Khirokitia, Ceramic Neolithic 5500 – 3900 BC
I’m for example very experienced with wrapping the head cloths for girls in the right way, fast and rapidly, and in the meanwhile soothing and calming the little ones. I help the younger mums here in town to do it correctly – you have to start very early on, and use different techniques when they grow older. They all come to me for advice.
See that girl over there passing by? She lives a few houses away from me. That’s what I a call an excellent silhouette. Yep, her mother can be proud, she did an excellent job. She was one of my best students. The young men all turn their heads when she walks by, and I see some of the other girls having some envy. Well if anything – It should encourage those girls to pay better attention when I’m showing them how to do the head wrapping for their own kids, so that they’ll have beautiful daughters themselves.”
Skulls found in Earth pit tomb, inside the Khirokitia settlement – Burials were often inside the round buildings under the floor
Conjoining extrasutural bones in the extrasutural bone bands occurring in
the antero posteriorly shaped crania in the Neolithic Khirokitia series in Cyprus
One types of cranial modification in Cyprus: Antero-posterior (middle, from Khirokitia), Scale 1:2. Photos K. O. Lorentz, courtesy Department of Antiquities
Artistic impression of how such a cranium might relate to an individuals appearance © FF-MAC
Khirokitia (or Choirokoitia, Greek:Χοιροκοιτία)
Hilltop site, east of Limassol. Dating: Pre-pottery Neolithic of the 7th millennium BC. It was suddenly abandoned and than again occupied in the in the 5th millennium BC.
The first people living here were likely early settlers of Cyprus, coming from the surrounding mainland. The village was surrounded by a stone wall. Houses were round made of mudbrick with foundations of stone. Some houses had human burials under the floors. The houses have internally low walls and platforms. Hearths were also found just like traces of benches and windows. In some cases there might have been an upper floor.
The Neolithic settlement of Khirokitia, occupied from the 7th to the 4th millennium B.C., is one of the most important prehistoric sites in the eastern Mediterranean. Its remains and the finds from the excavations there have thrown much light on the evolution of human society in this key region. Since only part of the site has been excavated, it forms an exceptional archaeological reserve for future study.
Choirokitia is a part of Unesco's world heritage list.