Spatial and Social Discontinuities in Burial Practice and the Privatisation of Mortuary Space in Bronze Age Cyprus
Issue: Vol 31 No. 2 (2018)
Journal: Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology
Subject Areas: Ancient History Archaeology
DOI: 10.1558/jma.38083
Abstract:
This paper looks at spatial and social discontinuities in burial practice and in the intensity with which burial places became contested spaces in Bronze Age Cyprus. Early and Middle Bronze Age cemeteries are typically viewed as communal landscapes associated with ancestral claims to place and community, a process that involved varied levels of social negotiation and posturing linked at some sites with ritual and material culture elaboration and the likely use of some tombs as mortuary shrines. In the Late Bronze Age there was a shift, in some settlements, to intramural burial. This 'privatisation' of mortuary space has been linked with the rise of more rigid political and economic structures and the development of an 'urban mindset'. The public/private dichotomy across the Middle to Late Bronze Age transition, however, appears to have been overstated. While earlier, relatively fluid associations did give way to more structured relationships, likely reducing the need for community-wide strategies of affiliation, this did not happen evenly across the island and at many settlements it did not happen at all. The boundary between intraand extramural burial, furthermore, was never absolute and the inclusive egalitarian village cemetery may never have been a reality, with the dead perhaps always viewed as belonging to lineage groups rather than to a wider ancestral community. Variations in the place value of burial are visible throughout the Bronze Age and the apparent shift to intramural burial is likely to have been determined by historically contingent circumstances rather than changes in ideology or emerging notions of privacy or hierarchy.
Author: Jennifer M. Webb
References :
Adams, R.L., and S.M. King
2011 Residential burial in global perspective. Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association 20: 1-16. https://doi.org/10.
1111/j.1551-8248.2011.01024.x
Ashmore, W.
2002 ‘Decisions and dispositions’: socializing spatial archaeology. American Anthropologist 104: 1172-83. https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.2002.104.
4.1172
Barrett, J.C.
1988 The living, the dead and the ancestors: Neolithic and Early Bronze Age mortuary practices. In J.C. Barrett and I.A. Kinnes (eds.), The Archaeology of Context in the Neolithic and Bronze Age: Recent Trends, 30-56. Sheffield: J.R. Collis.
Baxevani, E.
1997 From settlement to cemetery burial: the ideology of death in the Early Bronze Age societies of Cyprus and Crete. In D. Christou (ed.), Cyprus and the Aegean in Antiquity: From the Prehistoric Period to the 7th Century A.D., 57-69. Nicosia: Department of Antiquities.
Bombardieri, L.
2017 Erimi Laonin tou Porakou: A Middle Bronze Age Community in Cyprus: Excavations 2008–2014. Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology 145. Uppsala: Astrom Editions.
Buikstra, J.E., and D.K. Charles
1999 Centering the ancestors: cemeteries, mounds, and sacred landscapes in the ancient North American midcontinent. In W. Ashmore and A.B. Knapp (eds.), Archaeologies of Landscape: Contemporary Perspectives, 201-28. Oxford: Blackwell.
Canuto, M.A., and J. Yaeger
2000 The Archaeology of Communities: A New World Perspective. London and New York: Routledge.
Catapoti, D.
2014 Beyond the general and the particular: rethinking death, memory and belonging in Early Bronze Age Crete. In A.B. Knapp and P. van Dommelen (eds.), The Cambridge Prehistory of the Bronze and Iron Age Mediterranean, 525-39. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CHO9781139028387.038
Catling, H.W.
1962 Patterns of settlement in Bronze Age Cyprus. Opuscula Atheniensia 4: 129-69.
Chapman, J.
2000 Fragmentation in Archaeology: People, Places, and Broken Objects in the Prehistory of South-eastern Europe. London and New York: Routledge.
Charles, D.K., and J.E. Buikstra
2002 Siting, sighting, and citing the dead. In H. Silverman and D.B. Small (eds.), The Space and Place of Death. Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association 11: 13-26. Arlington, Virginia: American Anthropological Association.
Crewe, L.
2007 Early Enkomi: Regionalism, Trade and Society at the Beginning of the Late Bronze Age on Cyprus. British Archaeological Reports, International Series 1706. Oxford: Archaeopress.
2009 Feasting with the dead? Tomb 66 at Enkomi. In T. Kiely (ed.), Ancient Cyprus in the British Museum: Essays in Honour of Veronica Tatton-Brown. British Museum Research Publication 180: 27-48. London: The British Museum.
