Gypsum

Gypsum is soft enough to scratch with a fingernail, which makes it easy to carve. The thick gypsum beds of the Kalavasos Formation record a time, between about six and five million years ago, when the Mediterranean largely dried up. In archaeology the stone appears in small but telling roles: at Late Bronze Age Kalavasos-Ayios Dhimitrios, two gypsum pithos lids were inscribed with signs.

Gypsum is also one of the stones reported for the rare stone plank figures of the Bronze Age, alongside chalk and limestone. Soft white stones are hard to tell apart by eye, and catalogues do not always agree which is which. See stone plank figures.