City quarters from Late Bronze Age revealed

The 2013 field season at the Late Bronze Age harbour city of Hala Sultan Tekke, near Larnaka International Airport, has been completed.. The excavations, which took place for over five weeks during May and June, were conducted under the direction of Professor Peter M. Fischer from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

Aerial photograph of the building excavated at the site in 2012
[Credit: Department of Antiquities, Republic of Cyprus]

The excavations exposed hitherto unknown city quarters dating to the 14th – 12th centuries BC. The size of this city is estimated between 25 and 50 ha. Only a small portion of the city, the history of which goes back to the 16th century BC, has so far been excavated. At the beginning of the 12th century BC the city was destroyed and abandoned, and never inhabited again. The discovery of a city quarter was made possible through the use of a sophisticated ground penetrating radar device in 2010 and 2012, as part of a cooperative project between the University of Gothenburg (Prof. Peter M. Fischer) and the University of Vienna (Dr Immo Trinks). A ground penetrating radar may produce “X-ray images” of the soil up to 2m beneath the surface. The 2013 excavations, which exposed 200 square metres of the city, confirmed the interpretation of the radar survey.

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