Day 4, Locality 8

8) Amathus, west of Limassol; ancient site visit.

This is a quick tourist stop to see the ancient site of Amathus, conveniently situated on our route back to Limassol.

Amathus stands on a rocky knoll composed of Miocene Pakhna Formation reefal carbonates, within which some coarse clastic channel deposits occur. Age of these channel deposits is open to debate, but they are of Miocene-Pliocene age generally. Importantly, they witness phases in the uplift of the Troodos massif to the north. Similarly the presence of biostromes in the Pakhna chalks again indicate that some parts of the ocean floor had become uplifted to shallower depths in the Miocene.

Amathus was an ancient city-kingdom and port dating from at least the 5th century BC. This is one of the oldest city-kingdoms, supposedly founded by a son of Hercules. Later it became the capital of an administrative district in Roman times. It was the birthplace of St. John the Almoner, the patron of the Knights Hospitaller, and a refuge for Richard the Lionheart. By the 12th C after much devastation by earthquakes and subsidence, it declined rapidly from its former glory. Parts of the sea port are now submerged.  The site is only partly restored, and retains an air of peaceful tranquillity.

===============================================

(There is a comprehensive description given in CGE-7, pp 206 to 210).

Stop 7.9 - The ancient city, water resources, sea-level change and Pakhna and Quaternary rocks along the Amathous circuit.

The archaeological site of Amathous lies at the eastern end of the sprawling coastal strip of hotels and restaurants east of Lemesos, and signs clearly indicate the site entrance on the landward side of the BI.  There is parking at the site entrance and a small entrance fee.  The details given here describe a round-trip of several kilometres, which starts and ends at the archaeological site, and includes examination of Pakhna and Quaternary rocks.  Done completely, the circuit can take a full day.

Although there were Neolithic settlements in the hills around Amathous, the actual site is believed to have been uninhabited until the Late Bronze Age (around 1100 BC).  Growth of the settlement was favoured by the natural setting:  the surrounding hills were used for defence and agriculture, trees and water were abundant, and the sea offered a means of transport and anchorage.  Local limestone quarries provided building stone for the port and city monuments, and mining of copper at Kalavasos, Parekklisia and north of Armenochori, as well as in the Limassol Forest, brought great wealth to the city.

Amathous was one of the oldest city kingdoms in Cyprus.  By the eighth century BC, the site was under the control of the Phoenicians, who used it as a base for trading.  Between the eighth and sixth centuries BC, Phoenicians, Hittites, local Cypriots, Greeks and Egyptians ruled Cyprus, and Amathous was influenced in turn by each of these cultures, becoming a focal point for trade.  During the Greco-Persian wars in the fifth and fourth centuries BC, Amathusians sided with the Persians, remaining in the process one of the independent kingdoms in Cyprus headed by a local king.

Following the defeat of the Persians by Alexander the Great, King Androkles of Amathous attempted to maintain power, but failed when Amathous became a democracy in 312-311 BC.  The city was then under the domination of the Ptolemies, Romans and Byzantines until its decline in the Arab raids of the seventh century AD.

Perhaps the most impressive part of the site is the agora (marketplace), which lies at the end of the road from the site entrance.  An information board at the southeastern end of the agora provides a comprehensive orientation.  The water-supply infrastructure and baths are particularly noteworthy.  At the northwestern end are a nymphaeum (monumental fountain) associated with a reservoir, and a vaulted reservoir and cistern, which were all tapped by a series of limestone and terracotta conduits that supplied water to the Roman baths, a centrally positioned Roman public fountain and, in earlier times, Greek baths (Fig. 7.8).  Some fine columns remain on the agora site.  Those made of limestone clearly come from the Pakhna Formation, but the granite, white-marble and well foliated grey-marble columns must have been imported, probably from Turkey, as no such rocks occur in Cyprus.  The importation of such exotic rocks confirms the wealth that this ancient city once possessed.

