Biographical information about Bernard Knapp and rationale for the volume.

Introduction to the volume and summaries of the chapters.

Bernard Knapp founded the Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology in 1988, being joined as co-editors by John Cherry in 1990 and by Peter van Dommelen in 2006. The 1980s were a time of disciplinary turmoil in archaeology at large, as well as a period that saw numerous new Mediterranean-themed journals come on the scene. Knapp, who did not at the time have job security, took a chance on a new, small, Biblical Studies press to produce JMA, and created for the journal a distinctive mission statement that emphasized the need to meld data with a theoretical context for interpretation, and the necessity of setting one’s own locally situated study within the broader comparative context of Mediterranean archaeology. This chapter briefly reviews some of the factors that led to the launch of JMA, some of its early difficulties in achieving its goal of publishing theoretically-informed articles of interest to a Mediterranean-wide readership, and the distinctive character of the journal as it has evolved over more than three decades. In the context of a volume intended to honor Bernard Knapp’s wide-ranging contributions to the field of archaeology, in the Mediterranean and beyond, it is important that we also recognize his quiet, behind-the-scenes work for over 30 years — since journal editors receive little kudos for their efforts — in creating a powerful and influential venue for the publication of new research in the Mediterranean.

The current view of Middle Bronze Age (MBA) Cyprus as isolated from the wider eastern Mediterranean and comprised largely of agropastoral villages is under challenge. New excavations and new readings of legacy data suggest that communities are likely to have been significantly more internally complex and interconnected with some participation also in external networks. This chapter builds on earlier research in which I argue that a still unlocated coastal settlement at Lapithos was exporting Cypriot copper and receiving copper and copper-base artefacts in the first half of the second millennium BCE. I respond, specifically, to several questions regarding the off-island trade links of Lapithos and the timing and nature of metal assemblages and imports in MBA tombs at the site. There are significant problems of visibility, but it is clear that Cyprus was a source of copper for the Levant and the Aegean prior to 1700 BCE. With the Anatolian coastline likely offering few suitable anchorages, Lapithos may have taken advantage of its location to supply passing ships with food, water and copper, in return receiving imported goods including tin or/and tin bronze. Imports, many of which are items of personal adornment, appear from the first phase of the MBA. The quantity of metal, including tin bronze, increased markedly in tomb deposits during the MBA but both metal and imports are unevenly distributed in the mortuary landscape. This suggests the presence at Lapithos of individuals and groups whose wealth and status were based on differential access to metal and imported goods acquired through management of the internal relationships that enabled north coast communities to acquire copper from ore bodies in the Troodos and participation in external trade networks.

Interactions, not just between people, but among people and things, have always played a key role in the development and transformation of social structures and material culture. But how can we move beyond acknowledging this to understanding how such interactions played out ‘on the ground’? In what follows, I pick up a few threads woven by Bernard Knapp that address the materiality, meaning and use of things in Late Bronze Age Cyprus. I take as a point of departure his recent critique of approaches to the agency of the material world (Knapp 2018). Following Knapp and others, I argue that agency of things resides in their material properties and the affordances they present to human actors. I examine this material agency through a discussion of the materiality of Late Cypriot monumental built environments, focusing on the material properties and social meanings of stone, plaster, wood, and earth. These material and social aspects were highlighted during the performance of social occasions, such as ceremonial feasting, through which people and things were brought into focused interplay. Hall’s (1966) proxemics provides a means of examining the sensory dimensions of these interactions. Such an approach begins to get at how people and things were ‘entangled’ during social occasions, potentially allowing a more nuanced understanding of human-material interactions and their implications for social dynamics during a transformative period of the Cypriot past.

The Bronze-to-Iron Age transition on Cyprus presents compelling opportunities for macrohistorical arguments of social and economic development across centuries of practice, but these narratives can attenuate the social actors and communities driving these transformations. A promising way to rethink temporal and spatial schemes is through the analysis of different communities and their landscapes, themes that A. Bernard Knapp has explored in several important contexts. How can we investigate the complexity of these communities in time and place? This paper prescriptively calls for more attention to building high-resolution chronological records as well as to studying the settlements and land use practices outside major Iron Age towns through comparative survey analysis. These archives and datasets provide windows into changes in community from the second to first millennia BCE and the differentiated ways that social groups fostered relationships with each other and with emerging authorities. Showcasing the interesting example of Amathus and its landscapes along the south-central coast, the paper briefly examines survey evidence from the Vasilikos and Maroni areas, where novel communities grew during the ninth and eighth centuries BCE, to discern variable place-making practices in one regional context.

