Catherine Kearns (University of Chicago), “Rural Matters: Studying the Countrysides of Ancient Cyprus” (Yale Department of Classics and Archaeological Institute of America)

The island of Cyprus in the eastern Mediterranean has become a rich site for archaeologies of urbanism and the political economies of complex states, especially during the Bronze Age and Iron Ages. Indeed, many of the island’s current cities are situated on top of the remains of millennia of urban activities. With advances in spatial analyses and remote sensing techniques, however, archaeologists are seeing more traces of the rural and other-than-urban places and communities that surrounded and interacted with ancient cities. These include the fields that people worked and commuted to, the sites of industry and processing that supported or shaped urban economies, as well as the settlements, ritual sites, and cemeteries of smaller-scale groups with uneven attachments to the city. In studying these sites, we stand to gain a more holistic understanding of social and economic processes in periods of urbanization or abandonment. Through a diachronic survey of rural places, from the Bronze Age to Late Antiquity, this talk explores the dynamic and varied social histories that can be explored outside the city walls and their contributions to the archaeology of Cyprus.

 

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