Cyprus

Writing Wednesday: Eating the Wolf One Bite at a Time

After a day of getting my feet on the ground from almost two months of summer research leave, I am confronting the fact that the rest of the world didn’t stop when I was away. I have a to-do list and it’s terrifying.

I’m trying to apply the old saying: shoot the wolf closest to the sled and eat the elephant one bite at a time. 

I have three things to get sorted this August.

First, I need work through the copy edits on my most recent book length manuscript. As readers of this blog know, I’m not necessarily a careful writer. I leave words out (I try to think that these are simply sub-vocalized texts), lose track of syntax during revision, and simply forget what it was that I was trying to say. This means that even my best versions of a manuscript are … pretty raw. Fortunately, most of the revisions tend to be easy for an experienced copy editor and I don’t think this will take long.

Second, this summer, the last bits of the second volume dedicated to our work at Pyla-Koutsopetria finally arrived. All that needs to happen now is that I put the volume together. Because this project has quite a few “stake holders,” we need to circulate the manuscript to the current excavators of the site, the former excavators of the site, and at least one of the book’s editors who has stepped back from the project (for peace of mind, if nothing else). The plan is to get it out to the press for peer review by the end of the summer.

Third, I promised to write a book review of Anna Magdalena Blomley, A landscape of conflict? Rural fortifications in the Argolid (400–146 BC). It’s a good, but so far relatively boring book to read. This isn’t the fault of the author, but rather my own attenuated attention span and the press’s decision to use columns (which I find simply inexcusable in the 21st century [even as I’m on the eve of publishing my second book with a press that insists on using columns]). In any event, this has to happen in the next week or two no matter how annoyed I am about format. 

So, the open vistas of research time is officially over, and professional time has begun with the tick-tick-ticking of the real world chasing me for the rest of the summer… I’ll eat the wolves one bite at time.

End of the Season Work

There’s this perennial issue with archaeology (at least how I practice it): writing mostly happens toward the end of a field or study season and this is exactly when my energy and motivation is lowest. As a result, writing final reports tends to be a slog not because I don’t enjoy writing about archaeology, but because they come at the very time when my energy levels are low and I’m starting to look forward to going home.

Compounding this more is that I use writing as both a way to think through problems (and build testable hypotheses) and as a way to produce arguments. This means that I have to write to think through a problem properly as well as to produce an argument. (As an aside, I’ve always admired scholars who can produce an argument and hold it in their head rather than have to work it out on the page.) The problem with this is that as I work out the argument, I often diagnose problems with it or come to recognize that I need additional evidence to make it effective. By the end of the season, the opportunities to gather additional evidence meet the realities of diminishing time and energy! I’m sure a similar situation confronts my colleagues who work in archives.

Over the next four days, I’m frantically writing, collating images, creating lists of things to do both when I get home and next season. My delusional goal is to come home with two papers in various states of readiness: one on the kiln (and surrounding areas) at Polis in Cyprus and one on the Early Medieval settlement at Isthmia. The latter is in much more provisional shape than the former (and also involves more moving parts as it is part of a larger project). 

My to-do list this week:

1. Process images for the kiln article by removing their background and making sure that they are publishable quality.

2. Prepare the final data version for the context pottery data collected over the course of the Isthmia study season.

3. Write a description of the stratigraphy and context for material in Room X of the Roman bath.

4. Work with Scott Moore, our ceramics expert, to complete drafts of the catalogue of Early Medieval handmade and slow wheel made cooking pots from Isthmia and Roman fine and cooking ware from Polis.

5. Pack and do a bit of shopping while trying to enjoy my last days in the Mediterranean.

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Photo Friday

I’ve had a pretty unsatisfying photography summer so far. For some reason, I’m just not quite able to capture what I see (or what I want to see as a photograph). Maybe it’s a lack of vision as much as anything (or a kind of insecurity as to whether my vision is actually realizable). 

I feel like I’m caught between photos that are snap shots (or look like snap shots) and more thoughtfully composed shots. I 

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Some with the Sony:

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And some with the Sigma.

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Writing Wednesday: Splitting and Drawing

This week has been pretty slow. I had this plan to write a very ambitious paper that would weave together various Roman period features and finds from the area E.F2 at Polis. As the article took shape — complete with catalogues, stratigraphic descriptions, and comparanda for the various features — it crept toward 25,000 words. Having just completed a “minigraph” that was supposed to be around 30,000 words (and somehow became longer), I knew where this was heading and we decided cut the growing article in half.

