*«^*l ^- 



The sheep's fold made from an eroded cave uj.Icu LiMeras- Mandres Vihias produced pygmy hippopotamus 

 bones below a thin layer of goat dung. Here the author examines the bones with a Maronite priest (in white) and 

 young volunteer. Summer 1973. 



In 1980, a British officer named Lt. Brian Pile re- 

 discovered the site when conducting an archaeological 

 survey on the Akrotiri peninsula, and mentioned it to 

 Dr. Stuart Swiny, director of the Cyprus American 

 Archaeological Research Institute (CAARl), in Nico- 

 sia. Later that year they visited the site and collected 

 additional htines, shells, and flints. The site is often re- 

 ferred to simply as Site E, Pile's name for it in his sur- 

 vey; more technically it is called Akrotiri-Aeto/cremnos 

 (Greek for "Eagle's Cliff). 



Since 1980 various scholars have visited the site 

 and examined the small collection of bones, shells, and 

 chipped stones housed in CAARl. Carbon- 14 analyses 

 performed on the 1980 bones were inconclusive — 

 some dates were much earlier than man was previously 

 thought to exist on the island while others indicated 

 that the bones were less than 2,000 years old. This ex- 

 treme range of dates seems attributable to the fact that 

 the tests were made on contaminated surface material. 



The site quickly became very controversial: was 

 man indeed associated with animals previously thought 

 to have become extinct 500,000 or 100,000 years ago, 

 long before he arrived on the island? Did man play a 



role in the extinction of these animals and if so, when 

 did man first arrive on the island? Conventional wis- 

 dom put earliest man on the island around 7000-6500 

 B.C. (calibrated carbon-14 dates). This period, the 

 Aceramic Neolithic, is typified by circular or sub- 

 circular buildings, stone bowls and figurines, domesti- 

 cated plants and animals, and burials below the house 

 floors. 



In 1987, ten days of surface collection and test 

 trenching were performed at the Akrotiri site, produc- 

 ing more than 250 lbs. of bone, uncontaminated 

 carbon-14 samples, and about 70 stone artifacts. This 

 project was directed by Dr. Alan H. Simmons of the 

 Desert Research Institute, University of Nevada Sys- 

 tem. I was asked to study the bones, but could not join 

 the team on Cyprus in 1987 because of other com- 

 mitments in Italy and Greece. 



In the summer of 1988 I was able to analyze the 

 1987 bone collection through a Pacific Scientific Com- 

 pany Fellowship (administered by t .e American 

 Schools of Oriental Research). For three weeks in Sep- 

 tember 1988 we also conducted more intensive excava- 

 tions at the site, these funded by the National Geogra- 



27 



