There were a lot of whorls on display, which is understandable given the industrial nature of the site.

This is labelled as "Red Slip ware". They also specified the date as between 2600-2300 BC, so it is one of the older pieces.

As a child, I would be annoying and ask what slip ware meant. These days I can just google it.

Slipware is pottery decorated with slip, which is a liquid mixture of clay and water.

What is Slip?

Liquid clay: A creamy or watery blend of clay particles and water.

Contrasting colors: Potters use a slip that is a different color than the main clay body (such as white slip on red clay).

Applied wet: Put onto the pottery while the clay is still firm yet damp (called leather-hard) before the first firing.

This is a different type of pottery. It turns out, there are a number of ancient pottery types in Cyprus. If you want to find out more about them, check out this compendium on the Ancient Cyprus website.

This is another example of Red Polished ware, and is actually labelled as an Ear lug vessel. What on Earth is that? Let's have another google. Actually, let's ask Grok this time, for a change:

An ear-lug vessel (or ear-lug pot/jar) is a distinctive form of Early Bronze Age Cypriot pottery, typically from the Early Cypriot I period (roughly 2300–2150/2100 BC).

It is a handmade ceramic container, usually in Red Polished Ware (often Red Polished I, sometimes with black-topped or mottled effects). Typical features include:

• An ovoid or similar body with a flat or small base.
• A short-to-tall, thick or cylindrical neck with a round or slightly out-turned rim.
• Two opposed vertical lugs (projections or flange-like handles) on the sides of the neck or at the body-neck junction. These are often unpierced and shaped somewhat like ears, which gives the type its name.

So, to summarise, Kissonerga Skalia was a mainly industrial site which existed in one form or another for about 1000 years. That's unfathomable really. The latter buildings were only there for 150 years, but that is still a few generations. There's obviously more to it than what you can see in the museum at the moment. But my closing thought concerns where the people who worked here actually lived. If this was their place of work, where did they commute from? How many more sites are dotted around Paphos in random fields, containing historical information mere inches from the surface?