One part of the article would focus on the features (levigation pool, kiln, and some of the later walls), stratigraphy, and a small number of finds. The other would be a proper article focused on the Roman pottery from Polis. This gave us the freedom to delve a bit more deeply into our Roman pottery assemblage which we hope will be to the benefit both to folks thinking about how imported (especially Eastern Sigillata A) and regional (especially Cypriot Sigillata and regional cooking wares) pottery circulated on Cyprus and to folks interested in understanding the variation in common forms on the island. 

The result of this is that we’re back in the storeroom going back through dozens of contexts to refine our reading of Roman period wares (which often residual in latter fill levels in the area). Hopefully, by the end of this week, we’ll have some teasers on this work.

Meanwhile, I’m reworking the article on the features and lamps. Fortunately, the latter is not a particularly heavy lift and that’s given me the chance to work on preparing photographs and illustrations necessary to make our arguments in the afternoon.

Below is a draft showing the relationship between the tile lined levigation pool and the beehive shaped kiln below it from the south. The heavy black line on the left side of the drawing the flaring foundation wall of the basilica apse. The hand drawn wall is a later wall that runs to the north of the levigation pool and kiln and at a higher elevation, but still earlier than the church.

This drawing is far from being done and publication worthy, but it gives you an idea of where we’re headed!

  Kiln Area Illustrations.

Two Things Tuesday: On Roman Lamps

My interest in Roman lamps has not grown over the last few years where I’ve been studying them (albeit in a rather desultory way). As readers of this blog know, we have a lamp deposit from Polis and have been working to say something about this odd little assemblage of lamps. The most unusual thing about it is that excavators discovered these lamps nestled amid the Late Roman leveling fill for the so-called South Basilica.

The lamps themselves are relatively well preserved and several derive from the same mold. The types are well-known on Cyprus and appear — as far as we can tell — to be in Cypriot fabric. There is every reason to assume that these lamps were manufactured on this island and most likely at Polis. There are two interrelated aspects of publishing these lamps that makes it more of a challenge (beyond lamps being inherently boring).

Thing the First

In the spring of 2013, someone broke into the Polis storerooms and among the rather unusual collection of things they stole (which included a partially complete Saraçhane Type 54 amphora) was an assortment of Roman lamps from the site.

Fortunately, the summer before, Brandon Olson had photographed most of the lamps with the idea that he might study them for publication (Brandon discovered that almost anything was more interesting than studying lamps and moved on). Brandon’s study photographs proved invaluable as we try to study both the lamps left behind and those stolen.

The photographs are not perfect. As you can see below, this photograph is probably better for study than publication. That said, it is good enough for us to be able to identify a close parallel (perhaps a later generation from the same mold) in the Cesnola Collection at the Met in New York. Note the planta pedis on the base which in the Met example is described as an “I”, but in the British Museum is more refined.

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Thing the Second

The challenge of studying lost lamps goes beyond trying to salvage hastily taken study photographs for publication (and to be clear, I’m not complaining about Brandon’s photos! Had he not taken them, we’d have had even less of a record of these lamps).

We also have descriptions of the lamps by Kit Moss who did a preliminary study of the objects over the course of several seasons. As we moved toward publication, we planned to include Moss as a co-author on our work to give him credit for his initial analysis which often saved us a good bit of time identifying sometimes fragmentary lamps.

For this lamp, Moss’s notebook recorded:

Nearly complete short nozzle type; missing top half of handle and base of nozzle area. Very fine fabric usual color fired somewhat irregularly: mostly tan, buff, slightly orange on disc. Pierced handle. Flat base with two impressed circles and three semi circles and planta pedis. Salamis VII examples with planta pedios are all [word] and with more articulated, elaborate nozzles (e.g. 162, 340, 597). Nozzle volutes are extremely sketchy; only bare semi-circles. shoulder tongue pattern. disc: horizontal grape vine with four leaves and two pendant grape clusters.

While we have prepared proper catalogue entries for the lamps that we can can, we are in an awkward position for the “non vidi” lamps. In the end, we’ve concluded that some catalogue entry is better than none at all and we can add comparanda and photographs.

Writing Wednesday: Roman Fineware from Polis

Over the last few days, I’m grinding out a bit of text based on an assemblage of frneware from Polis on Cyprus. This is in the service of a larger project that I’ve been describing over the last few weeks. 

