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A ground-breaking investigation of burial practices and social transformations in the era when Cypriot agricultural communities moved from village to urban life and became major players in the eastern Mediterranean copper trade. The author develops an innovative theoretical and methodological approach that enables her to define and elucidate the shifting spatial relationships between tombs and habitation areas, the elaboration of rituals involving secondary treatment and collective burial, and changing patterns of mortuary expenditure and symbolism throughout the Bronze Age. Keswani proposes that during the Early-Middle Bronze periods, the growing elaboration of mortuary festivities and their crucial importance in negotiating status hierarchies contributed to the intensification of Cypriot copper production and the expansion of interregional exchange relations. Subsequent changes in mortuary practice suggest that the importance of collective burial rites and traditional modes of ritual display diminished over the course of the Late Bronze Age, as urban institutions multiplied and the bases of social prestige were transformed.
The first book to explore the development and importance of writing in ancient Cypriot society over 1,500 years.
Robert Koehl has long considered processions to have played an integral role in Aegean Bronze Age societies. Papers concentrate mainly on evidence from Crete, the Cyclades and the Greek mainland, with additional perspectives from abroad, these geographic divisions forming the basic outline of this volume.
The importance of cultural contacts in the East Mediterranean has long been recognized and is the focus of ongoing international research. Fieldwork in the Aegean, Egypt, Cyprus, and the Levant continues to add to our understanding of the nature of this contact and its social and economic significance, particularly to the cultures of the Aegean. Despite sophisticated discussion of the archaeological evidence, in particular on the part of Aegean and Mediterranean archaeologists, there has been little systematic attempt to incorporate anthropological perspectives on materiality and exchange into archaeological narratives of this material. This book addresses that gap and integrates anthropological discourse on contact, examining exchange systems, the gift, notions of geographical distance and power, colonization, and hybridization. Furthermore, it develops a social narrative of culture contact in the Mediterranean context, illustrating the reasons communities chose to engage in international exchange, and how this impacted the construction of identities throughout the region. While traditional archaeologies in the East Mediterranean have tended to be reductive in their approach to material culture and how it was produced, used, and exchanged, this book reviews current research on material culture, focusing on issues such as the biography of objects, inalienable possessions, and hybridization - exploring how these issues can further illuminate the material world of the communities of the Bronze Age Mediterranean.
Jill L. Baker’s innovative approach to mortuary archaeology begins by identifying commonalities of a culture from the “funeral kit” that occurs in all of its burials, using examples from the Ancient Near East and comparing it to other cultures.
The Prehistoric Bronze Age is a tremendously important period on Cyprus for understanding the later development of the island. During this period architecture, settlement patterns, technologies, and subsistence practices changed drastically, and of greatest interest to this thesis, the dead were buried in discrete cemeteries. It has been historically stated by scholars that these cemeteries were located outside, and within view, of the associated settlements. The recent publication of the excavations and surveys of several Prehistoric Bronze Age sites allows these assumptions to be tested, and their implications considered. The shifts in settlement form and organization and in mortuary behavior clearly reflect major changes in the organization of society during this time period. By analyzing the various relationships between settlement and cemetery within the landscape, this thesis attempts to better understand the dimensions of variation and patterns of practice that shaped the changing society of the Cypriot Bronze Age. Using data from the excavations and surveys at Marki-Alonia, Alambra-Mouttes, and SotiraKaminoudhia, and the survey data from the Vasilikos Valley Project, as well as a reconnaissance survey undertaken by the author during the summers of 2008 and 2009, this thesis takes a behavioral and phenomenological approach to the PreBA Cypriot mortuary landscape, addressing four key aspects. Placing the Dead encompasses the issues surrounding the choice of cemetery location, in the topographical sense, as it relates to the location of the associated settlement. While the expected pattern of spatial organization is shown to apply to some of the case studies, others challenge these assumptions. Viewing the dead considers intervisibility between settlement and cemetery, the viewing of the cemeteries being the most common, and likely daily, interaction between the living inhabitants of the landscape and the dead. Marking the Dead investigates the evidence for the intentional and formal marking of individual burial sites. Such markers would have allowed individual burials to be relocated, prevented the inadvertent destruction of previous burials, and the way in which they were marked could have symbolic meaning. Finally, Visiting the Dead will consider the evidence for other activities that may have taken place within the cemetery, besides internments, including feasting, gaming, and even daily chores such as food preparation. These four aspects of human action taken together show that the mortuary landscape was neither static, nor empty. Instead, the mortuary landscape of PreBA Cyprus was dynamic and contested, where the inhabitants constructed and renegotiated their identities and their social organization.
This Handbook aims to serve as a research guide to the archaeology of the Levant, an area situated at the crossroads of the ancient world that linked the eastern Mediterranean, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, and Egypt. The Levant as used here is a historical geographical term referring to a large area which today comprises the modern states of Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, western Syria, and Cyprus, as well as the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and the Sinai Peninsula. Unique in its treatment of the entire region, it offers a comprehensive overview and analysis of the current state of the archaeology of the Levant within its larger cultural, historical, and socio-economic contexts. The Handbook also attempts to bridge the modern scholarly and political divide between archaeologists working in this highly contested region. Written by leading international scholars in the field, it focuses chronologically on the Neolithic through Persian periods - a time span during which the Levant was often in close contact with the imperial powers of Egypt, Anatolia, Assyria, Babylon, and Persia. This volume will serve as an invaluable reference work for those interested in a contextualised archaeological account of this region, beginning with the 'agricultural revolution' until the conquest of Alexander the Great that marked the end of the Persian period.