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Focuses on the excavations at Politiko Phorades denoting the prevalence of copper smelting in the late Bronze Age Cyprus. Presence of slag at the excavation site of prevalence Features of the pottery of Phorades; Collection of melting furnaces from the sites.

The origins of copper-based metallurgy on the island of Cyprus, which became the main supplier of the metal in the Late Bronze Age in the Mediterranean and whose name became associated with the metal, is relatively obscure. While metal extraction and metal artefacts became increasingly important in the broader Near East, early metallurgy on Cyprus remains poorly known, and it is often postulated that metals were of limited importance on the island prior to the Philia phase. Here we present a unique context from the Late Chalcolithic (ca. 2800-2400 BC) from the excavations at Chlorakas-Palloures that has considerable ramifications for this debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]