The Best Cyprus Community

Skip to content


UC research uncovers ancient Mycenaean fortress

Feel free to talk about anything that you want.

UC research uncovers ancient Mycenaean fortress

Postby kurupetos » Mon Jun 20, 2011 8:34 pm

That research, by UC’s Gisela Walberg, professor of classics, will be presented at the annual workshop of the Cyprus American Archaeological Research Center in Nicosia, Cyprus, on June 25, 2011.

Since 2001, Walberg has worked in modern Cyprus to uncover the ancient city of Bamboula, a Bronze Age city that was an important trading center for the Middle East, Egypt and Greece. Bamboula, a harbor town that flourished between the 13th through the 11th century B.C., sits along a highway on the outskirts of the modern village of Episkopi, along the southwestern coast of Cyprus and near the modern harbor town of Limassol. The area thrived in part because the overshadowing Troodos Mountains contained copper, and the river below was used to transport the mined materials.

Her most recent research at the site revealed the remnants of a Late Bronze Age (1500-750 B.C.) fortress that may have functioned to protect the urban economic center further inland, which does not seem to have been fortified.

Clues to the function of the structure were clear to Walberg. "It's quite clear that it is a fortress because of the widths and strengths of the walls. No house wall from that period would have that strength. That would have been totally unnecessary," she said, noting that one wall is 4.80 meters thick. "And it is on a separate plateau, which has a wonderful location you can look north to the mountains or over the river, and you can see the Mediterranean to the south -- so you can see whoever is approaching."

Remains of stairs leading up to a destroyed circular tower-like structure, which would have been convenient to look out over the area, were also found.

"We found the first walls, which we thought were interesting, in 2005," Walberg said. "But, we continued, and this year, we found a staircase – actually we had found two steps before of a similar staircase, but this time we found a whole staircase."

According to Walberg, the staircase seems to have been broken in a violent catastrophe, which throws lights on the early Late Bronze Age history in Cyprus, a period of which little is known but characterized by major social upheaval and cemeteries containing what a number of scholars have identified as mass burials.

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-06-uc- ... tress.html

:D :D :D
User avatar
kurupetos
Leading Contributor
Leading Contributor
 
Posts: 18855
Joined: Tue Jul 31, 2007 7:46 pm
Location: Cyprus

Re: UC research uncovers ancient Mycenaean fortress

Postby supporttheunderdog » Sat Jun 25, 2011 2:51 pm

What makes anyone think the fort was built by the Mycenaeans.....there is nothing in the body of the Article to link the fort to the Myceneaens and I suspect that with a 13th Century origin it may be indigeonous Cypriot and intended to keep folks like the Mycenaeans out.
User avatar
supporttheunderdog
Main Contributor
Main Contributor
 
Posts: 8397
Joined: Thu Oct 28, 2010 3:03 pm
Location: limassol

Re: UC research uncovers ancient Mycenaean fortress

Postby kurupetos » Sat Jun 25, 2011 6:58 pm

supporttheunderdog wrote:What makes anyone think the fort was built by the Mycenaeans.....there is nothing in the body of the Article to link the fort to the Myceneaens and I suspect that with a 13th Century origin it may be indigeonous Cypriot and intended to keep folks like the Mycenaeans out.

:lol: ...or maybe the indigenous Cypriots were Greek in the first place. That's why there were no wars between the Cypriots (Greeks) and the Mycenaeans (Greeks). :D
User avatar
kurupetos
Leading Contributor
Leading Contributor
 
Posts: 18855
Joined: Tue Jul 31, 2007 7:46 pm
Location: Cyprus

Re: UC research uncovers ancient Mycenaean fortress

Postby supporttheunderdog » Sat Jun 25, 2011 7:45 pm

Distance would play a part in stopping wars - and forts Like Bamboula would make life hard - as it is the genetic and linguistic evidence suggests Mycenaeans were part of a group of peoples who came west out of the Pontic steps in the period from about 3000BC, probably entering what is now Greece in about 2000 BC and acquiring the arts of civilisation, including limited writing, - the Minoans only seem to have provided a debased form of their own script - only after contact with the Cretan based Minoan civilisation in about 1500 BC - Long before the Mycneaean arrival the North Eastern med from Greece through the Anatolian Coast to the Levant was peopled by different groups who probably came out of the fertile crescent in two or three waves starting soon after the end of the last glacial maximum, and who were on Cyprus from probably 11000 BC onwards.

As it is there is some sign of conflict with, for example, the Cypriote city of Salamis seemingly sacked and destroyed in about 1100 BC-1000 BC and replaced by a Mycenean style city. This also partly refected in the pottery styles , where seemingly Cypriote Style pottery was replaced by Mycenaen Pottery.
User avatar
supporttheunderdog
Main Contributor
Main Contributor
 
Posts: 8397
Joined: Thu Oct 28, 2010 3:03 pm
Location: limassol


Return to General Chat

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest