Vouni Necropolis
On gentle slopes near the medieval abbey of Bellapais in the Turkish-occupied part of Cyprus sits an extensive Bronze Age cemetery known to the world almost exclusively through its dead. The Vounous necropolis contains 164 rock-cut chamber tombs that served an unknown settlement for nearly five centuries, from approximately 2500 to 2000 BCE, preserving one of the finest collections of prehistoric pottery ever discovered on the island. Vounous presents archaeologists with an unusual challenge. Despite extensive searches that began in the 1930s and continue sporadically today, the settlement that used this cemetery has never been located. The site sits somewhere between the villages of Ozanköy and Çatalköy in the Kyrenia region, but the homes, workshops, and temples of the people buried here remain hidden beneath modern development or agricultural land. Historical Background The tombs at Vounous date to the Early and Middle Bronze Age, a period when Cyprus underwent major transformation. Around 2500 BCE, settlers from Anatolia arrived on the island, bringing new pottery styles, copper-working technology, plow agriculture, and the warp-weighted loom. These immigrants, identified as the Philia Culture, moved quickly to the foothills of the Troodos Mountains to exploit the rich copper deposits. The people who used Vounous cemetery were part of this cultural shift. Their pottery shows clear Anatolian influence, particularly the distinctive Red Polished ware that…
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