settlement on cyprus during the 7th and 8th centuries

DRAFT MAY 5, 2014. DO NOT CITE WITHOUT PERMISSION

1

Settlement on Cyprus in the 7th and 8th Century

William R. Caraher, University of North Dakota R. Scott Moore, Indiana University of Pennsylvania

Introduction

The 7th and 8th centuries on Cyprus remain a vexing period for historians and archaeologists

alike. The obscure nature of the historical narrative for this period has provided an opportunity for archaeology to fill the gap in our understanding of the history of the island. To do that, archaeologists have reconsidered the traditional view of these centuries on Cyprus as a period of economic, demographic, and cultural decline reflective of the large-scale disruptions in the Eastern Mediterranean.1 The needs of the capital in Constantinople and the military in both the Balkans and the Levant enlivened the economic networks that engaged the island and the region during the 6th and 7th centuries. These same networks, however, reeled under the collapse of Roman political hegemony. Wars, plagues, and various official efforts to resettle disruptive or displaced populations reshaped the population of the Roman Mediterranean and invariably had an impact on the organization of settlement. In the traditional narrative of Mediterranean history in the 7th and 8th centuries, these economic and demographic changes had a profound impact on the urban fabric, on architectural innovation, and on the extent and intensity of rural settlement.2 On Cyprus, Arab raids during the middle decades of the 7th century presented a local anchor to the larger narrative of Mediterranean disruption and decline at the end of Roman antiquity. Further complicating the events of this period is the complex political situation on the island which may have seen some kind of joint Byzantine and Arab control or at least taxation of the island, as well as the presence of an Arab garrison.

A circular reading of archaeological evidence from the island has tended to reinforce a traditional

picture of the 7th and 8th century as a period of disruption and change. Archaeologists frequently attribute destruction layers at Late Roman sites on the island to the depredations of the Arabs.3 Scholars have used the Arab raids to explain the abandonment of the major urban site of Kourion on the central coast.4 They have long attributed to Arab raids the destruction of churches across the island, from the rural basilica complex at Alassa,5 to the multiple churches of the community at Ay. Georgios-Peyia,6 the coastal church of Maroni-Petrera,7 or at the site studied by the authors of this volume at Pyla-Koutsopetria on Larnaka Bay.8 The transformation of wood-roofed basilicas to barrel-vaulted churches has become emblematic of the Cypriot response to the destruction caused by the Arab raids.9 In most cases, the date for the destruction of these buildings rests on the coincidence of ceramics, coins, and the historical narrative. Archaeological artifacts that should provide a terminus post quem consistently reinforce attributions to specific historical events rather than more

1 Metcalf 2009, 573-575 for a summary of the traditional perspective. 2 See Haldon and Brubaker 2011, 531-572 for the most recent survey of these centuries. 3 Papageorghiou 1985 for the effect of Arab raids on the basilica churches on the island. 4 Megaw 1993, but since revised in Megaw 2007. 5 Florentzos 1996, 2. 6 Bakirtsis 1995; Papacostas 2001 7 Manning 2002 8 Christou 9 Megaw 1946; See Stewart 2010 for a critical evaluation of this traditional view and a summary of subsequent scholarship.


2

chronologically indistinct historical processes. The tendency to associate the end of these sites with the Arab raids has produced a largely monocausal argument for a seemingly abrupt transformation of the settlement on Cyprus.

Over the past two decades, however, scholars have become increasingly skeptical of the

monocausal explanation for the 7th century settlement change. For example, Marcus Rautmans study of the village site of Kopetra in the Kalavassos Valley argued that the site depended upon the integrated economy and administrative influences of Roman hegemony in the Eastern Mediterranean which facilitated the export of agricultural products from the island and support of mining operations in the copper rich Troodos mountains.10 The abandonment of the settlement in the late-7th century represented the disruption of economic and political networks brought about by the Arab conquest of the Levant, incursions on the island, and activities in Cilicia in Asia Minor. The decline of Kopetra, in this context, was a local adaptation to the changing place of Cyprus in the political and economic life of the region.

The following contribution to this discussion shares more with Rautmans perspectives than the

traditional views. It will locate the transitional 7th and 8th centuries, first, in a regional context and then as a series of archaeological problems. The regional situation and archaeological context provides the basis for some generalizations about urban and rural settlement on Cyprus supported by specific examples. Recent work by L. Zavagno, D. Metcalf, T. Papacostas, M. Rautman, and others provide a comprehensive and sophisticated reading of the problems and prospects associated with analyzing this period in the archaeological record and these efforts provide a solid guide for this work.11 We have avoided sustained discussion of the complex literary sources for these centuries and have focused on the complexities of the archaeological record with the understanding that the material culture of the island can tell a complementary, but independent story of these opaque centuries. The picture that arises from the lacunose and problematic archaeological perspective for these centuries is of a population that adapted longstanding networks and settlement patterns to contingent economic and political situations on the island.

The Regional Context for Settlement on Cyprus

As the contributions to this volume demonstrate, larger patterns exist in settlement of the 6th-

8th century Mediterranean. Increased attention to later levels at urban sites, the expansion of intensive pedestrian survey, and growing interest in rural sites ranging from fortifications to villages have created a landscape that is far more complex than earlier narratives of decline have suggested. This recent work has provided not just a historical and archaeological context for the period on Cyprus, but also a growing terminology for reconceptualizing the transformation of settlement.12 As scholars like A. Dunn and M. Veikou have noted,13 the changing character of settlement has confounded expectations grounded in the study of ancient landscapes. For example, there is reason to suspect that the 7th century saw the blurring of the distinction between urban and rural sites, the emergence of new kinds of rural sites, such as monasteries, without clear antecedents in earlier periods, and the end of settlement types, like market towns, associated with the last great flourishing

10 Rautman 2003, 235-262. 11 Zavagno 2009, 2011, 2011-2012, 2013; Metcalf 2009; Papacostas 1999, 2001; Rautman 2003. 12 Haldon and Brubaker 2011. 13 Viekou 2009, 2010; Dunn 1994, 1997, 2005; Haldon and Brubaker 2011, 533.


3

of Roman economic activity in the Eastern Mediterranean. This new landscape did not coincide neatly with earlier landscapes either in terms of types of settlement or their extent.

Haldon and Brubakers magisterial overview of society in the iconoclast era provides a point of

departure for any consideration of 7th and 8th century settlement in the Eastern Mediterranean.14 While emphasizing regional variation, they nevertheless identify significant changes to the economic and political foundations of settlement across the region. Urbanism of the Late Roman period witnessed the last great investment in urban space in antiquity with the construction of churches, baths, fountains, and walls, and the transformation of roads, amenities, and public spaces that adapted urban space to the values and needs of the Late Roman community. Against the backdrop of flourishing Late Roman urbanism, the 7th century saw a seemingly rapid decline in the size, complexity, and economic prominence of urban areas throughout the Balkans and Anatolia, revealing the impact of demographic decline, military instability, and economic disintegration across the region. Communities across Asia Minor and the Aegean witnessed the ravages of the recurrent Justinianic plague as well as military insecurity brought about by the Persian War and the growing threat of Slavic and Arab raids of the 7th and 8th centuries. As a result, cities contracted in area and constructed fortified enceintes enclosing only a small area of the earlier city. The economic and administrative prominence of urban areas likely persisted, but at a reduced scale as military instability undermined longstanding economic relationships between urban areas and local and distant markets. The transformation of the highly urbanized world of Late Antiquity represented a crucial nexus of administrative, economic, political, and social change.

The overall impact of these interrelated trends on the structure of settlement varied across the

Early Byzantine world with some areas like Anatolia and the southern Balkans seeing the rise of highly nucleated, fortified cities, the displacement of urban populations to more dispersed settlements, or the disappearance of urban areas almost entirely. Cyprus remained insulated, but not isolated from these trends. The military disruptions and contraction of urban space and populations in Cilicia and Pisidia over the course of the 7th century almost certainly led to the decline in nearby markets for Cypriot commodities and trade in the region more generally.15 Likewise, the more complex disruptions in the northern Levant, particularly Antioch and environs, had an impact on regional markets.16 Even when these disruptions did not affect urban areas on Cyprus directly, as the cities on the island appear to enjoyed stability until middle decades of the 7th century, they did destabilize the longstanding economic, political, social, and even military relationships between communities in the Eastern Mediterranean.

