The ninth to the fifth centuries BCE saw a series of significant historical transformations across Cyprus, especially in the growth of towns and in developments in the countryside. In this book, Catherine Kearns argues that changing patterns of urban and rural sedentism drove social changes as diverse communities cultivated new landscape practices. Climatic changes fostered uneven relationships between people, resources like land, copper, and wood, and increasingly important places like rural sanctuaries and cemeteries. Bringing together a range of archaeological, textual, and scientific evidence, the book examines landscapes, environmental history, and rural practices to argue for their collective instrumentality in the processes driving Iron Age political formations. It suggests how rural households managed the countryside, interacted with the remains of earlier generations, and created gathering spaces alongside the development of urban authorities. Offering new insights into landscape archaeologies, Dr Kearns contributes to current debates about society's relationships with changing environments.

The ninth to the fifth centuries BCE saw a series of significant historical transformations across Cyprus, especially in the growth of towns and in developments in the countryside. In this book, Catherine Kearns argues that changing patterns of urban and rural sedentism drove social changes as diverse communities cultivated new landscape practices. Climatic changes fostered uneven relationships between people, resources like land, copper, and wood, and increasingly important places like rural sanctuaries and cemeteries. Bringing together a range of archaeological, textual, and scientific evidence, the book examines landscapes, environmental history, and rural practices to argue for their collective instrumentality in the processes driving Iron Age political formations. It suggests how rural households managed the countryside, interacted with the remains of earlier generations, and created gathering spaces alongside the development of urban authorities. Offering new insights into landscape archaeologies, Dr Kearns contributes to current debates about society's relationships with changing environments.

The question of how to define the territories of the ancient polities (city-kingdoms) of Iron Age Cyprus is a fascinating, but also a very difficult one. While this topic has already been widely explored by previous scholarship, recent investigations that include both modern approaches, such as the application of landscape archaeological methodologies, as well as a re-evaluation of the available archaeological evidence from a new perspective, now offers a fresh take on such questions. A workshop organized in Berlin in 2018 aimed at discussing additional information on the topography of the ancient city of Idalion and its hinterland. This volume therefore includes unique contributions that deal with a wide array of relevant aspects. They provide new information on the location, chronology and character of settlements, necropoleis and sanctuaries from the wider area of Idalion, and discuss important issues such as the continuity or discontinuity of settlement activities from the (Late) Bronze Age to the Iron Age and how this is reflected by material culture. They address questions concerned with the physical control of territories and communication networks by considering Idalion’s resource availability and the overall development of its rural settlement pattern in contrast to that of its neighbouring polities.

This book examines the textual and archaeological evidence for the history of Cyprus from 750 to 500 BC. This significant period of the island's past is examined in three parts. The first surveys what is known about the local population of Cyprus and the political and social organization of the island. The second offer a narrative account of the period within a chronological framework more detailed than any analysis currently available. It suggests that the defining feature of the Cypro-Archaic period was the way in which local kingdoms adapted to different political and economic conditions in the Near East and Egypt, and took advantage of them. It challenges the prevalent view of a succession of foreign overlords controlling the island through military means. The third part discusses the internal and external relations of Cyprus by studying specific groups of pottery, seals, and sculpture. As a whole, this book provies a more complete picture of Archaic Cyprus than ever previously attempted. Generously illustrated with plates and figures, this will be an invaluable work of reference for archaeologists and ancient historians of both the West and Near East.

Examines the textual and archaeological evidence for the history from 750 to 500 BC. The significant period of the island's past is examined in three parts. The history of Cyprus is a blend of the Greek world to the West and the civilizations of the East.

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.

The Sydney Cyprus Survey Project (SCSP) devoted five seasons of fieldwork (1992-1997) to an intensive archaeological survey in the north-central foothills of the Troodos Mountains on the eastern Mediterranean island of Cyprus. The survey covered 65 square kilometers in and around the modern villages of Politiko and Mitsero. This pathbreaking project examined the relationship between the production and distribution of agricultural and metallurgical resources. Additionally, the project provides new insights into the interpretation and collection of regional archaeological data. The volume represents an integrated approach to the discussion of social landscapes--from archaeological, historical, geomorphological, geobotanical, and archaeometallurgical perspectives--within the SCSP survey universe. The twenty-two contributors to this volume provide a comprehensive data set including lithics, pottery, site types, and radiocarbon dates. Full color GIS maps provide a wealth of information on pottery densities and site distribtutions. This well-illustrated monograph will serve as a model for future research throughout the region.