Abstract
Our understanding of the earliest Iron Age on Cyprus has long remained somewhat obscure. This is the result of both a relative lack of material evidence and the fact that scholarly attention has focused more on the preceding Late Bronze Age and on the subsequent Cypro-Archaic period. As more, and more varied, data have accumulated, there have been calls for a more theoretically informed approach to considering the social changes involved, and even for prehistorians to extend their work into the Cypriot Iron Age. As a response to this, the present study considers a broad range of material and documentary evidence, attempts to reconstruct the political economy, and offers an interpretative framework based on social understandings of Complex Adaptive Systems theory. Using this approach, the authors conclude that, while the enduring realities of Cyprus—its geography, copper resources and long tradition of agropastoralism—continued to shape Cypriot culture, the Iron Age is not simply a continuation of its Bronze Age sociopolitical forms. We argue instead that the earliest Iron Age involved social actors negotiating new politico-economic agendas in response to changing conditions in the Iron Age eastern Mediterranean.
Highlights
Over the past three decades, the concept of ‘collapse’ has stimulated a great deal of world archaeological research on prehistoric as well as historic societies (e.g. McAnany & Yoffee, 2010; Middleton, 2017; Schwartz & Nichols, 2006; Tainter, 1988; Yoffee & Cowgill, 1988)
Along with a range of other factors, the paucity of settlement evidence on Cyprus during the centuries between c. 1100–800 bc has led to two opposing positions about the nature of the island’s Early Iron Age polities and the date at which they emerged: (1) a ‘consolidation’ around 750 BC of earlier political formations that originated in the twelfth century BC; and
The tin shortage we suggest seems evident in the remains of the two most prominent shipwrecks of the Late Bronze Age (LBA)—those found at Uluburun and Cape Gelidonya (c. 1200 bc) off the southern coast of Anatolia
Summary
Over the past three decades, the concept of ‘collapse’ has stimulated a great deal of world archaeological research on prehistoric as well as historic societies (e.g. McAnany & Yoffee, 2010; Middleton, 2017; Schwartz & Nichols, 2006; Tainter, 1988; Yoffee & Cowgill, 1988). McAnany & Yoffee, 2010; Middleton, 2017; Schwartz & Nichols, 2006; Tainter, 1988; Yoffee & Cowgill, 1988) Not least amongst this body of work is a series of volumes treating the decline of several polities of the Late Bronze Age (LBA) Aegean and eastern Mediterranean, observed to have taken place within a halfcentury either side of 1200 bc Our focus falls upon issues such as large-scale agricultural production and surplus storage, industrial-scale mineral resource extraction and craft production, and the volume and types of exchange, local and more distant To pursue these lines of evidence, we examine a broad array of information, including settlement data, mortuary remains, pottery production and metalworking, raw metal sourcing and availability, and the role of rural sanctuaries—all in a preliminary and exploratory manner, intended to encourage further dialogue and research. We present CAS in more detail, and show how we use its features to help interpret changes within Cypriot society during the transition from the Late Bronze to the Early Iron Age
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