The transformation of the urban world in the 7th and 8th centuries accompanied changes in the

structure of rural settlement. While rural life in the 5th and 6th centuries boomed alongside urban prosperity across most the Eastern Mediterranean, scholars have long recognized a steep decline in rural communities starting in the late 6th century in the Balkans and continuing into the 7th century in Asia Minor and the Levant.17 Fortifications appeared alongside or in the place of rural farms and villages either as the home for garrisons or as places of refuge for local populations rendered vulnerable by the military instability of the borders.18 At the same time, detecting the rise of villages

14 Haldon and Brubaker 2011. 15 Decker and Kingsley 2001. 16 Casana 2014. 17 Bowden and Lavan 2003. 18 Dunn 2005.


4

as both centers of settlement and as the basic unit for the emerging Byzantine economy has played a key role in efforts by scholars to find the leading edge in the reorganization of productive landscape in the post-antique era. Unfortunately, relatively few rural sites have seen systematic excavation in the Eastern Mediterranean and intensive pedestrian survey has struggled to distinguish monasteries, villages, and rural churches, in the archaeological record.19 While the regional perspectives offered by intensive survey hold forth the potential to produce a Byzantine landscape, at present the limitations of our methods have obscured our ability to identify consistently the surface signatures of short-term activities. Some of this has to do with ongoing difficulties recognizing and dating 7th and 8th century ceramics on the surface as various authors in this volume have noted and we will discuss in greater detail later. It also involves our difficulty in recognizing the signatures of small sites or short-term occupation on the surface in any period.20 The ambiguity associated with the basic structures of rural life during a particularly dynamic period in Mediterranean history has led M. Veikou to argue for the existence of new forms of settlement, third spaces, in the landscape that subvert and defy the traditional categories of settlement linked to Classical understandings of rural and urban and monumental or temporary.21 Recognizing, for example, evidence for occasional squatting or buildings made of non-permanent materials like wood or mud brick on the surface remains a challenge for understanding contingent activities in the landscape.

Constructing a normative view of the Late Antique or Early Byzantine countryside remains

difficult. Traditional notions of decline, contraction, and abandonment have given way to more nuanced and regional perspectives that complicate any universalizing perspectives.22 At the same time, we are more aware of the interconnections or, to use Horden and Purcells term, connectivity between micoregions, sites, and communities in the Mediterranean basin.23 A systemic approach to understanding the effects of instability of on interdependent and connected communities reminds us how insular places like Cyprus can nevertheless feel the effects of larger changes in prosperity or integration elsewhere in the network. Indeed, the insularity of Cyprus, in a literal sense, ensured its entrenched position within a large and complex Mediterranean system and contributed both to the islands resilience as well as its vulnerability to economic, political, and social change in the region.24

Evidence for Settlement on Cyprus

Nowhere is the integrated position of Cyprus in the Eastern Mediterranean more clear than in

the archaeological evidence for settlement. Traditionally, scholars have relied on the careful study of ceramics, coins and seals, and architecture to provide evidence for the extent and character of settlement. These objects also represent the degree to which Cyprus was integrated into a regional social and economic system. Thus, each type of evidence presents its own interrelated challenges that shape the kinds of landscape that these types of artifact produce. The material culture provides evidence by analogy for settlement as well as evidence for the connectivity and economic strategies at play among the island communities.

Ceramics 19 Sanders 2004 for a summary of many of these issues. 20 E.g. Bintliff et al. 1999. 21 Veikou 2009. 22 Kourelis 2010. 23 Horden and Purcell 2000. 24 Leonard 2005.


5

Ceramic evidence plays a key role in dating settlements, establishing local and regional trade

connections, and understanding production within the Cypriot economy. Fortunately, the last four decades have seen a massive improvement in our ability to unpack the significance of ceramic assemblages on Cyprus. The publication of production sites both on Cyprus and in the wider region as well as significant assemblages from sites like Anemurium on the Cilician coast have provided a regional context for Cypriot assemblages.25 On Cyprus, excavators have systematically published a range of deposits including both urban centers at Paphos and Kourion and more rural sites like Kalavassos-Kopetra, Panayia-Ematousa, and Dhiorios.26 Furthermore, survey projects and less systematic publications offer a substantial and diverse body of ceramic material from both major sites and landscapes across the island.27 Finally, there is a wealth of important material still awaiting publication from both major sites whose excavations were disrupted by the 1974 invasion and the salvage excavation of dozens of basilicas and significant coastal sites at Pyla-Koutsopetria, Dreamers Bay,28 and Ay. Georgios-Peyia,29 as well as a growing number of shipwrecks.30 The distribution and chronology of ceramics on Cyprus provides a key indicator of settlement as well as the integration of the island in the wider economy.

Since the publication of John Hayes magisterial Late Roman Pottery, our appreciation and

understanding of Late Roman fine wares in the Mediterranean has much more solid footing.31 The continuous, incremental revision of Hayess founding efforts have pushed the latest types of most common Late Roman red slips - Phocaean red slip (Late Roman C), African red slip, and Cypriot red slip (Late Roman D) ware - well into the 7th and even 8th century. The continued circulation of these red slips has been central to arguments for the persistence of Mediterranean trade and the production of red slipped fine wares for over a century longer than traditional assessments. For example, well-forms of Cypriot red slip (LRD) from Anemurium date to middle decades of the 7th century.32 P. Armstrong, following H. Catlings excavations at Dhiorios on Cyprus,33 has reminded us that certain LRD forms including the common and long-lived Form 9 have appeared in contexts dated securely to the middle decades of the 8th century.34 The recent publication of kilns nearby in Pamphylia indicates that LRD ware was not produced exclusively on Cyprus and may have entered the island on the western side and circulated across the island from there.35 Sites further east have LRC and African red slip in higher percentages than those to the west.

The production of various kinds of utility wares across the island reflects a range of different

production strategies and economic networks. The best-known kilns at Dhiorios appear to have produced cooking wares for both local use and regional exchange at least until the 8th century.36

25 William 1989. 26 Paphos: Meyza 2007; Kourion: Hayes 2007; Kopetra: Rautman 2004, Panayia-Ematousa: Lund 2006, Jacobsen 2006; Dhiorios: Catling 1972. 27 Manning 2002; Flourentzos 1996; Lund 1993; Moore and Gregory 2003; Catling 1970. 28 Leonard and Demesticha 2004 29 Bakirtsis 1995; 1996. 30 The Wanger 2013. 31 Hayes 1972. 32 Williams 1977. 33 Catling 1972. 34 Armstrong 2009. N.B. H. Meyza has muddied the waters by arguing that some of the traditionally late forms of LRD could also appear early. 35 Jackson et al. 2012. 36 Calting 1972; Armstrong 2009.


6

Like LRD fine wares, Dhiorios ware are diagnostic and seem to appear more consistently in assemblages on the western half of the island than in the eastern parts. On a more local scale, M. Rautman has identified a class of handmade wares that were almost certainly produced on a household or village level for very local consumption.37 At the village site of Kalavassos-Kopetra, these vessels appeared in contexts contemporary with imported fine wares like African red slip and locally produced cooking wares from Dhiorios in the 7th century.38 The contemporaneity of transmediterranean, regional, and local pottery has complicated our chronological assumptions about the development and access to various ceramic types on the island.

Perhaps the best known and most widely distributed ceramic type from the island is Late Roman

1 amphora.39 As S. Demesticha describes in greater detail elsewhere in this volume, the third generation of LR1 amphoras with clearly 7th century dates circulated widely in the Eastern Mediterranean and most likely reflected, at least in part, an administrative convenience tied to the provisioning the military.40 It is clear that these amphora and their variants such as the widely produced LR13, circulated into the 8th century suggesting that at least some of the administrative and economic connections of the empire persisted into the Byzantine world.41

Coins and Seals

The challenges associated with understanding the significance of Late Roman coins from

excavated contexts on Cyprus is well-known, but rarely discussed. Coins frequently serve to date the abandonment or destruction of buildings in the 7th century and are assumed to be the latest object in a level, fill, or on a surface. Archaeologically, this is a problematic assumption stemming in large part from the unimpeachable chronological authority of the coin as a dated object. Unlike ceramic chronologies which have proven particularly fluid in Late Antiquity, coins would appear to associate archaeological features with political figures and events. At the same time, coins remain dependent on supply, and during periods of economic instability, archaeologists have to consider most carefully the relationship between the frequency of coins in circulation and their tendency to appear in archaeological contexts.42

This is particularly significant for Cyprus where issues of Heraclius and Constans II have often

played an outsized role in the dating of archaeological events on the island.43 Not only did Heraclius briefly mint coins on the island from 608-610 when he used the island as a staging area for his revolt,44 but also during his reign troops cycled through Cyprus to his campaigns during the Persian War in the Levant. The frequency of coins dating to the reign of Heraclius and his successor Constans II to pay troops staged on Cyprus contrasts strongly with the nearly absolute collapse of currency supply in the final quarter of the 7th century.45 The disruption of regional mints owing to 37 Rautman 1998. 38 Rautman 2004; Rautman 2003, 212. 39 Riley 1979 and 1981. 40 Elton 2005: Demesticha 2013, 176. 41 Armstrong 2009. 42 For recent survey of numismatic evidence for the 7th century on Cyprus see: Zavagno 2011 and Metcalf 2009, 159-181. For issues related to the use of coins in dating see Slane and Sanders 2005; Sanders 2005. 43 A quick survey of R. Maguires 2012 catalogue of churches on Cyprus produced nearly a dozen churches dated by coins of Heraclius or Constans II. This is not limited to Cyprus, of course, but is an issue throughout the Levant, see: Walmsley 2007. 44 Metcalf 2009, 159-161. 45 Metcalf 2009, 148-158.


