Polis Archaeology
Work In Progress
They are still excavating this site. They may well have stopped for the time being, but you can see where they have been filtering the soil here looking for trinkets.
Google provided a bit more information about the site:
Although the museum is relatively small, it is part of the island’s Route of Aphrodite that connects important sites across Cyprus related to the myth of the Goddess of Love. The collection at Polis has been included because of the figurine statues of a Cypriot fertility goddess, which likely inspired the creation of Aphrodite centuries later.
Most of the items on display were found in the local region where the ancient city-kingdom of Marion-Arsinoe once stood. Marion was an important commercial centre in the Classical and Hellenistic periods, with close ties with Athens. During the Hellenistic-Roman period, Marion was renamed Arsinoe and is now the small town of Polis Chrysochous, commonly known as simply ‘Polis’.
Extra Protection
Needless to say, I left these covers well alone. Indeed, I was at pains to stick to the obvious paths and I touched nothing.
"Leave only footprints, take only photos"
Sizeable Settlement
When you think about it, it is surprising that they find anything of interest, other than the buildings themselves. I have walked around enough abandoned villages in Cyprus to know that anything remotely useful will get recycled for another purpose. So why did they leave a bunch of pots and statues around?
Interesting Stones
I wonder what those were part of?
Perhaps this is why the finds you see in the museum are never fully intact? Are the Archaeologists just rummaging through the dumped rubbish of bygone times, and discovering items that were originally thrown out? If that's the case then future Archaeologists are going to have a field day in Cyprus. Once the sun has set on the current civilisation, the left-over rubbish will prove a formidable challenge to Historians of the next millenium.