Contexts for cruciforms: figurines of prehistoric Cyprus

Striking anthropomorphic figurines in the shape of cruciforms are the hallmark of the Cypriot Erimi Culture during the 4th millennium BC (a Campo 1994). Carvers achieved the shape by extending outstretched arms, elongating necks and abbreviating and tucking the legs into a squatting posture. Occasional depiction of breasts suggests that at least some were intended to depict the female body. But the symbolism is much more complex since carvers elaborated their creations. For example, they transformed arms into a horizontal figure or balanced one figure acrobatically on the head of another.

There is little contextual information to account for the genesis, florescence and meanings of these stylized representations. They attracted looters ever since Dikaios (1934) published an example sporting a duplicate of itself worn as a neck pendant. A breakthrough came when Iliffe and Mitford, who were excavating the Temple of Aphrodite at Palaepaphos in the 1950s, briefly investigated a nearby cemetery. Three Erimi Culture tombs yielded cruciforms, but the figures from this and subsequent operations remain poorly known (Christou 1989). Their work unleashed intensified looting, and many cruciforms were attributed to that cemetery, even though clandestine operations elsewhere also yielded cruciforms. Our appreciation of the role of these island-wide symbols, therefore, is thwarted by the rarity of critical published associations.

To help resolve this issue, the Lemba Archaeological Research Centre (LARC) conducted excavations at the cemetery of Souskiou-Laona from which figurines have apparently been looted. The highly unusual site is located on a discrete limestone outcrop atop a prominent, narrow ridge immediately east of the Dhiarizos River in western Cyprus (Figure 1, above). Tombs are cut into an outcrop which rises above the ridge to a height of 1–3 m and measures approximately 25 m east–west and 40 m north–south.

During the 2001 season, a total of 42 shaft tombs were investigated, approximately one-third of the cemetery. The most characteristic type was that of straight-sided shaft graves with a subrectangular aperture belling out to an oval flat-bottomed base and an upper depression for the reception of a capstone. Another distinct type has a small sub-rectangular shaft and a concave oval base (Figure 2, right).

Although many of the tombs had been emptied by looters, we recovered two partially looted tombs with undisturbed burials and two intact tombs, complete with capstones. These provide evidence that Souskiou funerary traditions included both single and multiple inhumations. Tombs demonstrate Chalcolithic re-use. Primary interments had been displaced to the northern end of the tomb, along with associated grave goods, and other burials were subsequently inserted in a crouched position. The small, intact tombs contained grave goods; one a single Red-on-White bowl and the other segmented faience beads from a bracelet or necklace (Figure 3, left). The only osteological evidence from these sealed tombs was a single infant tooth, and it is possible that the smaller tombs were intended for infant burials.

Funerary furniture from these disturbed tombs confirm the popularity of cruciforms and the atypical wealth of the cemetery. They include approximately 20 picrolite pendants of cruciform and other types along with dentalium shell beads (Figure 4, below).

Preliminary results provide several new insights into cruciforms in particular and the Erimi Culture in general. Three deserve notice here. First concerns the alleged development of cruciforms in a context of island isolation. However, the discovery of segmented faience beads in the cemetery and the contemporary introduction of metalwork opens up the possibility that their popularity coincided with transmaritime contacts. The distinctive faience bead type, which is known in 4th-millennium north Mesopotamia, is the earliest in Cyprus and has no successors there (Stone & Thomas 1956). Questions about the existence of this singular expression are, therefore, part of a wider debate in which exceptional insular production in prehistory is seen as a consequence of isolation (Stoddart et al. 1993) or a re-working of contact (Robb 2001). Second, given the attenuated style of the figures at Souskiou-Laona, it may now be possible to identify local schools. And lastly, the unprecedented popularity of picrolite at an insubstantial settlement and cemetery site remote from good agricultural land, readily accessible water and the source of picrolite, poses problems about the role of the site and cruciforms. Our view that the Erimi Culture consisted exclusively of homogenous agro-pastoral settlements needs re-appraisal in light of this evidence.