Early Society In Cyprus

This volume, introduced by Edgar Peltenburg, presents the results of latest research by young scholars working on aspects of Cypriot archaeology from the Bronze Age to the Venetian period. It presents a diversity excavation, material culture, iconographic and linguistic evidence to explore the themes of ancient landscape, settlement and society; religion, cult and iconography; and Ancient Cyprus and the Mediterranean.

This is a collection of papers which focus on issues of gender and society in ancient Cyprus from the Neolithic to Roman periods.

No Marketing Blurb

This book examines the archaeology of Cyprus from the first-known human presence during the Late Epipalaeolithic through the end of the Bronze Age.

The first book to explore the development and importance of writing in ancient Cypriot society over 1,500 years.

This is a collection of papers focusing on the remarkable recent developments concerning the earliest prehistory of Cyprus. They are presented by scholars immediately involved in research of this period.

This volume substantiates the island of Cyprus as an important player in the history of the ancient Eastern Mediterranean and Near East, and presents new theoretical and analytical approaches. The Cypriot Neolithic, Chalcolithic, and Bronze Age are characterised by an increasing complexity of social and political organisation, economic systems and networks. The book discusses and defines how specific types of material datasets and assemblages, such as architecture, artefacts, and ecofacts, and their contextualisation can form the basis of interpretative models of social structures and networks in ancient Cyprus. This is explored through four main themes: approaches to social dynamics; social and economic networks and connectivity; adaptability and agency; and social dynamics and inequality. The variety and transition of social structures on the island are discussed on multiple scales, from the local and relatively short-term to island-wide and eastern Mediterranean-wide and the longue durée. The focus of study ranges from urban to non-urban contexts, and are reflected in settlement, funerary, and other ritual contexts. Connections, both within the island and to the broader Eastern Mediterranean, and how these impact social and economic developments on the island, are explored. Discussions revolve around the potential of consolidating the models based on specialised studies into a cohesive interpretation of society on ancient Cyprus and its strategic connections with surrounding regions in a diachronic perspective from the Neolithic through the end of the Bronze Age, i.e. from roughly the seventh millennium to the eleventh century BCE. Prehistoric and Protohistoric Cyprus is intended for researchers and students of the archaeology and history of ancient Cyprus, the Aegean, and the Eastern Mediterranean.

Dramatic social and political change marks the period from the end of the Late Bronze Age into the Iron Age (ca. 1300-700 BCE) across the Mediterranean. Inland palatial centers of bureaucratic power weakened or collapsed ca. 1200 BCE while entrepreneurial exchange by sea survived and even expanded, becoming the Mediterranean-wide network of Phoenician trade. At the heart of that system was Kition, one of the largest harbor cities of ancient Cyprus. Earlier research has suggested that Phoenician rule was established at Kition after the abandonment of part of its Bronze Age settlement. A reexamination of Kition's architecture, stratigraphy, inscriptions, sculpture, and ceramics demonstrates that it was not abandoned. This study emphasizes the placement and scale of images and how they reveal the development of economic and social control at Kition from its establishment in the thirteenth century BCE until the development of a centralized form of government by the Phoenicians, backed by the Assyrian king, in 707 BCE.

The beginning of the Late Bronze Age on Cyprus saw a range of dramatic changes occurring in the settlement patterns and material culture of the island, accompanied by evidence for increased interaction with the surrounding region. These include population movements from small inland to larger, nucleated coastal settlements, an increase in social stratification and copper production, the first evidence for literacy, and Cyprus becoming increasingly involved in the complex exchange networks of the eastern Mediterranean. Central to any study of the island's prehistory is the coastal settlement of Enkomi, often considered to be the first state-like entity on the island and identified with the Alashiya of contemporary textual. The author's main goal in this volume is to examine the archaeological evidence for the beginnings of the transformation of Cypriot society as it stands, to seek to understand the individual aspects of the process and to separate this from the later LCIIC outcomes. The author utilises the Enkomi pottery assemblage to examine the introduction of wheelmade pottery and thereby investigate the processes through which Cypriot society became highly complex, including whether the evidence points to early centralized control or independent regional developments. However, in order to understand the pottery, it was necessary to investigate all types of archaeological evidence pertaining to the early history of the site and this volume also includes discussion of architecture, tombs and other aspects of material culture. Part 1 provides the theoretical background to investigations of social complexity and discusses the applications. Part 2 addresses the evidence for both settlement and ceramics during the Cypriot Bronze Age. Part 3 is devoted to the analysis of the Enkomi data. Part 4 presents the author's conclusions.