7

the Arab conquests resulted in an almost singular dependence of Cyprus on currency minted in Constantinople. Moreover, disruptions to the regional economy and the ambiguous condominium arrangement on the island all contributed to a massive drop in the number of large, easily recognized coins available on the island.46

The significance of this situation is that we should approach buildings dated on the basis of

coins alone and, in particular coins of Heraclius and his successor with renewed caution. The presence or absence of coins within an archaeological context reflects more complex processes than archaeologists have sometimes allowed. The irregular supply of currency to the island in the last decades of the 7th century poses a challenge to dating levels based on coins as well as understanding the economic and political integration of the island. The date of the rural site of Kornos cave, for example, has been dated on the basis of a coin early in the third year of Contans IIs reign, although the investigator of the cave admitted that a date as late as the early 8th century was possible, he preferred to associated the cave with the Arab raids of the 650s.47 As D. Metcalf has shown, lead seals have demonstrate that the island remained connected to administrative structure of the Byzantine state.48 In fact, a small group of seals from the coast near Polis have suggested that the northwestern part of the island remained in contact with the Byzantine fleet stationed along the Cilician coast as late as the end of the 8th century49. G. Sanders offers a possible solution to this by suggesting that the seeming absence of numismatic evidence might reflect circulation of very small issues common in the 7th and 8th centuries which would have slipped through typical 1 cm sieves unnoticed unlike the larger imperial currency of the 6th and 7th centuries.50 The smaller coins served local residents and represent a resilient, if ultimately more local economy that remained monetized, but in a way that benefited small-scale exchange rather than the consistent influx of imperial funds. Until we have more systematic study of small issues, the value of coins for dating the transformation of settlement on Cyprus will remain limited and the continued dependence of large imperial issues reveals the codependence of connectivity and archaeological visibility that shaped the value of ceramics in our understanding of settlement in these tumultuous centuries.

Architecture

Identifying architecture datable to the 7th and 8th centuries on the island remains bound up in

issues of ceramic chronology and our use of coins. The traditional narrative saw the Arab raids destroying many of the traditional wood-roofed basilicas on the island. Scholars have argued that communities rebuilt some of these buildings after the destruction and, in a handful of cases, changed from wood roofs to barrel vaults. This phenomenon is most evident on the Karpas peninsula where a well-documented group of these churches stand: Panagia Chrysiotissa (Afentrika), Asomatos church (Afentrika), Agia Varvara (Koroveia), Panagia Afentrika (Sykhada), and Panagia Kanakari (Lythrankomi). These churches have attracted significant scholarly attention,51 but there is no stratigraphic or archaeological study of these buildings, and they remain dated on a basis of style and historical probability. A similar process of barrel-vaulting appears to have occurred at the south basilica at Polis-Chrysochous in northwest Cyprus. Recent archaeological work has securely dated

46 Zavagno 2011 for the problems associated with identifying Arab coins consistently. 47 Catling 1970. 48 Metcalf 2009; Metcalf 2004. 49 Metcalf 2009, 101-102. 50 Sanders 2005. 51 Most recently Stewart 2010 with references. See, in particular, Megaw 1946.


8

this transformation to the second half of the 7th century.52 It remains impossible, however, to associate the building with a specific historical event like the Arab raids.

There exists only a handful of buildings that can be clearly associated with the Arab raids. The

most dramatic example comes from Soloi where a long inscription dedicated the reconstruction of the basilica after it was damaged during the Arab raids.53 At Paphos, there are a series of poorly preserved buildings near the Limeniotissa basilica which featured Arabic inscriptions. One of these buildings used spolia from the Limeniotissa church and featured a series of Arabic inscriptions suggesting that this entire neighborhood postdated the Arab invasions and garrison in Paphos.54 At Salamis-Constantia it appears that the house of lHuilerie was modified for industrial uses in the later 7th or early 8th century,55 as were the churches of Campanopetra and of St. Epiphanius.56 The evidence from these sites, however, remains relatively provisional as the buildings in Paphos are relatively unpublished and those from Salamis remain dependent on the vagaries of numismatic and ceramic evidence presented without comprehensive stratigraphic documentation. The fragmentary picture derived from architecture does not offer enough of a foundation for an architectural typology that could shed light on the extensive corpus of unpublished or under-documented buildings from the end of antiquity.

Urban Settlement

Much of the evidence from Cyprus comes from the substantial, excavated contexts in Cypriot

cities. This is fitting as Cyprus was among the most urbanized areas of the ancient world (and even modern times). Situated largely on the coastal plain, the cities of Cyprus connected their agricultural hinterland and the important mineral resources, especially copper, of the Troodos mountains to the larger Mediterranean world through access to the sea. The urban landscape of Cyprus, then, depended economically upon connectivity and access to markets and trade networks that crisscrossed the region with the cities serving administrative functions for their regions. First Paphos and, then, Salamis-Constantia from the 4th century served as provincial capitals for the Roman province. Throughout the 6th and 7th centuries, the island enjoyed substantial administrative contact, access to maritime trade, and prosperous hinterlands. This economic situation created a scenario where the Late Roman archaeology of Cyprus leaned heavily on the abundant artifacts associated with this trans-Mediterranean connectivity including imported and exported ceramics, coins, and, for the Early Byzantine period, lead seals. The highly visible, widely distributed and abundant evidence from the 6th and first part of the 7th century presented a sharp contract with the more obscure and fragmentary evidence from the end of 7th and 8th centuries. This dramatic difference has tended to obscure the more fluid, but nevertheless persistent evidence for economic activity on a much smaller and more local scale.

Cities and Churches on Cyprus in the Prosperous 7th Century

Any archaeological understanding of the 7th and 8th centuries on Cyprus occurs at the

intersection of larger regional consideration of settlement and the challenges and potential of the

52 Caraher and Papalexandrou 2012. 53 Des Gagniers and Tinh 1985, 115-125. 54 Megaw 1988; Christides 2006. 55 Argoud et al. 1980. 56 For the Campanopetra: Roux 1998; For the St. Epiphanius see: Stewart 2008, 63-90.


9

archaeological evidence. At the same time, scholars have had to accommodate the unique situation of Cyprus as both an island and one of the most highly urbanized places in the ancient world. Late Antiquity, in particular, witnessed a flourishing of Cypriot urbanism with both longstanding urban centers like Kourion,57 Salamis-Constantia,58 Paphos,59 and Soloi seeing major building projects and significant prosperity.60 These urban areas coincided with a group of new settlement that A. Dunns has described as non-civic, urban areas. These densely built up centers like Ay. Georgios-Peyia and Pyla-Koutsopetria on the south coast of the island occupy places between village life and well-established cities while taking advantage of the thriving maritime networks that intersect on the island.61 Unfortunately, the invasion of 1974 cut off several important urban sites from continued study, and other sites remain published in only superficial or fragmented ways making it difficult to grasp the totality of Late Roman Cypriot urbanism.

