One problem I've just discovered with the same error is that the maven build 2.7.0 does not include the lib folder. This is probably a build error for the release build. I had to move up the b2 build which does properly include the lib folder in the supplied jar.
Problem maven 2.7.0 jar:
<dependency>
<groupId>org.python</groupId>
<artifactId>jython-standalone</artifactId>
<version>2.7.0</version>
</dependency>
Working maven 2.7.1b2 that includes the lib folder:
<dependency>
<groupId>org.python</groupId>
<artifactId>jython-standalone</artifactId>
<version>2.7.1b2</version>
</dependency>
NOTE: If you download the jar directly from the Jython site it does correctly include the lib folder. It's just the maven repository version.
Answer from Tim Cederquist on Stack OverflowVideos
One problem I've just discovered with the same error is that the maven build 2.7.0 does not include the lib folder. This is probably a build error for the release build. I had to move up the b2 build which does properly include the lib folder in the supplied jar.
Problem maven 2.7.0 jar:
<dependency>
<groupId>org.python</groupId>
<artifactId>jython-standalone</artifactId>
<version>2.7.0</version>
</dependency>
Working maven 2.7.1b2 that includes the lib folder:
<dependency>
<groupId>org.python</groupId>
<artifactId>jython-standalone</artifactId>
<version>2.7.1b2</version>
</dependency>
NOTE: If you download the jar directly from the Jython site it does correctly include the lib folder. It's just the maven repository version.
I believe the main difference causing your issue is that the jython-standalone jar provides Lib/ (which contains site.py) while the jython jar does not.
https://github.com/scijava/jython-shaded gives a more in-depth description of the issue, as well as other issues, and provides an alternative jar to get around some issues noted in the description.
I don't have experience with scijava:jython-shaded, but I substituted it into your pom (for my setup I also had to change jdk.version to 1.7 and to JythonExample) and your example runs.