Greece · Late Bronze Age · Palaepaphos (Kouklia), Paphos District, Cyprus
Bronze Age defensive tower dated near Aphrodite's sanctuary at Palaepaphos in Cyprus
Pottery and a marl foundation layer date the earliest rampart to the end of the Late Bronze Age, the first fortification of that age identified at the city.
Palaepaphos (Kouklia), Cyprus Archaeologists have dated a defensive wall and tower at Palaepaphos, in south-western Cyprus, to the end of the Late Bronze Age. The Department of Antiquities says this is the first Late Bronze Age fortification system identified at the ancient city.
A team from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA) excavated the Marchello site in August and September 2026. Marchello is near the modern village of Kouklia. It lies less than a kilometre north-east of the sanctuary of Aphrodite, one of ancient Cyprus's important religious centres.
The NKUA team has worked at the site since 2021. Its aim is to establish when the defences were built and how they developed over time.
Pottery beside the rampart
Earlier excavations had already found a long defensive wall and a monumental gate at Marchello. British, German and Swiss teams worked there, as did researchers from the University of Cyprus. But the date of the structures, and how they related to each other, remained uncertain.
This season the team exposed a new section of the wall. Beside it lay an undisturbed layer containing pottery from the Late Cypriot IIC to IIIA periods. These are the names archaeologists give to phases near the end of the Late Bronze Age on Cyprus.
Above this deposit, and directly beside the wall's stone foundations, was a layer of marl, a clay-rich soil. The researchers think the builders prepared the marl on site. They believe it was spread over the stone base to make a level foundation for a mudbrick wall above. Its position next to the pottery and the foundations helps date the earliest phase of the rampart to this period.
A tower built up in stages
The excavation also showed how a tower grew within the defences. Builders first set a rectangular bastion into the rampart in the Late Cypriot IIIA period. Later they added a three-sided extension to its front. The result was a nearly square structure of about 7.4 by 7.3 metres.
Thick walls enclosed a central room of around nine square metres. The design suggests the tower may have had upper floors. Only the foundations survive, however, so its original height is unknown.
The tower was then reinforced with an extra wall about 2.7 metres thick on its north-western side. The researchers think this work probably also took place in the Late Cypriot IIIA period. The successive phases indicate that the people of Palaepaphos repeatedly invested in their defences during the Late Bronze Age.
Building work continued long after the Bronze Age. In the 4th century BC, the Late Cypro-Classical period, another reinforcing wall went up along the tower's north-eastern and south-eastern sides. Pottery from its foundation trench helped date this phase. The rampart was also widened at a later stage, possibly in the same period.
There is a gap in the sequence. The team has not found building phases from the Cypro-Geometric or Cypro-Archaic periods in the area it excavated. It is therefore still unclear whether the fortifications stayed in use between the Late Bronze Age and their 4th-century reinforcement.
Further fieldwork and study of the recovered material are expected to help show how the complex developed and what role it played in the city's history. At the end of the 2026 season, the team covered the exposed walls with protective ground-cover fabric.
Sources
- Archaeologists Uncover Bronze Age Defences at Ancient Cyprus Site (greekcitytimes.com)
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