Abstract
Settled and Sacred Landscapes of Cyprus (SeSaLaC) is a systematic archaeological survey project of the University of Cyprus in the Xeros River valley in the Larnaka district in Cyprus. This article aims to present a first synthesis of the diachronic settlement pattern in the region. After a short introduction on the area and the SeSaLaC project, we attempt to identify and interpret settlement evolution and landscape changes in the region, from early prehistory to Late Antiquity. The contextualisation and evaluation of settlement changes in the Xeros River valley are carried out within a multi-layered framework along the main strands of approach presented in this Land special issue. The presentation and analysis that follows below is a work in progress.
Highlights
Settled and Sacred Landscapes of Cyprus (SeSaLaC)SeSaLaC is a multi-period surface survey project led by the University of Cyprus in the XerosRiver valley, 2500 ha in size, situated 20 km southwest of Larnaka and 5 km inland from the south coast of Cyprus in the Larnaka district (Figure 1)
The aforementioned survey projects at Vasilikos and Maroni valleys, as well as excavation projects in the hinterland, such as Aredhiou-Voupes which corresponds to an agricultural village [47], and rescue excavations of Late Bronze Age tombs in the northeastern slopes of the Troodos (Mathiatis, Sia, Lythrodontas, which probably correspond to mining villages) [48,49,50] all show the existence of secondary special-function sites in the hinterland that were undoubtedly associated with other centres
The changing social and material worlds of a large population living in the countryside has received less attention, but regional surface surveys can illustrate that the centrality of a place can be seen as the result of inter-reliant socio-political processes relating to natural environment, on different spatial scales, ranging from the local to the supra-regional [82]
Summary
SeSaLaC is a multi-period surface survey project led by the University of Cyprus in the Xeros. We very much base our research on the spatial analysis of settlements that emphasise location in association with natural resources (mainly soil and land types, copper mines, and water availability). In these attempts, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have proved to be very useful, and their employment has assisted us in contextualising rural sites within their habitation and economic frameworks, maintaining in mind, at the same time, the problems around their deterministic nature The microenvironment of the survey area, defined by a continuous series of hills, crossed by the Xeros River, and located within the ‘landward buffer’ of Cyprus, provides an ideal laboratory for examining settlement systems in the longue durée
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