The Rural Landscapes Of Archaic Cyprus

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.

In this gripping sequel to his bestselling 1177 B.C., Eric Cline tells the story of what happened after the Bronze Age collapsed—why some civilizations endured, why some gave way to new ones, and why some disappeared forever “A landmark book: lucid, deep, and insightful. . . . You cannot understand human civilization and self-organization without studying what happened on, before, and after 1177 B.C.”—Nassim Nicholas Taleb, bestselling author of The Black Swan At the end of the acclaimed history 1177 B.C., many of the Late Bronze Age civilizations of the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean lay in ruins, undone by invasion, revolt, natural disasters, famine, and the demise of international trade. An interconnected world that had boasted major empires and societies, relative peace, robust commerce, and monumental architecture was lost and the so-called First Dark Age had begun. Now, in After 1177 B.C., Eric Cline tells the compelling story of what happened next, over four centuries, across the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean world. It is a story of resilience, transformation, and success, as well as failures, in an age of chaos and reconfiguration. After 1177 B.C. tells how the collapse of powerful Late Bronze Age civilizations created new circumstances to which people and societies had to adapt. Those that failed to adjust disappeared from the world stage, while others transformed themselves, resulting in a new world order that included Phoenicians, Philistines, Israelites, Neo-Hittites, Neo-Assyrians, and Neo-Babylonians. Taking the story up to the resurgence of Greece marked by the first Olympic Games in 776 B.C., the book also describes how world-changing innovations such as the use of iron and the alphabet emerged amid the chaos. Filled with lessons for today's world about why some societies survive massive shocks while others do not, After 1177 B.C. reveals why this period, far from being the First Dark Age, was a new age with new inventions and new opportunities.

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.

The church annexes of late antique Cyprus were bustling places of industry, producing olive oil, flour, bread, ceramics, and metal products. From its earliest centuries, the church was an economic player, participating in agricultural and artisanal production. More than a Church brings together architecture, ceramics, numismatics, landscape archaeology, and unpublished excavation material, alongside consideration of Cyprus’s dynamic and prosperous 4th–10th-century history. Keane offers a rich picture of the association between sacred buildings and agricultural and industrial facilities—comprehensively presenting, for the first time, the church’s economic role and impact in late antique Cyprus.

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 examines the applicability of central place theory in contemporary archaeological practice and thought in light of ongoing developments in landscape archaeology, by bringing together ‘central places’ and ‘un-central landscapes’ and by grasping diachronically the complex relation between town and country, as shaped by political economies and the availability of natural resources. Moving away from model-bounded approaches, central place theory is used more flexibly to include all the places that may have functioned as loci of economic or ideological centrality (even in a local context) in the past. Fourteen chapters examine centrality and un-central landscapes from Prehistory to the late Middle Ages in different geographical contexts, from Cyprus and the Levant, through Greece and the Balkans to Italy, France, and Germany.

Mediterranean islands exhibit many similarities in their biotic ecological, physical and environmental characteristics. There are also many differences in terms of their human colonization and current anthropogenic pressures. This book addresses in three sections these characteristics and examines the major environmental changes that the islands experienced during the Quaternary period. The first section provides details on natural and cultural factors which have shaped island landscapes. It describes the environmental and cultural changes of the Holocene and their effects on biota, as well as on the current human pressures that are now threats to the sustainability of the island communities. The second section focuses on the landscapes of the largest islands namely Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, Cyprus, Crete, Malta and the Balearics. Each island chapter includes a special topic reflecting a particular characteristic of the island. Part three presents strategies for action towards sustainability in Mediterranean islands and concludes with a comparison between the largest islands. Despite several published books on Mediterranean ecosystems/landscapes there is no existing book dealing with Mediterranean islands in a collective manner. Students, researchers and university lecturers in environmental science, geography, biology and ecology will find this work invaluable as a cross-disciplinary text while planners and politicians will welcome the succinct summaries as background material to planning decisions.