The Antiquities Department announced on Wednesday the completion of the first phase of the 2024 excavations for the ‘Palaepaphos Urban Landscape Project’ (PULP), led by the Archaeological Research Unit of the University of Cyprus.

This programme has been ongoing since 2006 under the direction of Professor Maria Iakovou.

The excavation team included undergraduate and doctoral students from the University of Cyprus’s Department of History and Archaeology, postdoctoral researchers from the University of Siena (Unistrasi), along with their professor, Dr Jacopo Tabolli.

The team was also supported by collaborators from the Cyprus University of Technology (Tepak), including Dr Athos Agapiou, Digital Data and Geographic Information Systems Manager, and Dr Kyriakos Themistocleous, who is responsible for the yearly updated orthophotograph (an aerial photograph in which distortions due to the ground topography, such as elevation and tilt, have been removed, giving the appearance of every object being viewed directly from above, like a map) of the landscape.

According to a press release, the excavation lasted five weeks and focused on the Laona tumulus and the eastern wall of Laona, which appears to form a single walled section of the acropolis that connected Laona with the Hadjiabdullah plateau.

The main objective of this year’s excavation was to locate the level on which the tumulus of Laona was erected. It was determined that the ancient architects, rather than constructing the tumulus on the floor of the internal phase of the earlier Cypro-Classical wall (which was buried and preserved within the tumulus), chose to remove the previous floor and erected the tumulus on a lower, more stable geological subsoil, approximately half a metre deeper.

It is estimated that a total of 10,000 cubic metres of marl and composite clay layers in various colours were required for its construction. This confirms that the Laona tumulus remains the largest built monument in ancient Cyprus.