History and significance

The founding of Choirokoitia around 7000 BCE is part of the earliest wave of permanent human settlement on Cyprus — an island that, unlike most of the eastern Mediterranean, appears to have had no permanent human population before the Neolithic period. The settlers who established Choirokoitia were farmers and herders who brought domesticated plants and animals with them, almost certainly arriving by sea from the Levantine coast of the Near East. Cyprus in the Neolithic period was culturally connected to the broader Pre-Pottery Neolithic world of the Fertile Crescent but developed its own distinctive material culture in relative isolation — a fact that makes Choirokoitia particularly valuable to archaeologists studying early cultural differentiation in the ancient world.

The settlement was arranged around a central paved lane with circular dwellings packed densely on either side, many sharing walls. The entire site was enclosed by a substantial stone perimeter wall, rebuilt and enlarged at least three times over the centuries of occupation; this is one of the earliest known defensive or community-boundary structures in the Mediterranean world. The dead — men, women, and children — were buried in a flexed position in shallow pits beneath the floor, often with grave goods including stone vessels, jewellery (dentalium shell necklaces, carnelian beads), and ground stone tools. Some burials show signs that a heavy stone was placed on top of the body after burial. Around 5800 BCE, occupation suddenly ceased. After approximately 1,200 years of abandonment, the site was reoccupied around 4600 BCE by a new pottery-using population. This second phase lasted until approximately 4000 BCE. Systematic archaeological excavation began in 1936 under Porphyrios Dikaios and continued through the 20th century, revealing over 50 dwellings and more than 500 burials.