It’s been slow going and quite frustrating, but words on the page count especially when it’s writing Wednesday.

Fineware

Scholars have generally argued that Eastern Sigillata A, produced somewhere in Syria or elsewhere in the northern Levantine coast, and Cypriot Sigillata produced somewhere in Western Cyprus or on the neighboring Anatolian coast constitute the two most common forms of Roman period fine ware on the island. For the deposits in E.F2 at Polis the ratio of CS to ESA is around 4:1. This reveals the dominance of CS at the site during the Roman period.

The area of the trenches S06 and T06 represents a series of contexts associated with the leveling fill for the basilica, the construction of the apse of the church, and earlier Roman activities associated with the construction of various walls, the levigation pool, and the kiln. As a result, trenches T06 and S06 produced more chronologically narrow contexts than the area as a whole with a number of clear Roman period contexts present. Since many of the contexts are relatively small, we aggregated the material from both trenches to produce quantitatively meaningful sample of Roman period artifacts. These two trenches, with their numerous Roman contexts, produced a different story. They revealed a more even ratio of ESA to CS which approaches 3:2 (57.7% CS and 42.3% ESA). This may speak to the comparatively earlier date of Roman material present in the complicated S06/T06 assemblage in general compared to the more diachronically representative assemblage from E.F2 more broadly.

The differences between the larger, diachronic and area-wide assemblage from E.F2 and the small, more chronologically narrow assemblage from trenches T06 and S06 reveals some of the complexities for understanding the circulation of Roman fine wares on Cyprus. For example, in the immediate hinterland of Paphos, the substantial sample of Roman fine wares from the unstratified surface assemblage from CPSP produced a wide range of CS forms which appeared in a 3:2 ratio with ESA. What distinguished this assemblage from EF2 at Polis is the quantity of imported Italian and Aegean imports which presumably offered an alternative both to Eastern imports and regional Cypriot Sigillata.

This interpretation would align with the long-standing positions of John Lund, John Hayes, and others who advocated for a western Cyprus center for the production of Cypriot Sigillata perhaps in the region of Soloi, Paphos, or the southern coast of Anatolia. They argue that in Western Cyprus, ready access to CS mitigated the popularity of ESA particularly in the later 1st and early 2nd century of our era. At Paphos, for example, Italian imports complement CS forms evidently at the expense of ESA. After the middle of the 2nd century, however, stratified deposits become less common and our understanding of the latest forms of CS become correspondingly less clear. Conversely, on the Eastern part of the island ESA was more common in relation to CS until the 2nd century AD when CS became the most common fine ware (Marquié 2002).

The challenge of understanding the assemblage at Polis, then is both one of chronology and one of regionalism. Chronologically, the larger, Late Roman assemblage of material from across the area of E.F2 captured residual examples of a wider range of CS forms that were later and more common than ESA forms in Western Cyprus after the 1st century AD. Material from trenches S06 and T06, in contrast, produced more earlier forms of ESA which reflected the generally earlier date of deposition throughout this trench and the clear mingling of earlier deposits — such as the one that produced the lamps — with later deposits in the local constitution of the basilica leveling fill.

The diversity of forms present in the S06/T06 assemblage offers a window into the distribution of ESA and CS at Polis. The forms present in these levels are unsurprisingly similar to those found at Paphos and from the CPSP survey with even the rarer forms such as CS31 and CS41 appearing elsewhere in Western Cyprus either on the Canadian Palaiopaphos Survey Project, the House of Dionsysios, or excavations at the Paphos Agora. Further east, The Amathous gate cemetery at Kourion lacks the earliest forms of CS while producing most of the later forms including CS31 and CS41. The assemblage of CS from Kition-Bamboula was similar and included the less common later forms CS41 and the more common CS29. In contrast, the smaller inland site of Panayia-Ematousa produced only some of the most common forms present at Polis (CS11, CS12, CS22, and CS40).

Two Things Tuesday: Rain and a Plan

I feel like I’m starting to find my groove here this summer and our manuscript is getting tighter and more polished. This gives week two of my summer research leave a bit momentum. 

There are a couple things going on these days that probably deserve a bit of text. 

Thing the First

We had a nice rain shower on Sunday. There’s something about summer rain in the Mediterranean. It’s abrupt, it can be intense and drenching, but it feels fleeting. It is the perfect counter balance to the grind of archaeology.

