GEOARCHAEOLOGY OF AIS YIORKIS, AN UPLAND EARLY ACERAMIC NEOLITHIC SITE IN SOUTHWESTERN CYPRUS: EVIDENCE FOR HUMAN-ENVIRONMENT INTERACTIONS

Ais Yiorkis is one of a handful of recently documented Aceramic Neolithic (Cypro-PPNB) sites that have expanded the island’s colonization by over 500 years. It is a small village about 25 km northeast of Paphos, Cyprus, on a side-slope in the foothills of the Troodos Mountains. The site is well dated, with primary occupation between ca. 9800-9300 cal ¹⁴C yr B.P. (middle Cypro-PPNB).

Four superposed strata, numbered I to IV from top to bottom, occur at Ais Yiorkis. All of the strata consist of matrix-supported colluvium, and the middle Cypro-PPNB component is associated with a buried paleosol developed in Stratum III.

Based on the archaeological record, there was intensive utilization of the landscape and resources during the occupation at Ais Yiorkis. The site is unique from other Cypro-PPNB settlements in that it is in the uplands rather than coastal, contains unusual oval architectural “platforms” and has many cultural deposits, including over 330,000 chipped stone artifacts, abundant and elaborate ground stone, imported obsidian, and rich ornamentation. It also has well-preserved domesticated plants, including einkorn wheat and barley, and an enormous faunal assemblage dominated by deer, but also with domestic pig, sheep, goat, and, surprisingly, small amounts of cattle. The latter are important, since previously they had been documented in the island’s Neolithic record, but they now are present in small percentages at three Cypro-PPNB sites, only to disappear until the much later Bronze Age.

While post-occupational disturbances have damaged the structures, at least six are partially preserved. Their floors are covered with a simple lime-based plaster, but it is not yet known if kilns were necessary to produce this; hence the impact on local timber is equivocal. Regardless, the richness and abundance of the material assemblage and the intensive use of multiple resources may have resulted in environmental instability; there is no evidence indicating that erosion was triggered by climate change. The removal of tree cover combined with intensive grazing and other land-disturbance processes associated with human activity may have triggered upland erosion and massive sedimentation, perhaps as debris flows, on the footslopes. Thus, degradation of the local landscape may have forced the abandonment of Ais Yiorkis.