It is clear that cities continued to attract the attention from wealthy patrons well into Late

Antiquity, and their access to wealth contributed to the great era of church construction on Cyprus during the 5th and 6th centuries, it is likely that church building in urban areas continued into the first half of the 7th century. The basilicas constructed at this time tended to be smaller, but remained architecturally elaborate. The Acropolis basilica at Amathus featured an impressive atrium, porch, and ambulatory,62 and its particular form seems to have inspired modifications to the South Basilica at Polis-Chrysochous (ancient Arsinoe) which ceramic evidence dates to the first half of the 7th century.63 The Amathus basilica likely had a high profile patron befitting its location and its use of spolia from the abandoned temple of Aphrodite at the site. Megaw, Stewart, and others have often argued that the modification of urban basilicas throughout the 7th century was a response to the destruction of earlier - mostly 5th century - buildings, but the archaeological evidence for this is unpublished, grounded in architectural typologies, or completely absent.64 Whatever the reason for the modifications of basilicas on Cyprus during this period, they represent the continued prestige of the church in these communities and their ability to marshal wealth. Bishops from Cyprus remained active in ecclesiastical politics through the 7th and 8th centuries65, with prominent figures like John the Almsgiver who was Patriarch of Alexandria in the early 7th century. In the 640s, Leontius of Neapoliss composed two significant saints lives, the Life of St. John the Almsgiver and the Life of Symeon the Holy Fool, set in Alexandria and the smaller urban areas in Syria respectively.66 Both of these texts depict prosperous, dynamic communities, but while the former acknowledged the first inklings of political and economic disruptions, the latter showed a world filled with craftsmen, business owners, trade, and community. Bishop Arcadius of Salamis-Constantia both commissioned The Life of St. John the Almsgiver in the 640s, and also deployed the wealth of the church for civic affairs. Arcadius repaired the extensive aqueduct that fed the city from the foothills of the Troodos in the reign of Heraclius.67

57 Megaw 2007. 58 Stewart 2008, 63-72. 59 Megaw 1988. 60 Gagnier 1985. 61 Bakirtsis 1985, 1986; Caraher et al. forthcoming. 62 Aupert 1996; Maguire 2012, 2.8-10. 63 Caraher and Papalexandrou 2012. 64 Megaw 1946; Stewart 2008, 2010. 65 Dikigoropoulos 1965. 66 Kreuger 1996. 67 Kreuger 1996.


10

The cities of Amathus, Paphos, and Salamis appear to have received fortification walls during the 7th century perhaps in response to either the threat of Arab raids or the earlier threat of the Persians.68 The extent, character, and date of these walls remains difficult to assess. The fortifications at Amathus appear to date to the reign of Heraclius.69 Megaw argued that Paphos saw a new fortification wall sometime during the 7th century, but the arguments for the dates of these walls and exact course remains obscure. Metcalf was particularly critical of Megaws dating of the wall of Paphos based on ungrounded, historical suppositions.70 The walls at Salamis have generally been seen as a response to the Arab raids rather than in anticipation of them, but the dating evidence is problematically dependent on presence of burnt mortar that Megaw dates to the second half of the 7th century.71 In general, the fortification of these cities is consistent with practices across the Mediterranean that saw the contraction of urban areas into smaller, fortified enceintes. Walls at Soloi and Lapethos might also date to the 7th century.72 The lack of archaeological evidence to date these walls or even clearly identify phases has made it impossible to associate these features with particular events or developments in urban planning.

These transformations of the urban fabric provide only the narrowest windows into the end of

Late Roman urban life. It is clear that civic urban sites and non-civic urban sites saw prosperity into the 7th century. The site of Polis-Chrysochous, ancient Arsinoe, has produced a massive assemblage of early 7th ceramics from a fill level associated with the South Basilica.73 This assemblage demonstrates local connections to the ceramic kilns at Dhiorios and locally produced Late Roman 1 amphoras. The assemblage also produced regional fine wares including a full range of LRD or Cypriot Red slip. Curiously, the assemblage produced a greater number of large LRD vessels, particularly the Form 12 and Form 8 bowls that appear only rarely elsewhere on the island.

At the ex-urban site of Pyla-Koutsopetria on Larnaka bay, a built up area including at least one

basilica extended for over 40 ha along the coastal plain.74 The site represents an example of a non-civic, urban site like elsewhere on the south coast of the island. The assemblage demonstrated a much greater degree of Mediterranean connectivity into the 7th century with a wide range of imported fine wares from North Africa (African Red slip) and Asia Minor (LRC and LRD wares). The number of Dhiorios wares was vanishingly small indicating another source of cooking and kitchen wares perhaps either in the Levant or somewhere on the eastern half of the island. Evidence for economic activity comes from the massive assemblage of Late Roman 1 amphoras suggesting that this site served as a emporium for the local agricultural areas. The early 7th century text called the Pratum Spirituale mentioned an emporium called Dadai on Cyprus which had a monastery with a particularly pious monk,75 and sites like Pyla-Koutsopetria, Dreamers Bay, or Ay. Georgios-Peyia represent other examples of this kind of built up site without civic identity.

Challenges at the End of the 7th and 8th Centuries

68 Ballandier 2002; Megaw 1985. 69 P. Aupert et P. Leriche 1988; Aupert 1996, 194-197. 70 Megaw 1972; Metcalf 284-285. 71 Balandier 2003; Stewart 2008, 73-74 n. 75 for a full discussion of these issues; Metcalf 2009, 276-281. 72 Zavagno 2013, 8-9; Christides 2006, 21-24. 73 Caraher et al. Forthcoming. 74 Caraher et al. Forthcoming. 75 Moschos, Prat. Spirit., 30.


11

The limits of our evidence have a much more significant impact in our understanding of Cypriot urbanism in the second half of the 7th and the 8th centuries. The difficulties associated with identifying the Arab raids in the archaeological record and the persistent belief that these raids must have defined life on the island in this period have shaped in profound ways our understanding of urbanism.76 It may be useful, however, to keep in mind Dikigoropouloss observation from 1961 that the destruction of wood-roofed basilicas need not have been caused by the Arab raids and might have just as easily been the result of an earthquake or some other disaster.77 More importantly, Dikigoropoulos noted that the decision not to rebuild these buildings, which evoked the apogee of Late Roman urbanism, was as much a result of depopulation from the plague and responses to the changing economy.78 Thus, urban change emerges less as a catastrophic event and more as a process taking place over decades.

Salamis-Constantia and Paphos have stood apart in considerations of late 7th and 8th century

urbanism on Cyprus. While neither city has received systematic excavation focusing on the 7th and 8th century, a mosaic of fragmentary evidence from these sites provides narrow windows into the life of these communities. For Salamis-Constantia, as we have noted, the city gained a new fortification wall that primarily encompassed the precinct of the church of St. Epiphanios, but excluded much of the ancient city. There was also a pair of cisterns constructed inside the walls to provide the community with water in the event of a siege.79 Likewise there is evidence that the Huilerie complex which was originally a house, was developed as an industrial complex including an oil press and the bath-gymnasium complex also saw some repairs and modifications.80 The church of St. Epiphanius saw rebuilding in the early 8th century and modifications sometime later according to C. Stewarts recent analysis which has archaeological grounding based the parallels on pottery under the bema floor that has parallels with admittedly unstratified material from Kornos cave.81 The Campanopetra basilica continued to stand outside the smaller enceinte and attract visitors throughout the 7th and 8th century.82 The bishop of Salamis-Constantia remained a prominent figure in ecclesiastical politics and his see a safe harbor for those resisting the iconoclast policies advancing elsewhere in the Byzantine world.83 The community itself was wealthy and seems to have preserved many of its traditional trading relationships especially with the Levant.84 The pilgrim Willibald visited the churches at Salamis-Constantia in 723 and left us his famous observations of the island where those Cypriots dwell between the Greeks and the Saracens, and were disarmed, because a great peace and friendship was then in force between the Saracens and the Greeks.85

The city of Paphos may have been the home of an Arab garrison after the conclusion of the

second raid on the island in 653.86 Excavations in various areas of the post-Roman city do not provide a comprehensive picture of urban life, but evidence from Megaws excavations at Saranda Colonnes, the University of Sydneys work at Fabrika hill, and various excavations associated with

76 Zavagno 2011-2012, 121-122 for a summary of the traditional view. 77 Dikigoropoulos 1961. 78 Papacostas 212-214 for the so-called condominium churches 79 Stewart 2008, 73. 80 Zavagno 2011-12, 142; Yon 1980; Argoud et al. 1980 81 Stewart 2008, 74-75 provides Dikigoropoulos unpublished report on the excavations at St. Epiphanius. 82 Megaw 2006; Roux 1998. 83 Dikigoropoulos 1966 84 Zavagno; Metcalf 2009; Stewart 2008 85 Wright 1969,14. 86 Zavagno 2013, 9-10; Megaw 1988; Christides 2006, 51-58, 65-66; But see Metcalf 2009, 285.