The water-supply network to Amathous is extensive and superbly integrated, as it reached as far north as Armenochori and Parekklisia, and consisted of a complex linked system of springs, reservoirs, conduits, channels and aqueducts.  About 500 m due north of the site entrance is the north wall, which was built as a defence in the low-lying area between adjacent hills.  Looking north from this wall, it is possible to see the rubble foundations of a once-arcaded section of the main aqueduct, which carried water from springs in the hills around Armenochori.  The north wall here supported a feeder system for water entering the city, and an offshoot from this system probably supplied water to the fountain reservoir in the agora.  Much of the infrastructure for the capture, storage and transport of water seen today dates to the Hellenistic and Roman periods.

Immediately south of the agora is the harbour.  The inner harbour lay in what is now the sandy depression between the ticket office at the site entrance, the agora and the B1 coast road.  This once-natural cove appears to have been abandoned in the late fourth and early third centuries BC, because the outer harbour silted up.  The outer harbour was constructed late in the fourth century BC and lies to the south of the inner harbour, and from the coastal footpath south of the B1 may be seen lying submerged immediately beyond the present-day coastline.  By the first century AD a beach had developed well out into the outer harbour as a result of elevation of the land and deposition of sand and silt by both water and wind.  The migration of the shoreline back inland since then is a sign of relative changes in sea level during the past two millennia.  Further evidence of this sea-level change may be seen about 150m farther east along the coast from the harbour, where remains of the fifth-century AD southeast basilica are partially submerged.  These changes in relative sea level reflect the rising and sinking of the land in this seismically active region, rather than global changes in levels of the oceans.

About 400 m west of the site entrance is a small broad valley with excellent exposure of the Pakhna Formation and interesting archaeology.  It is reached by following the path from the entrance on the landward side of the B1.  The path passes the southwest basilica and then remnants of the southwest wall and west gate, which date from Archaic and Classical times, just before it goes under the B1.  At this point, the wall, gate and rockface mark the edge of a relatively flat area of the valley bottom that contains remains of land snails and abundant fragments of ancient pottery which must not be removed.  The rockface may once have been a seacliff, but it has also been quarried.  At its base there is a manmade water channel that has been cut into the rock and this probably tapped off water from springs farther up the valley.  While exploring, be aware of the potentially dangerous excavations at the foot of the cliff.

The Pakhna rocks in the quarried cliff face are well bedded carbonates, ranging from calcarenite to sandy marl.  They exhibit a variety of sedimentary features, and graded bedding, convolute stratification, slump folds, flame structures, load casts, channel fills and intraclasts may all be seen (see Fig. 6.7b).  Many of these features are characteristic of loading and slumping of soft sediment, perhaps accompanied by de-watering, in a high-energy shallow-water shelf-slope environment.  Further evidence of soft-sediment deformation can be found on the western side of the valley, west of the Moulin Rouge club, on the sharp bend in the road that comes inland from the B1.

Now take the path under the B1 and examine the impressive remains of the Hellenistic southwest wall on the coast path.  From here the coastal boardwalk leads back to the main archaeological site, but it is best to head about 400 m west to Loures Beach, below the Avenida Beach hotel, in order to undertake a full transect of the clearly exposed geology along the coast between beach and archaeological site.  At Loures Beach the narrow zone of black ophiolitic sand gives way to dark ophiolitic beachrock that dips very gently seawards (see Fig. 6.14c).  The key feature in the beachrock is the fragments of orange and reddish-brown pottery, which limit the oldest age of the rock to within historical times, probably the past 2000 years, and demonstrate how quickly sedimentary rocks can form.  The cement of the beachrock is carbonate, seen coating many of the clasts, and this crystallized during repeated and rapid wetting and drying in the zone of wave splash.

About 100m further east the beachrock gives way to conglomerate overlying Pakhna limestone along an uneven unconformity.  The conglomerate, dominated by ophiolitic pebbles, exhibits alternations of coarser and finer bands, some of which partially overlap.  These features, and the presence of shell fragments, suggest that the conglomerate is of Pleistocene age and that it originated as part of a pebbly beach or shallow-marine debris flow.  The abundance of ophiolitic pebbles, with the exception of rock types from the mantle sequence, implies that the main sediment source was the crustal section of the Troodos ophiolite.  The underlying bioclastic limestone has a highly eroded surface, much like that seen at sea level farther east, and it has been bored by marine organisms.  This eroded and bored surface was once below sea level, but is now above it - again demonstrating relative sea-level changes along this section of shoreline.