Press Releases

The Department of Antiquities, Deputy Ministry of Culture, announces the completion of the 2024 excavation season of the French archaeological mission conducted at Kition-Bamboula in October 2024. During the previous campaign, we were able to define the limits in plan and depth of a dumping area, into which ostraca with Phoenician inscriptions (around 86 pieces, found in 2021-2023) had been discarded towards the end of the 4th century BCE. In the central part of sondage 11, the excavation of the various layers of fill from the dump had revealed an area of around 9 sq.m, free of any built structure. Our main goal, during the 2024 season, was therefore to carry out a deep test trench in the centre of this area, in order to determine the nature of the previous occupations and in particular the phases preceding the episode of massive filling, which levelled out this area in the Late Classical period.

In the final days of the 2023 campaign, we discovered the upper part of a massive rectangular block. Investigations in 2024 revealed that this block (wall 962; fig. 1) rests on a second oblong structure, running north-south. These are probably two superimposed walls, formed by large blocks (the average module is 47 cm high and 1.04 m long). Excavation to the east revealed an arrangement contemporary with the final (?) phase of the wall's reuse. This is evidenced by the installation of a row of four large, flat, rectangular gypsum slabs, laid on their edge (locus 963, fig. 1). The row of slabs follows an east-west alignment, perpendicular to the blocks formed by wall 962.

Further excavation to the north of the slabs shows that they rested against a layer of sediment, probably an anterior pebble wall with a partially preserved mud-brick elevation (locus 968) that held them in place when they subsequently subsided. A little to the north of the sondage 11, another pebble wall was uncovered running north-south (locus 965). Its orientation and altitude suggest that it may have been built at the same time as the pebble and mud-brick alignment on which the slabs of locus 963 rest. If this hypothesis is valid, we would be in the presence of a wall angle, perhaps forming the western limits of a building. However, the wall (locus 965) is interrupted to the south by a large disturbance that prevents us for the moment from verifying its stratigraphic relationship with the installations.

A study of the ceramic material associated with wall 965 confirms that it belongs to an earlier occupation of the area, the material being uniquely assignable to the Archaic period. Investigations to the south of the slabs revealed that they delimited the northern end of an oval-shaped “basin” (locus 966), rounded at its eastern end. This basin was dug into a level of lime plaster and earth filling which could mark a final phase of occupation of a building, possibly using wall 962 as its western boundary (fig. 1). Excavation of the floor level associated with the basin enabled us to establish that it was the result of cutting in an earlier structure that we began to uncover during the final days of the campaign.

This structure, known as locus 967, consists of a layer of lime plaster, cut to form a raised convex protuberance 70 cm in diameter (fig. 2). When the structure was uncovered, it became clear that it had been progressively buried by a superimposition of layers of alternating clay, charcoal and ash compositions. This is probably the result of careful and repeated cleaning of the structure, the function of which remains to be defined. Directly to the south-east of the structure, a set of two complete vases (a cooking pot and a small jug, both from the Classical period) was left in situ, caught in the filling of the level. Further excavation during the next campaign will aim to understand the purpose of this deposit and the function of the space associated with the use of structure 967.

During this campaign, we also continued the in-depth excavation of the exploratory trench opened to the south-west of the sondage 11 during the 2023 season. There, investigation has uncovered a large section of wall (locus 964). Like the last phase of wall 962, wall 964 does not follow a strictly north-south alignment, which is that of the other structures around it. The wall has been excavated over a length of 1.40 m, but its extension to the south has not yet been verified. It is solid and varies in width from 0.95 to 1.02 m. The absence of a facing on either side of the wall suggests that it is a foundation wall. Still dated to the Classical period, it was built after the other Classical installations had been abandoned.

Fig. 1: Detail of the slabs forming locus 963 and the cutting of the basin locus 966; to the left wall 962. Looking north.

Fig. 2: Excavation of the circular structure (locus 967) and the vases abandoned in situ, looking north.

Fig. 3: Final orthoimage of the area excavated in 2024 (A. Rabot)

(EK/NZ/GS)