12

the citys destroyed Early Christian basilicas show that the city continued as a nucleated settlement into the 7th and 8th centuries.87 It is likewise clear that the city saw an influx of Arab settlers and visitors in the aftermath of the Arab invasions.88 The prevalence of Arab inscriptions in the city, the apparent construction of a mosque there, and the appearance of Arab coins suggested to Megaw and others the presence of an Arab garrison in the city.89 Megaws suggestion that the Arab garrison divided the city into a Christian and Arab quarter rests on very limited evidence.90 The withdrawal of this garrison in 683 has some grounding in historical sources, but in general, the continued presence of Arab coins, particularly those excavated from the site of Saranda Kolones at Paphos,91 and Arabic inscription dated to the 8th century indicates that the Arab presence in the city was not exclusively tied to the military garrison.92 In fact, the continued appearance of Byzantine coins and inscriptions suggests that the situation at Paphos, like at Salamis-Constantia, may have more closely approximated the kind of middle ground recently appropriated by L. Zavagno in his study of the 7th to 9th on the island.93

The site of Kourion provides an alternate perspective on the nature of urban change in later 7th

century Cyprus.94 The urban area of the site appears to have been largely abandoned by the final quarter of the century. Dated on the basis of late issues of Constans II and a single coin of Justinian II, the major episcopal complex and basilica appear to have collapsed in the final decades of the 7th century probably as a result of an earthquake.95 Evidence survives for some ad hoc efforts to stabilize the damaged church and continued 8th century habitation on the basis of a handful of Arab coins dating to after 695, an Arab funerary inscription as well as some Byzantine small issues and lead seals including one of the Bishop Damianos from around 740.96 Megaw argues that most of the 8th evidence is the work of salvage operations and that the city was large abandoned because of the failure of the citys water supply after the late 7th century earthquake. This also prompted the moving of the episcopal seat to Episkopi with its barrel-vaulted church at Serayia which included spolia from the episcopal precinct at Kourion.97 The evidence for occupation around the church at this site is quite scant. If we see the founding of the church at Episkopi as a separate matter from the complete abandonment of Kourion in the later 7th century, an image appears of the city that is startlingly similar to that at Paphos or even Salamis. The site appears to have endured significant decline in the closing decades of the 7th or start of the 8th century, but at the same time there is strong evidence for Arab and Christian interaction at the site throughout the 8th century suggesting that the city continued to represent some appeal as a settlement.

The history of Cypriot urbanism in the later 7th and 8th centuries remains opaque. The absence

of systematic archaeological excavation and the comprehensive publication of excavated sites presents only a fragmented image of Early Byzantine urban life. Despite these limitations, we can see some general directions. First, as events, the Arab raids had far less of an effect on urban areas than

87 Megaw 198x; Green et al 2004; Gabrieli et al. 2007; Rowe 2004. 88 Megaw xxxx; Metcalf 2009, Christides 2006 xx-xx. 89 Megaw 1988; Christides 2006 90 Metcalf 2009, 285. 91 Metcalf 2003, 92 Christides 2006, 53-58. 93 Zavagno 2013. 94 Megaw 2007. 95 Megaw 2007, 174-176. 96 Dunn (in Megaw) 2007, 539-540. 97 Megaw 1993.


13

conventional wisdom would have us believe. It is clear that the sites of Salamis-Constantia, Paphos, Soloi, and even Kourion recovered to some extent from either raids or seismic events. Soon to be published evidence from the urban site of Polis-Chrysochous shows continuous modification of church architecture into the 8th century.98 Next, we can see that urban sites became places for interaction between Arabs and Christians on the island. Traditional views of the Arab presence on Cyprus looked for evidence of a garrison or military occupation in the 7th century. The evidence from urban centers, however fragmentary it is at present, would seem to indicate that Arab speaking civilians spent time on the island, engaged in economic activity, and perhaps even settled in urban areas on the island. Finally, Cypriot cities seem to have maintained economic and political connections with the wider Mediterranean world throughout this period. If Cypriot urbanism historically depended in part upon the islands position astride trade routes and the islands connection to the wider region, the transformation of the political and economic networks in the region, including the rise of Arab involvement in trade and the political and military instability as Cyprus became a middle ground between two different political systems, invariably shaped the character of Cypriot cities.99

The Cypriot Countryside

The same problems with evidence that impact our understanding of the 7th and 8th century

urban landscapes exist for our understanding of settlement in the countryside. The first two-thirds of the 7th century are a continuation of the prosperity of Late Antiquity. Marcus Rautman aptly describes rural Cyprus of this era as a busy countryside.100 David Pettegrew in describing this period in Greece, noted that our ability to recognize widely distributed and abundant Late Roman ceramic types, like transport vessels with ridges or grooves or highly diagnostic red slip wares, complicating comparisons between the highly visible Late Roman landscape and the less visible countryside.101 Pettegrew does well to identify the difficulty of studying the Late Roman landscape at the precise intersection of archaeological methods and historical processes. While he does not provide a simple solution to this problem, he nevertheless offers a key reminder that the nature of rural land use and economic integration often dictates its visibility in the countryside.

A Prosperous Countryside For much of 6th and 7th century, the countryside of Cyprus was densely occupied. Building on

the basic organization of rural settlement established under centuries of Roman rule and the resulting economic integration of the Eastern Mediterranean, Late Roman settlement represented a continuation and intensification of rural land use and settlement.102 Extensive and intensive pedestrian survey and excavation have documented Late Roman activity on landscapes from the Troodos mountains to valleys and coastal plains of the southern coast.103 It is probably not an exaggeration to say that the Cypriot countryside is among the best-documented landscapes in the

98 Caraher et al. forthcoming 99 Zavagno 2013. 100 Rautman 2000 101 Pettegrew 2007 102 Leonard 2005; Rautman 2003; for a wider view of the East see Decker 2009. 103 Rautman 2003; Srensen and Rupp 1993; Caraher et al 2014; Given and Knapp 2003; Srensen and Jacobsen 2006; Toumazou et al. 2012; Clarke and Todd 1993; Dikaios 1971; Fefjer 1995; Manning et al. 2002; Given et al. 2013; Najbjerg et al. 2002; Plat Taylor and Megaw 1980; Rowe 2004; Hadjisavvas 1997; Catling 1972; Catling and Dikigoropoulos 1970; Swiny and Mavromatis 2000.


14

Eastern Mediterranean. At the same time, the chronology, function, and character of rural activities remain hampered by some of the same chronological and methodological limitations that have shaped our knowledge of urban areas. As many scholars have noted, the quality of unstratified surface data depends in large part on the quality of well-published, stratified deposits.104 While Cyprus is unique in possessing a number of excavated rural sites, they have still only provided the narrowest windows into the character of 7th century settlement across the island.

We have already discussed the emergence of built-up, urban, non-civic sites that exceed 10 ha in

size on the island like Pyla-Koutsoptria or Ay. Georgios-Peyia in the 6th and 7th centuries. These sites almost certainly represent emporia through which local agricultural goods entered the Mediterranean market and important agricultural products, table wares, and other commodities came onto the island. The massive quantities of Late Roman 1 amphora at Pyla-Koutsopetria on Larnaka bay, for example, suggests that the site functioned to export olive oil and possibly wine.105 A similar scatter of LR1 sherds appears at Dreamers Bay, another emporium type site on the south coast of Cyprus, indicating that these coastal sites may have served similar functions across the island.106 It seems probable that these emporia complemented the existing urban areas along the coast to support both local trade as well as the demands placed by the state on Cypriot producers. The incorporation of Cyprus into the quaestura Iustiniani exercitus along with parts of the Balkans and Aegean clearly oriented some part of the economy toward the west.107 Likewise, Bakirtsis has seen the development of the coastal site of Peyia as a response to the movement of annona from Egypt to Constantinople.108 The growing corpus of evidence from shipwrecks and offshore assemblages along the Cyprus coast indicates that cabotage continued as well.109 The development of these emporia in the countryside undoubtedly reflect the vibrancy of the regional trade, the productivity of the Cypriot countryside, and the demands placed on the island by the state.

Further inland from these large, well-developed areas, smaller villages populated the river valleys

along the south slope of the Troodos mountains. Village sites like Kopetra in the Kalavassos Valley or, in hinterland of Kourion at Alassa, represent a second level of settlement that likely served as both primary production sites as well as points of contact between the coastal economy and sites situated on unproductive ground and involved with the extraction of copper from the slopes of the Troodos.110 Rautmans excavations at Kopetra demonstrated that village life was relatively well integrated in local, regional, and trans-mediterranean economies. Imported fine wares, transport amphora, Dhiorios type cooking pots as well as more locally produced handmade pottery demonstrate the range of economic connections that shaped the character of village level settlement on Cyprus. Similar assemblages appeared at the rural site of Panyia-Ematousa in the hinterland of ancient Kition.111 The material from these sites dates to at least as late as the middle decades of the 7th century. In short, the few village sites systematically excavated on Cyprus reveal communities engaged in a wide range of economic relationships and embedded in the Mediterranean economy.

