Tenta, Cyprus

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Kalavasos- Tenta is a settlement of the early Pre-Pottery Neolithic Vasilikos Valley in Cyprus.

Location

Tenta is located in the district of Larnaca, approximately 4 km south of Vouni near the southeast coast of the island.

Excavation

Tenta was the first time in 1974 by Porphyry Dikeos, Curator of the Cyprus Museum in Nicosia, exhumed, and then from 1976 to 1984 examined more thoroughly under the direction of British archaeologist Ian Todd. The excavation is now under a PVC canopy and can be visited.

Stratigraphy and dating

Todd distinguished four phases and a phase of settlement without buildings ( 5), which he allocated the second half of the 7th millennium. The earliest radiocarbon date, Kt -18 ( 9240 ± 130 BP), came from the " Lower South Slope", which is not stratigraphically to connect to the rest of the settlement. Mc Carthney divides the population into the following phases:

Buildings

From the first phase (5) only post-holes and pits are known. In phases 4-2 was the development of round houses of very different size from clay bricks. Phase 1 is poorly preserved, but the sparse construction residues are also likely to be a contribution to roundhouses. In some of the houses there are signs of an upper floor. In part, the settlement was protected by a wall.

The village was repopulated in the early Chalcolithic period, as some pits in the bottom of the slope show.

Finds

The stone implements from the Phase 5 show by McCartney certain similarities to the epipaläolithischen material from Aetokremnos. The preferred raw material is a translucent flint, which was mainly used for unipolar micro blades and small appliances discount of discoid cores. In the basic form of production reductions and blades are almost equal frequency, with both uni- and bidirectional as cores are used. True Kiel cores ( cores naviform ) lacking. It happens almost no Anatolian obsidian, in contrast to the simultaneous settlement of Kissonerga - Mylouthkia and Parekklischa - Shilloroukambos. On devices to find drills, notched blades and lateralretuschierte discounts.

Besides jewelry made Pikrolith, numerous stone vessels and two figurines were found in stone. From rock and grinding and grinding stones, mortars and hatchets were made ​​.

Economy

It was einkorn, emmer and cultivated barley in a lesser amount, along with legumes such as lentils. Wild barley, figs, pistachio and vetch were collected.

Burials

It 14 burials were found, either in pits in the floor of the houses or next to the houses in waste layers. As free gifts an ocher lump was found only once. The skulls of the dead were partially deformed artificially.