Thing the Second

We have managed to analyze enough of the material from two trenches S06 and T06 which are in the area of E.F2 to the east of the apse of the South Basilica. Here’s a general sketch of our work! We can now begin to compare this material to assemblages from elsewhere at the site and from other sites on Cyprus. There’s been a sustained interest in the distribution of Roman period finewares on the island with the two main forms Eastern Sigillata A and Cypriot Sigillata becoming indicators of the relationship between a site and larger economic patterns on the island. The argument has largely been that the Western part of the island has tended to be more oriented toward the Aegean and the coast of Asia Minor while the Eastern part is more tightly tied to the Levant. The source of ESA remains obscure, but in keeping with this assessment, it is thought to be Levantine whereas CS likely derives from Cilician coast or somewhere in Western Cyprus. 

A site like Polis should look a good bit like Paphos where there has been a good bit of work to document the chronology and forms of CS on the island (as well as ESA). Moreover, they should look different from sites such as Kourion and the sites near Kition where Levantine wares should be proportionally more common. Survey projects fill some of the gaps between the regions and expand the sample.  Of course, this kind of comparison involves the tedious compiling of information from diffuse publications some of which (and I’m talking about John Hayes’s Paphos III) are actually anti-intuitive. Others are simply obscure. As any number of scholars have noted, this makes comparisons between sites often impressionistic (at best) and makes quantitative analysis difficult. That said, we are going to start to sketch out some of this over the next few days. 

Photo Friday

The first week at work always feels a bit odd. Between getting into a new routine, shaking off the last vestiges of jet lag, and figuring out the variable Cypriot weather, I feel like I’ve been all over the map.

Fortunately, I have found a bit of time to take some photos. There’s nothing remarkable in these, but they do offer a bit of snapshot of work (and life) at Polis. Hopefully this weekend, I’ll have time for a walk around the village with the Sony and the Sigma. 

In the meantime, here are some of my favorite photos from this week. These are all with my Sony and the Voigtlander 50 mm f/1.2 and generally shot at high ISO (800 or so) which I think gives the black and whites a bit more character.

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And one for my old man:

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Three Cyprus Things Thursday

Here’s a short three things Thursday as we wrap up our week of field work at Polis.

Thing the First

Whenever I’m at Polis I think of walls. Partly this is because my run takes me past the site of A.H9 in the Princeton grid where the course of the Late Cypro-Classical (4th century) fortification wall runs. The wall is preserved only at the level of the socle made of rounded river stones set in a simple mortar. The superstructure of the wall would have presumably been mud brick with ashlar reinforcement at key places. The wall in A.H9 loosely followed the course of a low ridge that bordered a ravine to the west. In this area, the wall turns the west and presumably proceeded along the northern slope of the city above the coastal plain.

Monosnap City of Gold: The Archaeology of Polis Chrysochous, Cyprus - Childs et al. - 2012 - Zotero 2026-05-20 19-55-49.

Looking at this wall as a socle, I got to wondering whether this would have been wide enough (approximately 3 m) to support any substantial mud brick superstructure. Perhaps it was topped by a wooden palisade or similar arrangement to extend its height and protect defenders. 

It also got me thinking about whether Polis received fortification during the Late Roman period. In all likelihood this fortification would have been to the south of the Late Classical wall and enclosed a smaller enceinte which is now under the modern village. Oddly I don’t recall seeing anyone reporting the existence of this wall. 

Thing the Second

I’ve been thinking a good bit about Polis in the Roman period. One of the more interesting objects that we recorded this summer was a hypocaust tile probably in a mid-second century context. The origins of this tile is unclear, but we found it in a secondary context. This might mean that the bath from which this tile derived dated to the end of the 1st century; of course, it’s also possible that this tile was discarded from a bath being constructed in the second century. In either case, the location of a Roman bath at Polis is not known, but a late first or early second century date would place it on the early side of Roman style baths on Cyprus. This is just speculation of course.

It is likewise interesting to relate the discarded hypocaust tile to the small assemblage of Roman lamps nearby. The types of lamps in this assemblage are in no way distinctive or unique. In fact, they derive largely from Italian prototypes and are distinctly Roman in design. They date to around the year 100 and are Vessberg 11 which are locally made versions of Italian Loeschcke V lamps. By 100, if not earlier, Roman style lamps had not only become common on Cyprus, but were being manufactured there.