Cuozzo, M.
2014 The violence of symbols: ideologies, identity, and cultural interaction in central Italian cemeteries. In A.B. Knapp and P. van Dommelen (eds.), The Cambridge Prehistory of the Bronze and Iron Age Mediterranean, 585-603. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dalton, M.N.
2007 The Egkomi Mapping Project, Report of the Department of Antiquities, Cyprus: 157-74.
Dikaios, P.
1969 Enkomi. Excavations 1948–1958 I. The Architectural Remains: The Tombs IIIa. Mainz am Rheim: Verlag Philipp von Zabern.
Fischer, P.M., and T. Bürge
2017 Tombs and offering pits at the Late Bronze Age metropolis of Hala Sultan Tekke, Cyprus. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 377: 161-218. https://doi.org/10.5615/bullamerschoorie.377.0161
Fisher, K.D.
2009 Elite place-making and social interaction in the Late Cypriot Bronze Age. Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 22: 183-209.
2014a Investigating monumental social space in Late Bronze Age Cyprus: an integrative approach. In E. Paliou, U. Lieberwirth and S. Polla (eds.), Spatial Analysis and Social Spaces: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Interpretation of Historic and Prehistoric Built Environments, 167-202, Berlin: De Gruyter.
2014b Rethinking the Late Cypriot built environment: households and communities as places of social transformation. In A.B. Knapp and P. van Dommelen (eds.), The Cambridge Prehistory of the Bronze and Iron Age Mediterranean, 399-416. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
2014c The creation and experience of monumentality on protohistoric Cyprus. In J.F. Osborne (ed.), Approaching Monumentality in Archaeology, 355-83. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press.
Frankel, D., and J.M. Webb
1996 Marki Alonia. An Early and Middle Bronze Age Town in Cyprus: Excavations 1990–1994. Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology 123.1. Jonsered, Sweden: Paul Åströms Förlag.
2006 Marki Alonia. An Early and Middle Bronze Age Settlement in Cyprus: Excavations 1995–2000. Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology 123.2. Sävedalen, Sweden: Paul Åströms Forlag.
2007 The Bronze Age Cemeteries at Deneia in Cyprus. Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology 135. Sävedalen, Sweden: Paul Åströms Förlag.
2012 Household continuity and transformation in a prehistoric Cypriot village. In B.J. Parker and C.P. Foster (eds.), New Perspectives in Household Archaeology, 473-500. Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns.
Georgiou, G.
2007 The Topography of Human Settlement in Cyprus during the Early and Middle Bronze Age (in Greek). Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus.
2013 1955–2013: The necropolis of Nicosia Ayia Paraskevi almost 60 years after Stewart’s excavations. In A.B. Knapp, J.M. Webb and A. McCarthy (eds.), J.R.B Stewart: An Archaeological Legacy on Cyprus. Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology 139: 81-90. Uppsala: Åströms Förlag.
Georgiou, G., J.M. Webb and D. Frankel
2011 Psematismenos-Trelloukkas. An Early Bronze Age Cemetery in Cyprus. Nicosia: Department of Antiquities, Cyprus.
Gluckman, M.
1937 Mortuary customs and the belief in survival after death among the south-eastern Bantu. Bantu Studies 11: 117-36. https://doi.org/10.1080/02561751.1937.9676046
Harmanşah O.
2014 Introduction: towards an archaeology of place. In O. Harmanşah (ed.), Of Rocks and Water: Towards an Archaeology of Place, 12. Oxford: Oxbow Books.
Hennessy, J.B., K.O. Eriksson and I.C. Kehrberg
1988 Ayia Paraskevi and Vasilia: Excavations by J.R.B. Stewart. Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology 82. Göteborg: Paul Åströms Förlag.
Janes, S.
2014 An entangled past: island interactions, mortuary practices and the negotiation of identities on Early Iron Age Cyprus. In A.B. Knapp and P. van Dommelen (eds.), The Cambridge Prehistory of the Bronze and Iron Age Mediterranean, 571-84. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CHO9781139028387.041
Johnstone, W.
1971 A Late Bronze Age tholos tomb at Enkomi. In C.F.-A. Schaeffer (ed.), Alasia 1. Mission Archeologique d’Alasia 4: 51-122. Paris: Klincksieck.
Keswani, P.S.