Since the discovery of extensive copper workshops in the major coastal urban centre of Enkomi and copper oxhide ingots bearing Cypro-Minoan signs, the production and trade of copper in the Proto historic Bronze Age has been a key research question in Cypriot Archaeology. A. Bernard Knapp was, however, the one scholar who tried for the first time to see production of copper through a theoretical lens and investigate how the industry and the trade of copper was organized. Through the Sydney Cyprus Survey Project, which he designed and directed, and the excavation of the primary smelting workshop of Politiko Phorades he added a substantial body of evidence which enables us today to better understand these issues. The aim of this paper is to review current evidence regarding the production and trade of Cypriot copper and the organization of the industry in the earliest phase of the Proto-historic Bronze Age.

A brief and necessarily preliminary account and discussion is provided of the intriguing site of Mathiatis Mavrovouni in central Cyprus that was the subject of a limited rescue excavation and study by the author. The remains and material that were partly investigated and identified during road construction provide interesting evidence on a possible miner’s sanctuary site.

This paper examines the relationship between colonial geographical narratives and the archaeology of Cypriot landscapes. It highlights the ways colonial forms of environmental knowledge, particularly geographical categorisations, have been reified and largely appear as archaeological entities themselves. To illustrate that point in the context of Cypriot archaeology, I examine the history and usage of “mountain” as an archaeological category, using the Troodos Mountains as a case study. Although a widely applicable geographical category and emblematic feature in the island’s economic history, the Troodos Mountains is a rather static and ambiguous geographical term. Due to its notably patchy archaeology, the Troodos Mountains is described based on its environmental properties and has thus become largely synonymous with copper, timber and pastoralism. Problematically, this conceptualisation has become so capacious as to describe parts of the island that are quite varied in terms of material evidence and environmental characteristics (e.g. elevation, vegetation, precipitation). Drawing on the history of geographic thought with focus on postcolonial geography, this paper emphasises alternative geographies that can yield more nuanced understanding of the ancient landscapes of Cyprus. More broadly, I draw attention to the fact that employing reified archaeological categories sustains a dissociated gaze on the ancient landscape. Instead, reflexivity, topological maps and interdisciplinary approaches raise new possibilities for rethinking traditional interpretations and long-held assumptions.

Forty years after the beginning of the ‘new wave’ of intensive survey in the Mediterranean, it has become an established and widely accepted technique for the discovery and analysis of archaeological material on a landscape scale. In spite of the claims of its early enthusiasts, as well as numerous projects and large amounts of data, intensive survey has failed to engage successfully with contemporary landscape theory and wider social and environmental challenges. These concerns are heightened by a worrying decline in the number of articles published on intensive survey since 2010. To explore these issues, I present a conceptual history of survey in its political and social context. I ask what a post-survey landscape archaeology might look like, and suggest some ways in which it can be revitalised and thereby contribute to contemporary ecological and social challenges proactively and productively. Three concepts provide helpful ways forward here: a close engagement with ecological data and processes; systems theory, particularly the developing field of socioecological systems; and conviviality as a framework for understanding positive and productive relations among all social and ecological partners in past and present landscapes.

As an island, Sicily would seem to be a natural unit of study, despite its size and proximity to the Italian mainland. Examination of particular historical periods, however, reveals internal east-west cultural and economic cleavages that render an island-wide account of those periods problematic. This is evident from the Late Bronze Age through the Middle Ages and can be argued for periods before and after as well. One period that is touted as a moment of some measure of cultural unity is the Middle Bronze Age, when most of the island appears, from the local ceramics, to belong to the Thapsos archaeological culture. This paper uses social network analysis to argue that the island was as culturally fragmented in the Middle Bronze Age as it would be in later periods.

