British Academy: The UK's National Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences
14TH BRITISH ACADEMY POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWSHIP SYMPOSIUM
Abstract
Tradition, innovation and changing identity in the Cypriot Bronze Age
Dr Lindy Crewe
Around the end of the Middle Bronze Age on Cyprus (c.1750 BCE), the seemingly insular, small-scale agrarian communities of the island began to integrate into the wider eastern Mediterranean regional sphere. The subsequent impact was an island-wide transformation of all aspects of Cypriot society, including the adoption of new material culture styles and technologies and the gradual abandonment of many traditions. The result of these adoptions, some 500 years later, was a Mediterranean-wide 'international' style, centred around traded goods and shared ideologies.
Although foreign desire for Cypriot copper is widely held to be the catalyst for these transformations, the initial phases of this process on Cyprus are poorly understood. How, in the apparent absence of urban centres or centralised authority, did the widespread distribution of imported goods impact on individuals and communities? Who were the innovatory individuals who began to emulate foreign styles? The development of new styles and the adoption of new technologies requires serious investment on the part of craftspeople and implies a ready market for the new goods.
This paper presents one aspect of ongoing research into how and why small-scale societies transform, particularly as reflected in material culture, through an examination of the impact that imported Levantine transport amphorae may have had on local Cypriot pottery technologies and aesthetic choices.
Dr Lindy Crewe obtained her PhD in Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh and is currently the recipient of the British Academy Reckitt Postdoctoral Fellowship in Archaeology held at the University of Manchester. Her monograph, Early Enkomi: Trade, regionalism and society at the beginning of the Late Bronze Age on Cyprus, has recently been published. Current research interests include eastern Mediterranean Bronze Age interactions and she is also excavating an Early–Middle Bronze Age village in the west of Cyprus.