Rural Complexities: Comparative Investigations at Small Iron Age Sites in South-Central Cyprus

ABSTRACT

Archaeological survey methods combined with geophysical reconnaissance and test excavations offer systematic ways to shed light on ancient landscapes and settlements in regions considered passive “backwaters” on the edges of more well-known states or urban configurations. For the island of Cyprus, such rural places developing during the Iron Age (ca. 11th–4th centuries b.c.) are understudied, despite evidence for diverse and complex regional occupation patterns. This paper presents preliminary results of investigations in the Vasilikos and Maroni River valleys of south-central Cyprus and discusses the archaeological traces of emerging small-scale communities on the eastern edges of the polity of Amathus. Recent work incorporating legacy data reveals not only diverse taphonomies of rural landscapes, but also heterogeneous activities marked by investment in rural commodities, as well as by ritual and mortuary practices. Such investigations allow archaeologists to reassess assumptions of static hinterlands and interrogate instead the recursive generation of urban and rural formations.

KEYWORDS:

• archaeology of rural landscapes
• pedestrian survey
• geophysics
• Iron Age Cyprus
• Vasilikos and Maroni valleys
• Amathusian-style ceramics

Acknowledgments

The American Council of Learned Societies, Andrew Mellon Foundation, the College of the University of Chicago, and the Loeb Classical Library Foundation supported this research and writing. We thank the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus, Zomenia Zomeni and the Geological Survey Department, the Department of Lands and Surveys, Agata Dobosz, Anna Satraki, Ian Todd and Alison South, Sturt Manning, Thomas Urban, Georgia M. Andreou, Peregrine Gerard-Little, Jeff Leon, Brita Lorentzen, Grace Erny, Kathryn Morgan, and the KAMBE team who made this research possible. We also thank the three anonymous reviewers for their careful reading. All errors and omissions are solely our own.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Catherine Kearns

Catherine Kearns (Ph.D. 2015, Cornell University) is an assistant professor in the Department of Classics at the University of Chicago. Her research examines the intersections between social and environmental change in Mediterranean landscapes during the Bronze and Iron Age periods, urbanism and ruralism, and concepts of space and place in antiquity.

Anna Georgiadou

Anna Georgiadou (Ph.D. 2013, University Aix-Marseilles and University of Athens) is a postdoctoral researcher at the Archaeological Research Unit of the University of Cyprus. Her research focuses on the archaeology and history of Iron Age Cyprus and the eastern Mediterranean, material culture studies, and regional aspects of Cypriot and Levantine pottery production and technology, use, distribution, and consumption.