements formed an oblong tumble extending across the courtyard, apparently already not in their original position save for some entablature blocks of the eastern peristyle, and two acroteria with symbols of Dioskouroi, a pilos with a superimposed star, and at least two column shafts belonging to the southern peristyle. The cistern under the southeastern part of the courtyard had two successive well-heads, one (the later one) uncovered earlier, the other 2.02 m to the northwest, the top of which collapsed into the cistern. The disturbed fill from the courtyard surface included a mold for sling bullets with decoration in the form of a scorpion in relief and fragments of “Nabatean” capitals belonging to a variant showing schematic volutes.
[Text: Polish Archaeology in the Mediterranean 24/1]