The site of Khirokitia Vouni was discovered in 1934 by Porphyrios Dikaios who, on behalf of the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus, conducted six field campaigns between 1936 and 1946. The exploration of the site was resumed in 1977 by a French mission sponsored by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Since its foundation, dated among the turn of the 7th and 6th century BCE, the village went through a sequence of phases. The hill chosen for the Neolithic settlement lies within a sharp bend of the Maroni River, which protects it on the north, east and southeast (Figure 1). When the site was occupied, the river had a more substantial extension than at present, as shown by recent research undertaken on the southeast flank of the settlement along the bank where several structures suffered from floods and shifts in the course of the riverbed. This natural protection, however, didn’t exist to the west where the village was open to the neighboring hills. In place of such natural defenses, a long, linear stone structure was built, crossing the settlement from north to south, providing artificial protection. When the settlement spread to the west onto previously unoccupied land, the same pattern was repeated, and the development was accompanied by the simultaneous building of a new boundary in the form of an impressive stone wall. The UNESCO site of Khirokitia is today exposed to natural hazards, such as the fire that destroyed the surrounding landscape in 2013, and was in a dangerous proximity with the archaeological structures. The effects of this catastrophic event can be visualized in the interactive 3D model created using Kite Aerial Photography (KAP) data.
