Post-Bronze Age occupation at the site
L. Crewe and T. Kiely
There are 22 objects in this catalogue that
post-date the abandonment of the town of Enkomi. The Late Bronze
Age (LBA) settlement was abandoned in the course of
the twelfth century with the population moving to the coastal
site of Salamis several miles to the east. However, religious
activity appears to have continued in a number of locations at
Enkomi (such as the Sanctuary of the Ingot God) during the
succeeding LCIIIB period, finally ceasing by around 1050 BC.
However, the site of the LBA town was not completely forgotten by
the inhabitants of the surrounding area. Terracotta and stone
figurines, mostly depicting woman in a variety of poses suggesting
a votive function, were found by Dikaios on or close to the surface
near the fortifications in the northern part of the town. They date
from the late Cypro-Geometric and Cypro-Archaic periods (around 900
BC-450 BC). Similar objects were found by the Turner Bequest
excavations in or near tombs in the south-eastern part of the
town.
Dikaios interpreted these figurines as proof
of actual settlement occupation in this period, especially as he
also recorded a cemetery of CG III date at the site of
Kaminia 900 metres to the north (Dikaios 1971: 536).
However, there is no archaeological evidence from any of the
excavations at Enkomi that the town was used for regular settlement
activity after the end of the Bronze Age in the eleventh century
BC.
These votive offerings are more likely to
belong to a small rural shrine dedicated to a female divinity
(Hadjicosti 1989). This is a type of sanctuary common throughout
the island at this time, but especially around the edge of the
Eastern Lowlands where Enkomi is located, where they often
functioned as a focus for the dispersed rural population or perhaps
acted as way-stations for travellers. The findspot of the figurines
from the Turner Bequest excavations in the southern part
of the settlement suggests that there was more than one sanctuary
in the ruins of the old town, though these are later in date that
those in the northern sector identified by Dikaios and resemble
examples found at Salamis.
The local population may have retained a
memory of the older settlement and returned there regularly to
leave offerings, as they continued to do for several generations
after the move to Salamis during the eleventh century. But, since
there is a gap in time of several centuries between the latest
material from the old settlement and the rural shrine, the
worshippers may instead have ‘rediscovered’ the impressive ruins in
the nineth and eighth centuries BC and marked their
admiration and awe by establishing small sanctuaries here
or by placing objects in older tombs.
This phenomenon is attested elsewhere on
Cyprus in this period, and in the contemporary Greek world,
where shrines were also established in abandoned Bronze Age tombs
and settlements. This may also be connected with the development of
the territory of the historical kingdom of Salamis, where
sanctuaries served as important centres for local elites to display
their piety, wealth and power. Some of the stone and terracotta
sculpture from Enkomi discovered by the British Museum can be
compared with examples from much larger and richer sanctuaries of
Salamis and other Cypro-Archaic kingdoms, including material from
the Cyprus Exploration Fund excavations at Salamis now preserved in
the British Museum collections.
Objects in this catalogue dating to
the Post-Bronze Age occupation of the site of Enkomi are numbered
PBA.1 to PBA.22.