Mortuary Landscapes Revisited: Dynamics of Insularity and Connectivity in Mortuary Ritual, Feasting, and Commemoration in Late Bronze Age Cyprus

Teresa Bürge

doi:10.3390/rel12100877

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to discuss mortuary contexts and possible related ritual features as parts of sacred landscapes in Late Bronze Age Cyprus. Since the island was an important node in the Eastern Mediterranean economic network, it will be explored whether and how connectivity and insularity may be reflected in ritual and mortuary practices. The article concentrates on the extra-urban cemetery of Area A at the harbour city of Hala Sultan Tekke, where numerous pits and other shafts with peculiar deposits of complete and broken objects as well as faunal remains have been found. These will be evaluated and set in relation to the contexts of the nearby tombs to reconstruct ritual activities in connection with funerals and possible rituals of commemoration or ancestral rites. The evidence from Hala Sultan Tekke and other selected Late Cypriot sites demonstrates that these practices were highly dynamic in integrating and adopting external objects, symbols, and concepts, while, nevertheless, definite island-specific characteristics remain visible.

Highlights

While the surrounding cultures of Mycenaean Greece, Crete, Anatolia, the Levant, and Egypt have yielded a wide variety of cultic remains, as well as iconographical and textual information on ritual and religion, the evidence from Late Bronze Age Cyprus is sketchier
It is always difficult to assess whether, or to what degree, the society, social groups, and individuals felt aware of connectivity
The Late Cypriot evidence clearly points to a high awareness of this connectivity based on the important role of economic connections with the surrounding cultures

Summary

Introduction

While the surrounding cultures of Mycenaean Greece, Crete, Anatolia, the Levant, and Egypt have yielded a wide variety of cultic remains, as well as iconographical and textual information on ritual and religion, the evidence from Late Bronze Age Cyprus (ca. 1650–1050 BCE) is sketchier. The evidence of mortuary contexts is rich, albeit restrained by missing or limited research agendas, hasty and careless excavation, insufficient documentation, and the fact that many incomplete artefacts, as well as biofacts and human remains, were only rarely kept in the course of the extensive excavations on the island at the end of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century CE Keswani’s (2004) seminal study of mortuary ritual in Bronze Age Cyprus, it has become clear that this practice is highly complex, multi-faceted, and different from that of other Eastern Mediterranean regions, foreign objects and other elements were frequently incorporated into burial contexts in the Late Bronze

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Discussion

Conclusion