Choirokoitia Neolithic Settlement
UNESCO-listed Neolithic village of round stone houses on a hillside above the Maroni river.
Choirokoitia is one of the best preserved prehistoric settlements in the eastern Mediterranean. People lived on this slope above the Maroni river from roughly the seventh to the fourth millennium BC, during the aceramic Neolithic, farming cereals, keeping sheep and goats and hunting deer. The village was enclosed by successive stone walls, one of them nearly three metres thick, and reached by stepped passages. Excavation began under Porphyrios Dikaios in 1934 and has continued since 1977 with a French mission.
The houses were circular, built of stone at the base with mud brick above, and grouped around small courtyards; the dead were buried beneath the floors. Five dwellings have been rebuilt close to the entrance using the original methods and materials, and furnished with replicas of the querns, vessels and tools recovered on site. UNESCO inscribed Choirokoitia on the World Heritage List in 1998 for the evidence it preserves of early settled life on Cyprus.
Highlights
- Foundations of circular stone dwellings set behind massive enclosure walls
- Five full-size reconstructed houses furnished with replica objects
- Stepped entrance passages through the defensive wall
- Burials found beneath house floors, with stone vessels and ornaments
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