2008/10/01 by Maria Iacovou · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · #Ancient Near East History #Ancient Mediterranean Archaeology and History #Archaeology and Historical Studies #Hierarchy #Politics #Cult #Settlement (finance) #Interpretation (philosophy) #Kingdom #Ancient history #History #Iron Age #Geography #Political science #Law #Philosophy #Geology #Linguistics
paper · doi:10.3764/aja.112.4.625
openalex publication_date 2008/10/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/03/18
This paper attempts to show that the interpretation of the complex cultural and political configurations of Iron Age Cyprus rests on a 1,000-year long macrohistoric overview that focuses on continua rather than breaks. It maintains that the first-millennium B.C.E. kingdoms operated on very much the same decentralized politicoeconomic system as Late Cypriot polities in the 13th and 12th centuries. It argues that the long-term dynamics of this Late Cypriot model were actively and successfully promoted in the Archaic and Classical periods by preponderantly Greek central authorities. It is mostly Greek-named basileis (kings) that are found closely associated with the fundamental continua—the Cypriot script, the regional settlement hierarchy pattern, cult practice, and an economy based on trading metals—to the end of the fourth century B.C.E. This article argues that Greek-speaking people had become a constituent part of the sociopolitical structure of the island by the last centuries of the second millennium as a result of a migration episode.