104 Sanders 2005 for this important critique. 105 Caraher et al. forthcoming; Caraher et al. xxxx. 106 Leonard and Demesticha 2004. 107 Chrysos 1993; Lokin 1986; Elton 2005. 108 Bakirtsis 1995. 109 Leidwanger 2013. 110 Rauman 2003; Flourentzos 1996. 111 Lund 2006; Jacobson 2006.


15

The presence of imported fine wares in areas documented through intensive pedestrian survey suggests that 6th and 7th century fine wares are not concentrated just at village sites. While we have not identified a significant number of villae rusticae in the Cypriot countryside, it seems probable that they existed particularly on the coastal plains where a certain amount of monoculture allowed for economies of scale. The villa rustica situated on the arid Akamas peninsula site of Ay. Kononas may represent the exploitation of marginal areas suitable to niche farming strategies that are dependent upon strong extraregional connections for staples.112 Monasteries represent another kind of rural activity on a similar scale and with a material signature as villae rusticae or even small settlements.113 Rautman argued that the site of Sirmata at Kalavassos-Kopetra likely represented a monastic establishment, and as we have noted, textual sources indicate that other monastic establishments existed on the island dating to the 7th century.114 Production sites like the kilns at Dhiorios or those on the coast near the town of Zygi and the recent evidence for extractive activities in the Troodos indicate that Late Roman period witnessed ongoing, non-agricultural production on a significant scale.115 Finally, most of the large-scale surveys on the island have produced a massive quantity of small (


16

start of the 8th century based on ceramic evidence and coins, but as we have noted, problems remain with this approach.122 Production sites like Dhiorios continued further into the 8th,123 and there is no reason to imagine that the site of Kornos cave did not continue into the latest decades of this century.124 The coastal site of Pyla-Koutsopetria and Ay. Georgios-Peyia appear to have been abandoned by the start of the 8th century. Elsewhere the Cypriot countryside shows signs of continued activity. For example, we can date, albeit in a tentative way, the series of small, barrel-vaulted churches on the Karpas Peninsula. Charles Stewart has argued in the basis of the phasing of the buildings and comparanda elsewhere in the Eastern Mediterranean that the barrel-vaulted churches date to at least to the 8th century and perhaps as late as the 9th.125 While we should probably be hesitant to accept the dates of buildings on the basis of architecture alone, the date assigned by Stewart is rather later than previous scholars have assigned, and it suggests that communities on the Karpas continued not only to exist, but to invest in architectural innovation. This short list of exceptions, however, does little to displace the general impression of settlement contraction, and economic and demographic decline in the 8th century.

Our view of the contracting countryside is both archaeological and historical. The inscription

from the church at Soloi claimed that 120,000 individuals were taken by Arab raids from the island.126 While this number is likely outside the range of possibility,127 it does suggest that the Arab raids removed a part of the population as slaves throughout the 7th century.128 The long tail of the so-called Justinianic plague also had a probable impact on the overall population of the island as the hasty burial of 21 individuals in the Kopetra cistern suggests.129 It is impossible to assess the effect of events like the unusual and poorly understood effort by the Emperor Justinian II to relocate the population of the island to the Hellespont in the final decade of the 7th century.130 Likewise, we have little idea how the influx of refugees from iconoclast persecutions impacted settlement on the island,131 or how the departure of individuals voluntarily or involuntarily must have transformed the landscape. What we can observe, however, is that settlement in the countryside, just like in urban areas, entered a period of significant instability.

The economic boom of the 6th and 7th centuries was fed at least in part by key location of

Cyprus in the ongoing geopolitical and economic drama of the era. The impact of the annona trade, the transfer of Cyprus to the quaestura Iustiniani exercitus, the arrival of Heraclius, and the Persian War all created opportunities for Cypriot producers to engage with a larger economy spurred by imperial policy. Likewise, the longstanding stability of the Roman East produced a responsive settlement structure prepared to accommodate expansion and intensification under imperial and historical pressures. With the end of the annona and the fall of Egypt, with the decline in Byzantine military activity in the East, and with the military and political disruptions of large-scale economic contact with communities in Asia Minor, Syria, and the Levant,132 the conditions that produced the Late

122 Feifer and Hayes 1995 123 Catling 1972; Armstrong 2009. 124 Catling 1970; Armstrong 2009. 125 Stewart 2008; 2010. 126 Des Gagniers and Tinh 1985, 115-125. 127 Metcalf 2009, 400-401; Papacostas 1999, 24. 128 Zavagno 2010-2011, 152; McCormick 2001 for the possible significance of slaves and their archaeological invisibility. 129 Fox 2003. 130 Metcalf 2009 450-455; Theophanes, A.M. 6183. 131 Metcalf 2009. 132 Kennedy 2010; Walmsley 2007; 2008 for a more substantial understanding of the economy of Early Islamic Syria.


17

Roman settlement boom disappeared. This did not mean that the long standing economic relationships vanished over night as the presence of Arab coins on the island,133 the continued production of ceramics for export at Dhiorios, and the persistent building activity on the Karpas peninsula and urban sites showed. As much as the 8th century might appear to represent a significant decline in the intensity of activity on Cyprus, we might be more prudent to observe that the busy countryside of the 6th and 7th centuries were the exception.

Finally, the tools that archaeologist have at their disposal to understand landscapes marked by

demographic and economic contingency remain crude. As is noted throughout this volume, ceramic chronologies continue to drift later as archaeologists continue to publish more stratigraphic contexts. Numismatic dating offers a different set of problems based as much on how archaeologists have interpreted coins as how coins circulated in Cypriot communities. Excavators and survey archaeologists alike have struggled to recognize evidence for short term or contingent settlement on Cyprus. In times of economic and demographic instability, we expect settlement strategies to become more opportunistic as markets for produce underwent change and access to resources shifted across the island. The use of handmade pottery, documented by M. Rautman at sites across Cyprus from as early as the middle decades of the 7th century,134 reveals that communities had already developed local practices to manage the relatively modest risk associated with dependency on imported cooking wares. It seems likely that very small coins, nummi or minimi, continued to circulate on Cyprus even as access to larger imperial issues declined precipitously as administrative trade and military activities in the region abated. Careful excavation has only begun to reveal the persistent stirring of economic and political life in the urban areas on the island.

It is particularly important to recognize that a dynamic, contingent economy in the countryside

may remain virtually undetectable to intensive survey methods. Short term, contingent activity calculated to weigh any investment carefully against opportunities presented in a changing world is almost predestined to leave little trace in the surface record which is so vital to regional level studies of rural landscapes. This is exaggerated all the more by the abundance of material associated with Late Roman settlement prior to the end of the 7th century. The 5th to 7th century economic boom appears to have represented systematic, long term investment in the landscape in response to sustained economic opportunities and relative political stability. The abundance of material reflects both chronologically and spatially extensive and intensive activities in the landscape associated with production for export, integrated economic relationships between, for example, copper production and agricultural areas, and administrative pressures on the economy that directed production toward the needs of the capital and the military. By the end of the 7th century, the opportunities and motivations for intensive investment in the landscape had diminished significantly. In this situation, the economic activity on the island and the structure of settlement may have taken on a more opportunistic appearance. The impetus to invest intensively in rural sites reduced the need to engage in practices that would make these sites visible to archaeologists, ranging from the use of imported fine wares to the construction of monumental buildings in villages.

To say that the economy of Cyprus declined, then, risks misunderstanding the complex

intersection between archaeological evidence and activities in the past. The disruption of intensive economic networks that existed in the Late Roman Eastern Mediterranean compromised our ability as archaeologists to recognize settlement. It did not, necessarily, compromise the settlement on the

133 Zavagno 2010-2011, 144; 2011; 2013. 134 Rautman 1998.


18

island, but the faint traces of evidence for life on Cyprus in the 8th century provides an enticing challenge for a more sensitized archaeological practice.