1996 Hierarchies, heterarchies, and urbanization processes: the view from Bronze Age Cyprus. Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 9: 211-50. https://doi.org/10.1558/jmea.v9i2.211
2004 Mortuary Ritual and Society in Bronze Age Cyprus. Monographs in Mediterranean Archaeology 9. London: Equinox.
2005 Death, prestige and copper in Bronze Age Cyprus. American Journal of Archaeology 109: 341-401. https://doi.org/10.3764/aja.109.3.
341
2007 Beyond emulation and hierarchy: diverse expressions of social identity in Late Cypriot mortuary ritual. In S. Antoniadou and A. Pace (eds.), Mediterranean Crossroads, 509-35. Athens: Pierides Foundation.
2012a Mortuary practices and burial cults in Cyprus from the Bronze Age through the Iron Age. In G. Cadogan, M. Iacovou, K. Kopaka and J. Whitley (eds.), Parallel Lives: Ancient Island Societies in Crete and Cyprus. British School at Athens Studies 20: 313-22. London: The British School at Athens.
2012b Urban mortuary practices at Enkomi and Ugarit in the second millennium B.C. In H. Niehr, E. Pernicka and P. Pfälzner (eds.), (Re-)Constructing Funerary Rituals in the Ancient Near East. Qatna Studien 1: 183-203. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.
Knapp, A.B.
2009 Monumental architecture, identity and memory. In A. Kyriatsoulis (ed.), Bronze Age Architectural Tradition in the East Mediterranean: Diffusion and Diversity, 47-59. Munich: Verein zur Förderung der Aufarbeitung der Hellenischen Geschichte.
2013 The Archaeology of Cyprus: From Earliest Prehistory through the Bronze Age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Laneri, N.
2011 A family affair: the use of intramural funerary chambers in Mesopotamia during the late third and early second millennia B.C.E. In R.L. Adams and S.M. King (eds.), Residential Burial: A Multiregional Exploration. Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association 20: 121-35. Malden, Massachusetts: Wiley-Blackwell.
Lillios, K.T.
2014 Crossing borders: death and life in second millennium bc southern Iberia and North Africa. In A.B. Knapp and P. van Dommelen (eds.), The Cambridge Prehistory of the Bronze and Iron Age Mediterranean, 554-70. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CHO9781139028387.040
Manning, S.W.
2013 Appendix: a new radiocarbon chronology for prehistoric and protohistoric Cyprus, ca. 11,000–1050 Cal bc. In A.B. Knapp, The Archaeology of Cyprus: From Earliest Prehistory through the Bronze Age, 485-533. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
2014 Becoming urban: investigating the anatomy of the Late Bronze Age complex, Maroni, Cyprus. Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 27: 3-32. https://doi.org/10.1558/jmea.v27i1.3
McAnany, P.A.
1995 Living with the Ancestors: Kinship and Kingship in Ancient Maya Society. Austin: University of Texas Press.
1998 Ancestors and the Classic Maya built environment. In S.D. Houston (ed.), Function and Meaning in Classic Maya Architecture, 271-98. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks.
2011 Practices of place-making, ancestralizing, and re-animation within memory communities. In R.L. Adams and S.M. King (eds.), Residential Burial: A Multiregional Exploration. Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association 20: 136-42. Malden, Massachusetts: Wiley-Blackwell.
Merrillees, R.S.
1973 Settlement, sanctuary and cemetery in Bronze Age Cyprus. In J. Birmingham (ed.), The Cypriot Bronze Age: Some Recent Contributions to the Prehistory of Cyprus. Australian Studies in Archaeology 1: 44-57. Sydney: Department of Archaeology, University of Sydney.
Morris, I.
1991 The archaeology of ancestors: the Saxe/Goldstein hypothesis revisited. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 1: 147-69. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774300000330
Murphy, E. (ed.)
2008 Deviant Burial in the Archaeological Record. Oxford: Oxbow Books.
Shields, R.
1991 Places on the Margin: Alternative Geographies of Modernity. London and New York: Routledge.
Sneddon, A.C.
2002 The Cemeteries at Marki: Using a Looted Landscape to Investigate Prehistoric Bronze Age Cyprus. British Archaeological Reports, International Series 1028. Oxford: Archaeopress.
2015 Revisiting Alambra Mouttes: defining the spatial configuration and social relations of a prehistoric Bronze Age settlement in Cyprus. Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 28: 141-70. https://doi.org/10.1558/jmea.v28i2.29529
Steel, L., and S. Thomas
2008 Excavations at Arediou-Vouppes (Lithosouros), Cyprus: an interim report on excavations 2005–2006. Report of the Department of Antiquities, Cyprus: 227-49.