The Petras Kephala (Siteia, Crete) plateau was the focus in the Post-Palatial period of two geographically separate and functionally different complexes. Nevertheless, they were intimately related and contemporary. The southern complex was oriented around an ancestor veneration cult at an altar and a cenotaph and in the conspicuous drinking rituals held inside an imposing rectangular building. In the northern sector commemorative ceremonies were celebrated in an expansive rectangular sunken area with a theatrical backdrop on two sides. The open-air ceremonies and rituals held here included token communal feasting by the participants. The Rectangular Platform could have served as the dais for the community’s leader and close associates to view the activities and processions. The architectural adornment of these structures and spaces using various mnemonic devices was designed to send integrated, dominant messages of legitimacy, authority and group identity. Crucial to the acceptance of these messages in the two complexes was the invention of a new memory landscape starting in LM IIIA2 for the community’s mixed Cretan and mainland population. This was crafted using the ideological foundations of the long- standing central authority of the Middle Minoan IIA – Late Minoan IB palace at Petras and the incorporation of specific value laden architectural forms and materials, commemorative ceremonies, ancestor veneration, ritual activities and feasting taken from the palace and the Neopalatial settlement. By imposing this upon the visible remnants of the Pre- and Protopalatial house tomb cemetery it revived key aspects of a persistent memory landscape there where the elites of Petras had vied for sociopolitical supremacy for a 1000 years.

This paper investigates the network of roads in the Argolid and especially in terms of quantifying and assessing the construction labour involved and considering this against the least cost paths for movement across the landscape. The study finds that factors other than simple economy of travel were important, especially in mountainous regions. It is evident that provision of mobility/transport and the control over this both reflects and reinforces socio-political and economic power and status. Mycenae stands out as considerably more connected via roads than Tiryns and Midea, and this may suggest both its dominant political role in the region, and likely a central, organizing, role in pooling and supporting the resources necessary to construct and maintain the road system.

This paper presents, reviews and contextualizes cuneiform evidence pertaining to wine production and vineyards at two Syrian Late Bronze Age cities (ca. 1350-1175 BCE). Ugarit was well suited to viticulture, its whole material and textual culture well-steeped in wine that was seemingly as common as beer. Examining both the Ugaritic and Akkadian evidence from Ugarit shows that the long-held Assyriological view of strict royal control of its wine industry is untenably based more on theory than evidence, especially given the ample representation of non- royal ownership in the fully vocalized and less ambiguous Akkadian tablets. Fresh studies of Emar’s real estate transactions and archaeology reveal a wine culture based on irrigation methods in an alluvial setting perhaps comparable to Egypt’s highly developed wine industry. The conventional wisdom of wine as royally controlled thus collides with private ownership of production documented at both Syrian sites and in Egyptian dockets and iconography from the same era. Paired with the low prices for wine documented in Hittite, Syrian, and Egyptian sources, the construct of wine as an enclaved luxury good gives way to the plausibility that wine was already a widely affordable commodity by ca. 1300 BCE, a change that correlates with increasingly developed exchange networks and maritime shipping innovations. The importance of wine—in its various economic, ritual and political purposes revealed by decades of research on commensality—is thus re-framed as a process with an older history in the Eastern Mediterranean than hitherto recognized.

With this contribution, I build on my collaboration with Bernard Knapp that resulted in the publication of the edited volume Material Connections (2010) to look back at a decade of publications and debate on the twin themes of connectivity and material culture. Most of all, this chapter also offers an opportunity to present emerging comprehensive results from seven years of fieldwork and finds study at nuraghe S’Urachi in west central Sardinia as a case study of what fresh data collected against explicit theoretical perspectives may bring to the ongoing connectivity debates. I discuss architectural, ceramic, zoological and botanical evidence from deposits covering the late 7th to 5th centuries BCE to argue that a concerted focus on people’s everyday lives is a sine qua non for understanding connectivity. The fieldwork at S’Urachi also offers robust support for my claim that connectivity was not a colonial prerogative and that colonial settlements should not be prioritized over their indigenous counterparts, as has all too often been the case.