Scholars have long been interested in the Romanization of the island and have highlighted sites such as the Villa of Dionysios at Paphos to show it in its most dramatic form. Our smaller, more obscure, and unapologetically un-monumental trenches at Polis, however, offer a simpler and perhaps more ubiquitous testimony to the Romanization of the island in the 1st century AD in lamps and baths.

Thing the Third

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On my walks along the coast in the evening, I think a good bit about archaeology on Cyprus especially in the Roman and Late Roman period. Like in many places in the Eastern Mediterranean, Roman archaeology is a bit of an ugly duckling of the archaeological community. At worst, it documents a period characterized by a kind of ancient colonialism; at best, the sites are generic and represent a kind of Mediterranean koine that often speaks only quietly to the local situation. On Cyprus, for example, serious archaeologists tend to be interested in early prehistory, the Bronze Age, or Cypro-Archaic to Classical period. These periods tend to emphasize features of Cypriot culture that contribute to a distinctive culture.

Of course, historically those interested in these periods tend to emphasize religious and political developments and when they do delve into economics, it tends to be large scale, state-sponsored activity such as mining or the production of high value prestige and luxury goods. I understand that this is a broad generalization of a rich and complex vein of fieldwork and research — and I certainly recognize that recent scholarship has sought to explore the household and settlement archaeology during this period, but I suspect the interest in religion and politics (as a framework for culture) speaks to certain deep seated Orientalist tendencies in archaeological research. The east is a world of strange religious practices (i.e. non-western) and complex politics machinations in states that seem to hybridize endlessly.

I wonder whether studying the Roman period on Cyprus escapes the Orientalizing trap to some extent. Rather than trying to find an essentialized Cypriot under layers of Roman culture, Roman archaeologists on Cyprus (pace Jody Gordon and others) have tended to spend more time thinking about what Cypriots actually do rather than who they are. This too, I recognize, is an oversimplification. 

Writing Wednesday: More on the Levigation Pool

I am committed to finishing the article that I started this winter by the end of the upcoming weekend so we can move on to more interesting (or at least less familiar) material at Polis.

My current writing has focused on clarifying the structure and chronology of what we have identified as a levigation pool near a pottery kiln at Polis. Some of what I’ve included below is similar to what I wrote earlier this year, but I managed to develop some of the description more fully (as well as the analysis of finds; you’ll notice that some of the finds information is not quite complete or legible here). 

We’ve also started to play with using ChatGPT to clean up sketches in the notebooks and even export these sketches as vector files. This is particularly important for us as we study features like the levigation pool which never received formal documentation by the project’s architects. The images below were originally on densely gridded notebook paper. ChatGPT was able to extract the line drawing from the notebook page and supply a slightly suspect scale to it. I was also able to ask ChatGPT to eliminate all text from these images and export then as SVG files for further refinement in Adobe Illustrator. Here, I could superimpose the vector image atop the original notebook illustration and fix misinterpretations by the robot. 

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The Levigation Pool

Excavations in both 1990 and 1991 revealed the top of a series of eleven vertically arranged terracotta tiles arranged to form the coping of a pool. The excavators described this pool as a “fish pond,” but its proximity to a workshop area, size, and general characteristics make it more likely to have been a pool for the mixing of raw clay and water as part of the levigation process. The levigation pool itself consists of two perpendicular lines of coping tiles suggesting a pool that measured 5 meters east-west and perhaps 3 meters north-south. The tiles that defined the pool appear to be in reuse and from monumental buildings. The largest preserved tiles measured over a half a meter per side (e.g. AT54 and AT53) are 5 cm thick. Two more fragmentary tiles (AT60 and AT55) are damaged examples of this same type. These heavy, thick tiles were probably paving tiles. The rest of the larger fragments used to line the pool are roof tiles probably dating to the Hellenistic or earlier Roman period. Their 2 cm thickness with 4 cm ridges aligns well with the contemporary tiles at Panayia-Ematousa (Rose 2006). It seems likely that these tiles came from a monumental Hellenistic building at Polis and perhaps even the nearby structure at E.G0 (Najbierg 2012). The presence of hypocaust tile fragment (AT58) indicates that by the first or early second century a Roman style bath existed at Polis.

The tiles were set into a vertical bedding of clay which would have provided a degree of waterproofness. A layer of bright red clay covered the inner surface of the tiles. The interior layer of clay was either residue from the levigation process or, as plausibly, applied as a way to waterproof the sides of the pool. The floor of the pool seems to consist of a “hard, crusty, dried, clay-like earth floor” which perhaps represents the residue of the levigation process. The lack of complete waterproofing of the pool may have facilitated the draining of water and been an asset rather than a liability. Finally, there appears to be a gap in the tile wall of the basin on its southern side where the hypocaust (AT58, AT68, and AT67). This gap would have presumably been closed, perhaps with a tile, when the basin was in use and perhaps facilitated drainage after levigation occurred.

