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 is 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.
Dynamics and Developments of Social Structures and Networks in Prehistoric and Protohistoric Cyprus is intended for researchers and students of the archaeology and history of ancient Cyprus, the Aegean, and the Eastern Mediterranean.
1. Introduction: connecting multiple approaches to social structures and
networks;
2. Material convergences in a globalising world? Cyprus and the
Near East in the seventh and sixth millennia BCE;
3. Economic convergences in
a globalising world? Cyprus and the Near East in the seventh and sixth
millennia BCE;
4. A multi-proxy approach to human-environment-climate
coevolution in prehistoric and protohistoric Cyprus;
5. Rethinking the
emergence of social inequalities: the case of Chalcolithic Cyprus;
6. Metal
artefact production and distribution in Early and Middle Bronze Age Cyprus:
patterns of intraregional and interregional connection and disconnection;
7.
Intraregional and interregional connections on Cyprus between MC III and LC I
in the regions of Limassol and Paphos;
8. Innovation and adaptation: ceramic
development across the Middle to Late Cypriot horizon;
9. Cypriot connections
through the Middle to Late Bronze Age transition in the Western Galilee: a
review of residual Cypriot pottery from Tel Achziv;
10. Strategies for
success during the transition to the Late Bronze Age at Kissonerga-Skalia;
11. The social context of ritual in Late Bronze Age Cyprus: an
archaeobotanical study from the cemetery of Hala Sultan Tekke;
12. Of bulls
and birds: Mycenaean and Cypriot animal and social symbolism on the move;
13.
Eastern Mediterranean exchange networks: imported ceramics at
Pyla-Kokkinokremos, Cyprus;
14. Pyla-Kokkinokremos (Cyprus) and Late Bronze
Age Mediterranean networks: the role of the pithoi;
15. Pursuits of social
status and power at Maa-Palaeokastro;
16. Connecting communities: agency and
social interactions in prehistoric and protohistoric Cyprus
Teresa Bürge is Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Universities of Gothenburg and Bern, and at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Her research focuses on the Bronze and Iron Ages in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant, in specific pottery and pottery provenance studies, economy, trade and exchange of goods, as well as depositional practices, ritual, and cult. She has co-directed the Swedish excavations at Hala Sultan Tekke, Cyprus, and is the expeditions ceramic expert.
Lærke Recht is Professor of Early Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology, Institute of Classics (Ancient Eastern Mediterranean Studies), University of Graz, and Research Fellow at the International Institute for Mesopotamian Area Studies. Her main research interests are the Bronze Age and prehistory of Cyprus, Mesopotamia, and the Aegean, in particular material culture studies, human-animal relations, and exchange networks. She conducts excavations in Cyprus at Erimi-Pitharka and is a part of the Tell Mozan Project in Syria.