Attempts to bring scientific climate data into dialogue with archaeological and historical evidence – a ‘consilient’ approach – are in many cases, given present data, more difficult than appreciated. To begin, there is often the initial challenge to relate timings with sufficient accuracy and precision to permit possible correlation. But, even if this is possible, correlation is not causation. This requires an explanatory narrative rooted in the specific social, economic and political context, in terms of impacts and effects on these inter-connected systems at the local and regional level. This paper considers aspects of the Late Bronze Age case in the east Mediterranean. It finds, as of early 2020 (when this paper was reviewed and revised), that for this topic we presently largely lack sufficient control of the timescale, yet alone an ability thus to address causation in any detail. More generally, the paper supports the view that the climate-history field needs to move from a relatively naive and “pervasive scientism” to an engaged historicism if we are ever fully to engage with the multifaceted relationships between climate and human history.

Among the ceramics excavated at the Tell Abu-Hawam Late Bronze anchorage was an unusual group at first identified as part of the enigmatic ‘Barbarian Ware’ family. Eventually it became clear that it is a member of the Cypriot cooking ware tradition. While the Eastern Mediterranean coastal cooking wares tend to be of the Canaanite tradition, those of the Cypriot tradition were also a substantial group of ceramics in the Domestic Quarter at Ugarit/Ras Shamra. The ware is identified, discussed and compared to materials observed at other coastal Eastern Mediterranean sites and Cyprus.

An anchorage at Maroni Tsaroukkas lies directly offshore from a late Cypriot complex along the south-central coast of Cyprus. Underwater survey of the anchorage was conducted in 1995-1996 as part of the Tsaroukkas, Mycenaeans and Trade Project as well as in 2017-2019 as part of the Kalavasos and Maroni Built Environments Project. The goals of the most recent survey were to determine the full extent of the anchorage and to implement new recording methodologies for accurate underwater survey. At the anchorage, a minimum of 70 anchors have been documented, alongside 11 stone blocks and over 400 ceramic sherds. Most notably, seven of these anchors are unfinished: roughly hewn into the shape of anchors with holes only partially carved. Very little is known about stone anchor manufacturing because few unfinished anchors or production sites have been documented. Therefore, the unfinished anchors at Tsaroukkas provide some of the only evidence for where sailors could have acquired their anchors and where anchors were carved. But, more than that, the anchors also attest to different scales of maritime trade when interpreted alongside the ceramic remains. Many of the unfinished anchors were found in close proximity to two assemblages of LCIA ceramics, indicating that this area might have been part of a terrestrial building complex, which is now submerged and being exposed by wave action. These two ceramic assemblages include locally produced ceramics, imports from other regions of Cyprus, and long-distance imports from the Levant and Egypt. Consequently, the remains at Tsaroukkas provide evidence not only for the production of anchors at a Late Bronze Age anchorage, which would have been a vital node in the supply chain of Bronze Age ships, but also for complex multi-scalar maritime trade networks in the Late Bronze Age.

This paper discusses some key concepts of maritime archaeology in the context of Late Roman Cyprus, namely maritime cultures, coast- and seascapes. On the basis of textual and archaeological evidence, as well as of contemporary geographical and meteorological features, it is argued that the island’s coastal zone should not be considered as a homogenous entity. Five possible coastscapes are distinguished with diverse connectivity attributes and seas with different names, according to texts of Roman geographers. This kind of information is related with the ancient mariners’ common sense geography, which, coupled with archaeological evidence from rural anchorages, can illuminate elements of ancient maritime cognitive landscapes. It is in this respect that underwater anchorage assemblages, located all along the Cypriot coast, are discussed in this paper. Most of the them were dated to multiple periods, but almost all had a strong Late Roman phase. This is not surprising, given the island’s prosperity during the three centuries of this period (5th – 7th centuries AD), which was coupled with an unprecedented peak in rural expansion and coastal activity. Despite the full exploitation of its maritime capacity, however, no major changes in established practices seem to have happened. Moreover, although there is no evidence to suggest that the island was rich in natural havens in antiquity, the location of anchorages at places completely unprotected today from the prevailing winds is intriguing. It indicates that that the shoreline was more sinuous before erosion eliminated small inlets, especially all along the south and the east coast. On this basis, this paper argues that Late Roman Cyprus shapes an ideal context for the study of the island’s maritime culture, in the longue durée.