Cyprus Photos Show Damage To Harvard Excavation Site

Emily D.T. Vermeule, Zemurray Stone-Radcliffe Professor, said yesterday she has received photographs from the U.S. Embassy in Cyprus indicating that damage done to the Harvard archaeological excavation on the island is less than previous State Department reports have estimated.

The excavation site is near Morphou, in the portion of the island now held by Turkish troops.

Turkish officials have allowed a few teams of U.S. military attaches to visit the site, Cornelius C. Vermeule III '47, lecturer on Fine Arts and curator of the Greek and Roman Department of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, said yesterday.

Emily Vermeule said she has received reports from the State Department based on the team's observations indicating that the excavation building has been plundered and the majority of the antiquities lost or broken since the Turkish occupation.

Turkish army officials delayed a U.S. Embassy request to photograph the site for four days. The U.S. military attaches finally allowed to visit the excavation building were able to photograph only "the half of the room that had some light in it," she said.

The photographs show the damage "is not as bad as I feared," she said, although she recognized many antiquities in the photographs "which were complete and are now broken." A number of other pieces seem to be missing, she said.

The commerical value of the lost antiquities could range from $100,000 to $250,000. The Turkish army has now sealed the excavation building to prevent further looting.

An official report from the Turkish Antiquities Service in Ankara is due to arrive here on Monday.

Vermeule said she will not be certain of the extent of the damage until she is allowed to examine the excavation site herself. She hopes to go to Cyprus in early November.

The site at Morphou is one of the important Bronze Age sites on the island because the Minoan pottery discovered there' established a link with an early civilization on Crete. If the pottery is lost the work at Morphou may have been set back four or five years, Vermeule said.