Swiny, S.
1997 The Early Bronze Age. In The History of Cyprus I. Ancient Cyprus, 171-212. Nicosia: Archbishop Makarios III Foundation, Office of Cypriot History.
2003 The settlement. In S. Swiny, G. Rapp and E. Herscher (eds.), Sotira Kamindoudhia: An Early Bronze Age Site in Cyprus. Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute Monograph Series 4: 9-101. Boston: American Schools of Oriental Research.
2008 Of cows, copper, corners and cult: the emergence of the Cypriot Bronze Age. Near Eastern Archaeology 71: 41–51
Swiny, S., and E. Herscher
2003 The cemetery. In S. Swiny, G. Rapp and E. Herscher (eds.), Sotira Kamindoudhia: An Early Bronze Age Site in Cyprus. Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute Monograph Series 4: 103-44. Boston: American Schools of Oriental Research.
Todd, I.A.
2013 Vasilikos Valley Project XII. The Field Survey of the Vasilikos Valley III. Human Settlement in the Vasilikos Valley. Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology 71.12. Sävedalen, Sweden: Åströms Förlag.
Webb, J.M.
1999 Ritual Architecture, Iconography and Practice in the Late Cypriot Bronze Age. Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology and Literature Pocket-book 75. Göteborg: Paul Åströms Förlag.
2010 The ceramic industry of Deneia: crafting community and place in Middle Bronze Age Cyprus. In D.L. Bolger and L. Maguire (eds.), The Development of Pre-state Communities in the Ancient Near East: Studies in Honour of Edgar Peltenburg, 174-82. Oxford: Oxbow Books.
2014 Ritual as the setting for contentious interaction: from social negotiation to institutionalised authority in Bronze Age Cyprus. In A.B. Knapp and P. van Dommelen (eds.), The Cambridge Prehistory of the Bronze and Iron Age Mediterranean, 619-34. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CHO9781139028387.045
2016a Lapithos revisited: a fresh look at a key Middle Bronze Age site in Cyprus. In G. Bourogiannis and C. Muhlenbock (eds.), Ancient Cyprus Today: Museum Collections and New Research. Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology Pocket-book 184: 57-67. Uppsala: Åströms Förlag.
2016b Pots and people: an investigation of individual and collective identities in Early Bronze Age Cyprus. In M. Mina, S. Triantaphyllou and Y. Papadatos (eds.), An Archaeology of Prehistoric Bodies and Embodied Identities in the Eastern Mediterranean, 55-62. Oxford: Oxbow Books.
2017 Lapithos Tomb 322: voice, context and the archaeological record. In E. Minchin and H. Jackson (eds.), Text and the Material World: Essays in Honour of Graeme Clarke. Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology Pocket-book 185: 1-12. Uppsala: Astrom Editions.
2018 Shifting centres: site location and resource procurement on the north coast of Cyprus over the longue durée of the prehistoric Bronze Age. In G. Papantoniou and A. Vionis (eds.), Central Places and Un-central Landscapes: Political Economies and Natural Resources in the Longue Durée. Land 7(2): Art. 64; https://doi.org/10.3390/land7020064
Webb, J.M., and D. Frankel
1999 Characterizing the Philia facies: material culture, chronology, and the origin of the Bronze Age in Cyprus. American Journal of Archaeology 103: 3-43. https://doi.org/10.2307/506576
2010 Social strategies, ritual and cosmology in Early Bronze Age Cyprus: an investigation of burial data from the north coast. Levant 42: 185-209. https://doi.org/10.1179/175638010X12797237885776
2013 Cultural regionalism and divergent social trajectories in Early Bronze Age Cyprus. American Journal of Archaeology 117: 59-81. https://doi.org/10.3764/aja.117.1.0059
2015 Coincident biographies: bent and broken blades in Bronze Age Cyprus. In K. Harrell and J. Driessen (eds.), Damaged Goods: Contextualising Intentional Destruction of Objects in the Bronze Age Aegean and Cyprus. Aegis 9: 117-42. Louvain: Presses universitaires de Louvain.
Webb, J.M., D. Frankel, K.O. Eriksson and J.B. Hennessy
2009 The Bronze Age Cemeteries at Karmi Palealona and Lapatsa in Cyprus: Excavations by J.R.B. Stewart. Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology 136. Sävedalen, Sweden: Åströms Förlag.
Weissner, P.
1983 Style and ethnicity in the Kalahari San projectile point. American Antiquity 48: 253-76. https://doi.org/10.2307/280450