Glossary Architecture and settlements
Tholos
Also called: tholoi, round house
A round building: in Neolithic Cyprus a circular house, and in the Bronze Age Aegean and Cyprus a circular tomb with a vaulted roof.
Excavators of Khirokitia called the circular houses of the Aceramic Neolithic tholoi and numbered them (Tholos XLVII, for example). Round houses of stone, mudbrick and pisé remained the Cypriot norm through the Chalcolithic, long after rectilinear buildings had replaced them on the mainland. See architecture. In Mycenaean Greece a tholos is a beehive-shaped stone tomb. Cyprus has small built tholos tombs at Late Bronze Age Enkomi but none of the monumental kind.
Full entry: Architectural Transformations in Ancient Cyprus
Related terms
- Mudbrick
A building brick of clay mixed with straw or other temper, shaped in a mould or by hand and dried in the sun without firing.
- Pisé
Walling of damp earth packed or moulded in place without bricks, used in early Cyprus for walls, benches, hearths and floors.
- Built tomb
A tomb constructed of masonry, usually of dressed stone blocks, instead of being simply cut into the bedrock.
Where it appears
- Furniture in Ancient Cyprus
- Neolithic and Chalcolithic Burial in Cyprus
- Bronze Age Chamber Tombs
- Neolithic and Picrolite Figurines
- Red-on-White Ware
- Clothing and Dress in Ancient Cyprus
- Society, Ritual, and Identity in Ancient Cypriot Mortuary Practice
- Swastikas
- The Mycenaeans and Cyprus
- Vounous and Early Bronze Age Burial