Mortuary Ritual and Society in Bronze Age Cyprus - (Volume 9) - Priscilla Keswani
The Early and Middle Bronze Age
Mortuary Ritual and Society in Bronze Age Cyprus - (Volume 9) - Priscilla Keswani
Priscilla Keswani [+]
Independent Scholar
Priscilla Keswani received her Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Michigan in 1989 and has taught at Washington State University and the Borough of Manhattan Community College. She has participated in archaeological field projects in Cyprus for many years and published a number of scholarly papers on Bronze Age burial practices, political organization, exchange systems, and pottery.
Description
The Early and Middle Bronze periods in Cyprus pose a major contrast to the preceding Chalcolithic era in almost every aspect of material culture and socioeconomic life. The chapter argues that Early Cypriot and Middle Cypriot mortuary practices evolved into a unique and locally rooted system that may initially have distinguished but ultimately united communities of recent immigrants and older inhabitants in a broadly shared complex of social representations and ancestral ideologies. Moreover, it introduces programs of mortuary ritual, patterns in burial group composition, as well as the origins and elaboration of the EC-MC chamber tomb tradition.