The culture appears to have formed about two centuries after the first influx of pottery on the island, brought in by a new wave of settlers who arrived around 5250 BC.

At the Sotíra Neolithic settlement lies a tightly packed group of house foundations of light construction.

These lower floors yielded an unusually rich series of implements, of flint, stone and bone, as well as bowls and jugs of the combed ware.

Ceramic sites are only found on the east of the island, showing that these newcomers did not reach either the west or the Karpass Peninsula (the long 'finger' at the north-eastern corner of Cyprus).

Of the thirty villages known to have been home to the culture, only a few were still inhabited in the next period but, as with the Khirokitia before it, why the majority of Sotira sites were abandoned is not known.