This estimate of the pool’s north-south dimensions depends upon the location of a basin described in the notebook as a “pithos.” It appears, however, that this “pithos” was an open ceramic basin whose lowest level is at approximately the same elevation as the lowest parts of the pool’s coping tiles (around 18 m ASL). It seems reasonable to conclude that the basin and the pool are contemporary and that the pool’s northern limits must fall before the area around the basin. Published examples of levigation pools from the Levant suggest that a pool of 15 sq. m would be relatively large, but not outside the range of dimensions for these features. Its size indicates the capacity to levigate large quantities of clay at the preliminary stage ceramic production process, and this suggests that it served a large production site. The basins to the north of the pool is a common feature at ceramic production sites in the Levant and should probably be associated with the treading of clay.

The main challenge in dating this pool and its associated basin is that the area where it stood was a busy one in the Roman and Late Roman periods. Not only was the basilica leveling fill and contemporary foundations cut through the area most likely disturbing the western side of the levigation pool, but a wall preserved in at least two and possible three phases seems to have complicated and potentially disturbed the southern and eastern side of the pool prior to the basilica construction. As a result, the overall stratigraphy of the area is compromised with only small areas of undisturbed soil behind the coping tiles of the pool. This area preserved a small assemblage of datable material (S06.1991.L21). The latest sherd in this material is a Cypriot Sigillata form 30 which is in the “late series” of CS forms largely dating to the first half of the 2nd century or later (Cat. 36 and 37; Hayes 1991, 44). There are also the thickened rims of contemporary globular cooking pots known from Paphos in this assemblage (Cat. 71). Eastern Sigillata Form 4 (Cat. 10) and 22 (Cat. 13) appear to date to a century earlier as does a lagynos with a parallel at Paphos (Cat. 82; Hayes Series 5, no. 14). Material excavated from within the basin (S06.1991.L17) offers little additional evidence for date although the utility and cooking wares and color coated wares might date earlier than the material associated with the pool. Since the pool and the basin are almost certainly contemporary, the presence of earlier material in the basin itself reflects the generally confused stratigraphy of the area.

The pool stood near the intersection of two walls: one to the south and one to the east. The date and precise relationship between these walls and pool remains unclear. The wall immediately to the south of the levigation pool has three phases with the later two phases being seemingly Late Roman in date, but presumably before the leveling and filling of the area for the construction of the basilica. Unfortunately, the exact relationship between the wall and the pool remains opaque as does the relationship between the south wall and east wall (and the east wall and the basin). That said, the gap in the tiles along the southern wall of the levigation pool might suggest that the south wall post-dated the pool; if the gap in the tiles was left to drain the basin when levigation was complete. Moreover, it seems unlikely that the pool was inside an enclosed space. This suggests that the south and east walls post date the pool and basin. Whatever the case, the material associated with the south wall is not substantially later than that found behind the tile packing of the pool suggesting that whatever their sequence, their chronological dating was likely quite close.

The removal of the south wall (S06.South Wall) contains CS12 (Cat. 22, Cat 24, and Cat. 25) and CS29 (Cat. 33 and Cat. 35) which generally belong to the later sequence of this type of pottery as well as CS18 (Cat. 26), pinch handled amphora (Cat. 55) and various medium coarse (Cat. 79 and 80 and kitchen wares (Cat. 66). This wall cuts through a series of levels — most of which are only narrow lenses of soil, cuts, and floors — that produced diagnostic cooking wares datable to the 1st and 2nd centuries (S06.L28P1B24 [Hayes, Paphos III, fig. 33:5]; S06.L28P1B25[Rowe 67.1]); S06.L31P2B21;S06L25P1B28 and 29). These levels also contained two fragments of potstands (S06.L25 and Cat. 84). The wall that runs along the eastern side of the levigation pool is a series of superimposed walls similar to the south wall. The latest phase of this wall is Late Roman, but the earlier phase is likely contemporary with the Roman period road to the east and perhaps joins with the south wall (see below). Our inability to distinguish the exact sequence of construction reflects the sometimes rapid adaptation of this area for new uses as production needs required.