Session: #383

Content:

This session will explore social transformations in ancient Cyprus. Islands can be seen as laboratories of cultures and societies, and Cyprus is particularly fascinating in this regard, due to its rich material culture, with both internally and externally caused processes of social transformations, stemming from the island’s geographical position within key Mediterranean maritime routes. The focus is on transitional periods, for example the so-called Philia phase between the Late Chalcolithic and the Early Bronze Age, the little understood Early Cypriot to Middle Cypriot and Middle Cypriot to Late Cypriot, the end of the Bronze Age and the beginning of the Early Iron Age and the transition from the Cypro-Classical to the Hellenistic period. Papers on any aspect of material culture and archaeological contexts that analyse transformations in social structures, economy or ideology are welcome. These can include, but are not restricted to, changes in settlement patterns, architecture, practices of production and consumption (e.g. ceramics, figurines, metalwork), human-environment interaction, intra- and extra-insular exchange networks and burial practices. We also encourage papers that question the conventional chronological standards and divisions themselves as they have been established and are used in scholarship today, closely examining their validity and usefulness. Such papers may in fact challenge the previously assumed transformations or our current chronological framework and terminology.

Session: #383

Theme & Session Format

Title & Content

Organisers