19

Works Cited Argoud, G., O. Callot, and B. Helly 1980 Salamine de Chypre : Tome 11, Une rsidence byzantine. LHuilerie. Paris: Maison Orient Mediterraneen. Armstrong, P. 2009 Trade in the east Mediterranean in the 8th century. Pp. 157-178 in Byzantine Trade, 4th 12th Centuries. The Archaeology of Local, Regional and International Exchange, ed. M. Mango. Surrey, England: Ashgate. Aupert, P. 1996 Guide d'Amathonte. Athens: Ecole franaise d'Athnes. Aupert et P. Leriche 1989 "Travaux de l'cole Franaise Amathonte en 1988", BCH 113: 878-889 Bakirtsis, C. 1995 The Role of Cyprus in the Grain Supply of Constantinople in the Early Christian Period. Pp. 247-253 in Proceedings of the International Symposium Cyprus and the Sea, eds. V. Karageorghis and D. Michaelides. Nicosia: University of Cyprus. 1996 Description and Metrology of some clay vessels from Agios Georgios, Pegeia. Pp. 153-161 in The Development of the Cypriot Economy from the Prehistoric Period to the Present Day, eds. V. Karageorghis and D. Michaelides. Nicosia: University of Cyprus. Balandier, C. 2002 The defensive network of Cyprus at the Hellenistic period and during the first centuries of the Roman Empire (3rd c. BC-3rd c. AD). Report of the Department of Antiquities, Cyprus 2002: 323-337. Bintliff, J.; Howard, P., and Snodgrass, A. 1999 The Hidden Landscape of Prehistoric Greece. Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 12: 139-68. Brubaker, L. and J. Haldon 2011 Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era, c.680850: A History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Caraher, W. and A. Papalexandrou 2012 Arsinoe in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Pp. 267-284 in City of Gold: The Archaeology of Polis Chrysochous, Cyprus, eds. W. Childs, J. Smith, and M. Padgett. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Caraher, W., R. Scott Moore, D. Pettegrew Forthcoming Pyla-Koutsopetria: Archaeological Survey of an Ancient Coastal Town. Boston: American Schools of Oriental Research. Casana, J.


20

2014 The Late Roman Landscape of the Northern Levant: A view from Tell Qarqur and the lower Orontes River Valley. Oxford Journal of Archaeology 33: 193-219. Catling , H. 1972 An Early Byzantine Pottery Factory at Dhiorios in Cyprus. Levant 4: 1-82. Catling, H. and A. Dikigoropoulos 1970 The Kornos Cave: An Early Byzantine Site in Cyprus, Levant 2: 37-62. Christides, V. 2006 The Image of Cyprus in the Arabic Sources. Nicosia: Archbishop Makarios III Foundation Press. Christou, D. 1994 Chronique des fouilles et dcouvertes archologiques Chypre en 1993. BCH 11: 647-693. Chrysos, E. 1993 Cyprus in Early Byzantine Times. Pp. 3-14 in The Sweet Land of Cyprus. Papers Given at the Twenty-Fifth Jubilee Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, Birmingham, March 1991, eds. A. Breyer, and G. Georghallides. Nicosia: Cyprus Research Centre. Clarke, J., and Todd, I. A. 1993 The field survey of Kalavassos-Pampoules, Report of the Department of Antiquities, Cyprus 1993: 11-28. Decker, S. and M. Kingsley 2001 Economy and Exchange in the East Mediterranean during Late Antiquity. Proceedings of a Conference at Somerville College, Oxford - May 29th, 1999. Oxford: Oxbow Books. Decker, M. 2009 Tilling the Hateful Earth: Agricultural Production and Trade in the Late Antique East. Oxford Studies in Byzantium. New York: Oxford University Press. Des Gagniers, J. and T. Tinh 1985 Soloi. Dix campagnes de fouilles (1964-1974). Saint-Foy, Presses Universit Laval. Demesticha, S. 2013 Amphora Typologies, Distribution, and Trade Patterns: The Case of the Cypriot LR1 Amphorae, Pp. 169-178 in The Transport Amphorae and Trade of Cyprus, eds. M. Lawall and John Lund. Lancaster, England: Aarhus. Demesticha, S. and D. Michaelides 2001 The excavation of a late Roman I amphora kiln in Paphos. Pp. 289-296 in La cramique byzantine et proto-islamique en Syria-Jordanie (IVe-VIIIe sicle apr. J.-C). Actes du colloque tenu Amman les 3, 4, et 5 December 1994, eds. E. Villeneuve and P.M. Watson. Beyrouth: Institut francais d'archeologie du Proche-Orient.


21

Dikaios, P. 1971 Enkomi: Excavations 1948-1958, vol. 2. Darmstadt: P.von Zabern. Dikigoropoulos, Andreas 1961 Cyprus betwixt Greeks and Saracens, A.D. 647-965. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation Oxford University (Lincoln College). 1965 The Church of Cyprus during the Period of the Arab Wars, Greek Orthodox Theological Review 11: 237-279. Dunn , A. 1994 The Transformation from polis to kastron in the Balkans (III-VII cc.): General and regional perspectives BMGS 18: 3-24. 1997 Stages in the transition from late Antique to the middle Byzantine urban centre in S. Macedonia and S. Thrace, Pp. 137-150 in N.G.L. Hammond. Thessaloniki: Hetaireia Makedoniko n Spoudo n. 2005 The problem of Early Byzantine rural settlement in eastern and northern Macedonia. Pp. 267-278 in Les villages dans lempire byzantin (IVe-XVe sicle). Proceedings of Table Rondes dedicated to 'Le village', XX. Congrs International des tudes Byzantines, eds. J.Lefort, C.Morrisson, and J.-P.Sodini. Paris, Buchet-Chastel. Elton, H. 2005 The Economy of Southern Asia Minor and LR1 Amphorae. Pp. 691-695 in LRCW1: Late Roman Coarse wares, Cooking Wares and Amphorae in the Mediterranean, ed. J. Esparraguera, J. Garrigs, and J. Ontiveros. Oxford: Oxbow Books. Fefjer, J. 1995 Ancient Akamas: Settlement and Environs. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press. Fejfer, J. and Hayes, P. 1995 Ancient Akamas and the abandonment of sites in the 7th century A.D. in Cyprus, Pp. 62-69 in Visitors, Immigrants and Invaders in Cyprus, ed. P. Wallace. Albany, NY: Institute of Cypriot Studies, New York University. Flourentzos, P. 1996 The Basilica of Alassa. Excavations in the Kouris Valley 2. Nicosia: Department of Antiquities. Fox, S. 2003 Human skeletal remains: a preliminary report, Pp. 274-277 in A Cypriot Village of Late Antiquity. Kalavasos-Kopetra in the Vasilikos Valley, ed. M. Rautman. Portsmouth, Rhode Island: Journal of Roman Archaeology. Gabrieli, R.S.; Jackson, M.P.C.; and Kaldeli, A.


22

2007 Stumbling into the darkness--trade and life in post-Roman Cyprus, Pp. 791-801 in Late Roman Coarse Wares, Cooking Wares and Amphorae in the Mediterranean: Archaeology and Archaeometry, eds. M. Bonifay and J.-Ch. Treglia. Oxford: Archaeopress. Given, M., and Knapp, A. B. 2003 The Sydney Cyprus Survey Project: Social Approaches to Regional Archaeological Survey, Monumenta Archaeologica 21. Los Angeles: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology. Green, R., C. Barker, and S. Gabrieli 2004 Fabrika: an ancient theatre of Nea Paphos. Nicosia: Moufflon Publishing. Hadjisavvas, S. 1997 Agia Napa. Excavations at Makronisos and the archaeology of the region. Nicosia: P. strms Forlag; Hayes, J.W. 1972 Late Roman Pottery. London: British School at Rome. 2007 Pottery. Pp. 435-476 in Kourion: Excavations in the Episcopal Precinct, ed. A.H.S. Megaw. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks. Horden, P., and Purcell, N. 2000 The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jackson, M.; Zelle, M.; Vandeput, L.; and Kse, V. 2012 Evidence for Late Roman D Ware production in southern Asia Minor: a challenge to Cypriot Red Slip Ware. Anatolian Studies 62: 89-114. Jacobsen, K. 2006 Transport amphorae, Pp. 303-336 in Panayia Ematousa I, eds. L.W. Srensen, and K.W. Jacobsen. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press. Kennedy, H. 2010 Syrian Elites from Byzantium to Islam: Survival or Extinction? Pp. 181-198 in Money, Power and Politics in early Islamic Syria, ed. J. Haldon. Aldershot: Ashgate. Kourelis, K. 2010 In the Comfort of Perpetual Abandonment. Pp. 209-214 in The Abandoned Countryside: (Re)Settlement in the Archaeological Narrative of Post-Classical Greece, ed. K. Kourelis and W. Caraher. The International Journal of Historical Archaeology (14). Kreuger, D. 1996 Symeon the Holy Fool: Leontius's "Life" and the Late Antique City. Transformation of the Classical Heritage 25. Berkeley: University of California Press Kyrris, C. 1970 Military Colonies in Cyprus in the Byzantine Period: their Character, Purpose, and Extent, BS 31: 157-181.


