This volume contains eighteen papers delivered at the ninth annual conference in Postgraduate Cypriot Archaeology (POCA) held at Oxford in 2009. It begins with a revised version of the plenary presentation by Peltenburg and is divided into three sections: ‘Settlements, Burials and Society’; ‘Religion, Cult and Iconography’; and ‘Ancient Cyprus and the Mediterranean’. All but one paper is in English. The volume showcases a new generation of archaeologists working in Cyprus and the results are impressive.
Several papers report on current excavations and surveys. Sewell offers a thought-provoking review of the Chalcolithic site cluster at Souskiou. His findings, based on excavations at the Laona settlement, may be summed up as follows: Laona was larger than hitherto believed, possibly up to 4 ha in area; its location was far more favourable than it now appears; and the unique extramural location of the associated cemeteries may be due to the unstable geology of the area, which would have made construction of burial pits in traditional locations inherently dangerous, rather than to a specific preference for extramural burial. Sewell further proposes that Souskiou was a major production centre for picrolite objects, the raw material for which may have been quarried at source as well as acquired as water-worn pebbles from the Kouris and Karyotis rivers.
Bombardieri discusses investigations at Erimi-Laonin tou Porakou in the Kouris River valley. He provides a detailed account of the pottery from a Middle Bronze Age workshop complex comprised of rock-cut basins and channels and possibly used for textile dying or leather processing. While excavations have continued since 2009, there is much useful information here and such reports reveal both the course of fieldwork and the excavator's evolving understanding of stratigraphy, chronology and finds. Graham's paper on pottery from the Early and Middle Bronze Age cemetery at Kissonerga-Ammoudhia in the Ktima lowlands also breaks new ground. Drab Polished is the dominant ware, highlighting the distinctive regional character of the assemblage, and its longevity is established beyond doubt by its co-occurrence with both Early and Middle Cypriot material. Graham's observations on the similarity of late Drab Polished and Proto Base-ring wares, while not new, are of interest, with the occasional presence of a ring base on Drab Polished bowls and other aspects of form and technology suggesting significant links between these two fabrics.
In an important addition to our knowledge of maritime activity along the south-west coast, Howlitt-Marshall reports on an offshore anchorage at Kouklia-Achni, where underwater survey has located some 120 anchors. It is not clear how this fits with Iacovou's suggestion that Loures, a low-lying area east of the ‘Sanctuary of Aphrodite’, was the original harbour of Late Bronze Age Palaepaphos. Howlitt-Marshall suggests, rather, that Achni served as a way-station for mariners on long-distance voyages from Egypt and the Levant to the west, and that large anchors may have been left on the sea bed to allow vessels to secure mooring lines in a kind of ‘proto-harbour’.
The remaining papers present ongoing or completed doctoral or postdoctoral research. G. provides a thorough review of Pyla-Kokkinokremos and Maa-Palaeokastro, two short-lived sites established toward the end of the thirteenth century b.c. This is contested space and is handled well. She points to significant regional differences between the two and finds no ‘cultural indicia’ to support the suggestion that they were established by Aegean people fleeing their Mycenaean homeland, though the presence of some immigrants is not excluded. On the contrary, they appear to be well-organised ventures possibly founded by the urban centres of Kition and Palaepaphos to consolidate their domains, manage land/sea traffic and ensure uninterrupted access to both copper mines and trade during the ‘Crisis’ years.
Georgiadou explores ceramic production in the Cypro-Geometric period by examining pottery from Lapithos Tomb 502. Like Graham, she notes the inadequacy of existing typologies to address regional variation and argues a case for Geometric pottery being less standardised than hitherto assumed. This is an important study of minimally published material, which shows both stylistic continuity and the addition of new vessel shapes either under influence from the Phoenician coast or developed to fulfil novel functions, reflecting the needs, choices and tastes of a local clientele and the response of local potters.
Steele's paper on the linguistic and archaeological evidence for Eteocypriot is one of the most important in the volume. In a critique of Given's conclusion that the Eteocypriots never existed as an ethno-linguistic group, Steele questions the assumption that the use of a language should be reflected in a distinctive material culture ‘on the ground’, arguing that this is a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept of ‘ethnicity’. Thus the epigraphic data does not need the support of archaeological data, and while we cannot know how widely Eteocypriot was spoken or by whom, we can be certain that it did exist.
The ‘Religion, Cult and Iconography’ section includes a number of less convincing offerings. Spigelman adopts a barrage of anthropological models to reinterpret the organisation of copper production in Bronze Age Cyprus, specifically arguing that copper production was organised through informal institutions such as work feasts from the seventeenth century b.c. Zeman-Wiśniewska and Carbillet propose, respectively, that ‘goddess with upraised arms’ and ‘warrior’ terracottas illustrate strategies employed by gender groups to negotiate their social status in the Early Iron Age; and that the ‘Grande Déesse’ of Cyprus was identified with Egyptian Hathor in both the Late Bronze and Iron Age. A paper by Ulbrich on votive sculptures from an Archaic to early Hellenistic sanctuary at Maroni-Vournes is particularly welcome as full publication of excavations conducted here between 1983 and 1994 is long overdue. The third section includes papers by Bushnell on Cypriot influence on Mycenaean perfumed oil production and packaging; Paule on jewellery in Greece and Cyprus; Vacek on the style, decoration and syntax of Greek and Cypriot pottery during the Geometric period; Chirpanlieva on Attic pottery from Kition; Autret on early Roman amphora production and trade between Cyprus and Cilicia; and Hadjikyriakos on Venetian elements in the iconostasis of Cyprus. All make an important contribution to our understanding of the reception of foreign goods in Cyprus.
Peltenburg's provocative paper explores the tension between the textual data, which suggest that the socio-political organisation of Cyprus (Alašiya) in the Late Bronze Age was comparable to other states of the ancient Near East, and the material record, which lacks compelling evidence for a unified state and explicit paraphernalia of formal institutions of government. He proposes that the king of Alašiya was a primus inter pares, whose power base was a network of enduring households rather than a unified state apparatus and whose role was to expedite engagement by independent, regionally-based groups with prevailing systems of exchange. For a different view and an extensive critique of Peltenburg's contribution see A.B. Knapp, The Archaeology of Cyprus: from Earliest Prehistory Through the Bronze Age (2013), pp. 439–47.
The volume is for the most part well illustrated and the papers are clearly written and well argued. Paule's paper, however, is marred by poor English and is rather difficult to follow. Several maps and plans are too small or have site names at too small a scale to read and figures frequently appear before they are discussed in the text. One illustration appears with the background only partially cut out, and another, intended to illustrate the use of colour in Florentine Renaissance architecture, fails to achieve this objective in black and white. The text is unnecessarily widely spaced throughout.
Such minor matters aside, this volume is a tribute to the talent, enthusiasm and commitment of a younger generation of scholars in both organising and contributing to POCA, which has become an annual event and something of a rite of passage. G. is to be congratulated on editing an important and enduring volume.
