IV.—Rock-cutting and Tomb-architecture in Cyprus during the Graeco-Roman Occupation

Extract

It has been thought, with a good deal of reason for such an opinion, that the age of a quarry or a rock-cut tomb may be determined by the apparent character of the tooling of surfaces. This is most easily defined in the following way.

Bronze Age tooling of rock surfaces of a soft kind, subsequently hardened with age, may perhaps be detected by the marks of a celt driven with a mallet, or possibly a heavy stone. The cut of the implement is short and deep, and of course leaves a rougher surface than the single-handed pick of iron. With the introduction of iron tools the work of finishing surfaces as well as of cutting into the stone seems to have been executed with single-handed picks having points or cutting edges of variable width. At a later period came the use of the chiselshaped pick with serrated edge. It is doubtful whether this was used in the Levant previous to the Byzantine or Constantinian era. The use of the chiselshaped pick causes a long sweeping cut on the stone, an effect also produced by mere chopping sideways with the stone-mason's chopper. The chopper and the chisel-pick play a great part in the finishing off of the elaborate rock-cuttings of the Levant.

From the foregoing it will be noticed that little more than a distinction into the two classes of work done with iron implements, and work done without iron implements, can be attempted for chronological purposes as far as the evidence on rock surfaces survives. The quarries and tombs of Cyprus referred to in the following notes must be considered to belong to the iron implement class; in other words, to the Graeco-Roman and Byzantine history of the island.