23

Lavan, L, and Bowden, W. 2003 Theory and Practice in Late Antique Archaeology. Leiden: Brill. Leonard, J. 2005 Roman Cyprus: Harbors, Hinterlands, and Hidden Powers. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation State University of New York at Buffalo. Leonard, J. and S. Demesticha 2004 Fundamental Links in the Economic Chain Local Ports and International Trade in Roman and Early Christian Cyprus, Pp. 189-202 in Transport Amphorae and Trade in the Eastern Mediterranean. Acts of the International Colloquium at the Danish Institute at Athens, September 26-29, 2002, eds. J. Eiring and J. Lund. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press. Leidwanger, J. 2013 Between local and long-distance: a Roman shipwreck at Fig Tree Bay off SE Cyprus Journal of Roman Archaeology 26: 221-243. Lokin, J. 1986 Administration and jurisdiction in Cyprus, in the sixth century AD. Pp. 1-9 in , eds. T. Papadopoulos and B. Englezakis. Nicosia: Etaireia Kypriakon Spoudon. Lund, J. 1993 Pottery of the Classical, Hellenistic, and Roman Periods, Pp. 79-156 in The Land of the Paphian Aphrodite 2. The Canadian Palaipaphos Survey Project: Artifactual and Ecofactual Studies. eds. L.W. Srensen and D. Rupp. Gteborg: P. strms. 2006 Ceramic Fine Wares from the 4th Century BC to the 7th Century A.D. Pp. 182-230 in Panayia Ematousa I, eds. L.W. Srensen and K.W. Jacobsen. Athens: Aarhus University Press. Maguire, R. 2012 Late Antique Basilicas on Cyprus. Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, University of East Anglia. Manning, S.W., Manning, A.; Tomber, R.; Sewell, D.; Monks, S.J.; Ponting, M.J.; Ribeiro, E.C. (and with contributions by others) 2002 The Late Roman Church at Maroni Petrera: Survey and Salvage Excavations 1990-1997, and Other Traces of Roman Remains in the Lower Maroni Valley, Cyprus. Nicosia: A.G. Leventis Foundation. McCormick, M. 2001 Origins of the European Economy. Communications and Commerce, A.D. 300-900. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. Megaw, A.H.S. 1946 Three Vaulted Basilicas in Cyprus, JHS 66: 46-56.


24

1985 Le fortificazioni Bizantine a Cipro, Corso di cultura sull' arte Ravennate e Bizantina 32: 199-231. 1988 Reflections on Byzantine Paphos. Pp. 135-150 in Kathegetria: Essays Presented to Joan Hussey, ed. J. Chrysostomides. Camberley: Porphyrogenitus. 1993 The Episcopal Precinct at Kourion and the Evidence for Re-Location. Pp. 53-67 in The Sweet Land of Cyprus. Papers Given at the Twenty-Fifth Jubilee Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, Birmingham, March 1991, eds. A. Breyer, and G. Georghallides. Nicosia: Cyprus Research Centre. 2007 Kourion: Excavations in the Episcopal Precinct. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks. Metcalf, D. M. 2004 Byzantine Lead Seals from Cyprus. Nicosia: Cyprus Research Centre. 2009 Byzantine Cyprus, 491-1191. Nicosia: Cyprus Research Center. Meyza, H. 2007 Nea Paphos V. Cypriot Red Slip Ware: Studies on a Late Roman Levantine Fine Ware, Warsaw: Polish Academy of Science. Moore, R. S., and Gregory, T.E. 2012 Athienou Archaeological Project Survey Pottery. Pp. 203-214 in Crossroads and Boundaries: The Archaeology of Past and Present in the Malloura Valley, Cyprus, eds. M. Toumazou, P.N. Kardulias, and D.B. Counts. Boston: American Schools of Oriental Research. Najbjerg, T., Ch. Nicklies, and A. Papalexandrou 2002 Princeton University Excavations at Polos/Arsinoe: preliminary report on the Roman and Medieval levels. RDAC, 139-154. Papacostas, T. 1999 Byzantine Cyprus: the testimony of its churches, 650-1200. Unpublished Dissertation Oxford University. 2001 The economy of Late Antique Cyprus, Pp. 107-128 in Economy and Exchange in the East Mediterranean during Late Antiquity, eds. S. Kingsley and M. Decker. Oxford: Oxbow. Papageorghiou, A. 1985 L'Architecture paleochrtienne de Chypre, Corso di cultura sull' arte Ravennate e Bizantina 32: 299-324. Pettegrew, D. K. 2001 Chasing the Classical Farmstead: Assessing the Formation and Signature of Rural Settlement in Greek Landscape Archaeology, Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 14: 189-209. Plat Taylor, J. du and A.H.S. Megaw 1980 Excavations at Ayios Philon. The ancient Carpasia. Part II. The early Christian building. RDAC 209-250.


25

Rautman, M. 1998 Handmade pottery and social change: The view from late Roman Cyprus, Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 12: 81-104 2003 A Cypriot Village of Late Antiquity. Kalavasos-Kopetra in the Vasilikos Valley. Portsmouth, Rhode Island: Journal of Roman Archaeology. 2004 Valley and village in Late Roman Cyprus, Pp. 189-218 in Recent Research on the Late Antique Countryside, eds. W. Bowden, L. Lavan, and C. Machado. Leiden: Brill. Riley, J.A.1979 The coarse pottery from Berenice. Pp. 91-467 in Excavations at sidi Khrebish-Benghazi (Berenice), ed.J.A. Lloyd. Lybia Antiqua Supplement V-2. Tripoli: Dept. of Antiquities, Ministry of Teaching and Education, People's Socialist Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. 1981 The pottery from the cisterns 1977.1, 1977.2,1977.3. Pp. 86-124 in Excavations at Carthage conducted by the University of Michigan VI, ed. J.H. Humphrey. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press. Roux, G. 1998 La basilique de la Campanoptra. Salamine de Chypre. Vol. 15. Paris: De Boccard. Rowe, A. 2004 Reconsidering Late Roman Cyprus: Using new material from Nea Paphos to review current artefact typologies. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis University of Sydney. Sanders, G. 2004 Problems in Interpreting Rural and Urban Settlement in Southern Greece, AD 365-700, Pp. 163-194 in Landscapes of change: rural evolutions in late antiquity and the early middle ages, ed. N. Christie. Aldershot: Ashgate. . 2013 Landlords and Tenants: Sharecroppers and Subsistence Farming in Corinthian Historical Context, in Corinth in Contrast: Studies in Inequality. eds. S.A. Friesen, S. A. James, and D. N. Schowalter Slane, K. and G. Sanders 2005 Corinth: Late Roman Horizons, Hesperia 74: 243-297. Srensen, L.W. and K.W. Jacobsen 2006 Panayia Ematousa I. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press. Srensen, L. W., and Rupp, D. 1993 The Land of the Paphian Aphrodite. Vol. 2. Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology. Gteborg, P. strms. Stewart, C. 2008 Domes of Heaven: The domed basilicas of Cyprus. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation Indiana University.


26

2010 The First Vaulted Churches in Cyprus, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 69: 162-169. Swiny S, and C. Mavromatis 2000 Land behind Kourion: results of the 1997 Sotira Archaeological Project Survey. RDAC: 433-452. Toumazou, M., P. Kardulias, and D. Counts 2012 Crossroads and Boundaries: The Archaeology of Past and Present in the Malloura Valley, Cyprus. Boston: American Schools of Oriental Research. Veikou, M. 2009 Rural Towns and In-Between or Third Spaces. Settlement Patterns in Byzantine Epirus (7th-11th c.) from an interdisciplinary approach,Archeologia Medievale 43: 43-54. 2010 Urban or Rural? Theoretical remarks on the settlement patterns in Byzantine Epirus (7th-11th Centuries, Byzantinische Zeitschrift (103): 171-193. Walmsley, A. 2007 Early Islamic Syria: an archaeological assessment. Gerlad Duckworth & Co Ltd: London. 2008 Economic Developments and the Nature of Settlement in the Towns and Countryside of Syria-Palestine, ca. 565-800, Dumbarton Oaks Paper 61: 319-352. Williams, C. 1977 A Byzantine Well-Deposit from Anemurium (Rough Cilicia), Anatolian Studies 27: 17590. 1989 Anemurium. The Roman and Early Byzantine pottery. Subsidia Mediaevalia 16. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. Zavagno, L. 2009 Cities in Transition: Urbanism in Byzantium between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Oxford: Archeopress. 2011 Betwixt the Greeks and the Saracens, coins and coinage in Cyprus in the seventh and eighth centuries. Byzantion 81: 448-443. 2011-2012 At the Edge of two Empires: the Economy of Cyprus between the Late Antiquity the Early Middle Ages (650s-800s A.D.) Dumbarton Oaks Papers 67: 121-56. 2013 Two hegemonies, one island: Cyprus as a Middle Ground between the Byzantines and the Arabs (650-850 A.D.) Reti Medievali 14: 3-32.

settlement on cyprus during the 7th and 8th centuries

Documents