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Settlement on Cyprus in the 7th and 8th Century
William R. Caraher, University of North Dakota R. Scott Moore,
Indiana University of Pennsylvania
Introduction
The 7th and 8th centuries on Cyprus remain a vexing period for
historians and archaeologists
alike. The obscure nature of the historical narrative for this
period has provided an opportunity for archaeology to fill the gap
in our understanding of the history of the island. To do that,
archaeologists have reconsidered the traditional view of these
centuries on Cyprus as a period of economic, demographic, and
cultural decline reflective of the large-scale disruptions in the
Eastern Mediterranean.1 The needs of the capital in Constantinople
and the military in both the Balkans and the Levant enlivened the
economic networks that engaged the island and the region during the
6th and 7th centuries. These same networks, however, reeled under
the collapse of Roman political hegemony. Wars, plagues, and
various official efforts to resettle disruptive or displaced
populations reshaped the population of the Roman Mediterranean and
invariably had an impact on the organization of settlement. In the
traditional narrative of Mediterranean history in the 7th and 8th
centuries, these economic and demographic changes had a profound
impact on the urban fabric, on architectural innovation, and on the
extent and intensity of rural settlement.2 On Cyprus, Arab raids
during the middle decades of the 7th century presented a local
anchor to the larger narrative of Mediterranean disruption and
decline at the end of Roman antiquity. Further complicating the
events of this period is the complex political situation on the
island which may have seen some kind of joint Byzantine and Arab
control or at least taxation of the island, as well as the presence
of an Arab garrison.
A circular reading of archaeological evidence from the island
has tended to reinforce a traditional
picture of the 7th and 8th century as a period of disruption and
change. Archaeologists frequently attribute destruction layers at
Late Roman sites on the island to the depredations of the Arabs.3
Scholars have used the Arab raids to explain the abandonment of the
major urban site of Kourion on the central coast.4 They have long
attributed to Arab raids the destruction of churches across the
island, from the rural basilica complex at Alassa,5 to the multiple
churches of the community at Ay. Georgios-Peyia,6 the coastal
church of Maroni-Petrera,7 or at the site studied by the authors of
this volume at Pyla-Koutsopetria on Larnaka Bay.8 The
transformation of wood-roofed basilicas to barrel-vaulted churches
has become emblematic of the Cypriot response to the destruction
caused by the Arab raids.9 In most cases, the date for the
destruction of these buildings rests on the coincidence of
ceramics, coins, and the historical narrative. Archaeological
artifacts that should provide a terminus post quem consistently
reinforce attributions to specific historical events rather than
more
1 Metcalf 2009, 573-575 for a summary of the traditional
perspective. 2 See Haldon and Brubaker 2011, 531-572 for the most
recent survey of these centuries. 3 Papageorghiou 1985 for the
effect of Arab raids on the basilica churches on the island. 4
Megaw 1993, but since revised in Megaw 2007. 5 Florentzos 1996, 2.
6 Bakirtsis 1995; Papacostas 2001 7 Manning 2002 8 Christou 9 Megaw
1946; See Stewart 2010 for a critical evaluation of this
traditional view and a summary of subsequent scholarship.
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chronologically indistinct historical processes. The tendency to
associate the end of these sites with the Arab raids has produced a
largely monocausal argument for a seemingly abrupt transformation
of the settlement on Cyprus.
Over the past two decades, however, scholars have become
increasingly skeptical of the
monocausal explanation for the 7th century settlement change.
For example, Marcus Rautmans study of the village site of Kopetra
in the Kalavassos Valley argued that the site depended upon the
integrated economy and administrative influences of Roman hegemony
in the Eastern Mediterranean which facilitated the export of
agricultural products from the island and support of mining
operations in the copper rich Troodos mountains.10 The abandonment
of the settlement in the late-7th century represented the
disruption of economic and political networks brought about by the
Arab conquest of the Levant, incursions on the island, and
activities in Cilicia in Asia Minor. The decline of Kopetra, in
this context, was a local adaptation to the changing place of
Cyprus in the political and economic life of the region.
The following contribution to this discussion shares more with
Rautmans perspectives than the
traditional views. It will locate the transitional 7th and 8th
centuries, first, in a regional context and then as a series of
archaeological problems. The regional situation and archaeological
context provides the basis for some generalizations about urban and
rural settlement on Cyprus supported by specific examples. Recent
work by L. Zavagno, D. Metcalf, T. Papacostas, M. Rautman, and
others provide a comprehensive and sophisticated reading of the
problems and prospects associated with analyzing this period in the
archaeological record and these efforts provide a solid guide for
this work.11 We have avoided sustained discussion of the complex
literary sources for these centuries and have focused on the
complexities of the archaeological record with the understanding
that the material culture of the island can tell a complementary,
but independent story of these opaque centuries. The picture that
arises from the lacunose and problematic archaeological perspective
for these centuries is of a population that adapted longstanding
networks and settlement patterns to contingent economic and
political situations on the island.
The Regional Context for Settlement on Cyprus
As the contributions to this volume demonstrate, larger patterns
exist in settlement of the 6th-
8th century Mediterranean. Increased attention to later levels
at urban sites, the expansion of intensive pedestrian survey, and
growing interest in rural sites ranging from fortifications to
villages have created a landscape that is far more complex than
earlier narratives of decline have suggested. This recent work has
provided not just a historical and archaeological context for the
period on Cyprus, but also a growing terminology for
reconceptualizing the transformation of settlement.12 As scholars
like A. Dunn and M. Veikou have noted,13 the changing character of
settlement has confounded expectations grounded in the study of
ancient landscapes. For example, there is reason to suspect that
the 7th century saw the blurring of the distinction between urban
and rural sites, the emergence of new kinds of rural sites, such as
monasteries, without clear antecedents in earlier periods, and the
end of settlement types, like market towns, associated with the
last great flourishing
10 Rautman 2003, 235-262. 11 Zavagno 2009, 2011, 2011-2012,
2013; Metcalf 2009; Papacostas 1999, 2001; Rautman 2003. 12 Haldon
and Brubaker 2011. 13 Viekou 2009, 2010; Dunn 1994, 1997, 2005;
Haldon and Brubaker 2011, 533.
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of Roman economic activity in the Eastern Mediterranean. This
new landscape did not coincide neatly with earlier landscapes
either in terms of types of settlement or their extent.
Haldon and Brubakers magisterial overview of society in the
iconoclast era provides a point of
departure for any consideration of 7th and 8th century
settlement in the Eastern Mediterranean.14 While emphasizing
regional variation, they nevertheless identify significant changes
to the economic and political foundations of settlement across the
region. Urbanism of the Late Roman period witnessed the last great
investment in urban space in antiquity with the construction of
churches, baths, fountains, and walls, and the transformation of
roads, amenities, and public spaces that adapted urban space to the
values and needs of the Late Roman community. Against the backdrop
of flourishing Late Roman urbanism, the 7th century saw a seemingly
rapid decline in the size, complexity, and economic prominence of
urban areas throughout the Balkans and Anatolia, revealing the
impact of demographic decline, military instability, and economic
disintegration across the region. Communities across Asia Minor and
the Aegean witnessed the ravages of the recurrent Justinianic
plague as well as military insecurity brought about by the Persian
War and the growing threat of Slavic and Arab raids of the 7th and
8th centuries. As a result, cities contracted in area and
constructed fortified enceintes enclosing only a small area of the
earlier city. The economic and administrative prominence of urban
areas likely persisted, but at a reduced scale as military
instability undermined longstanding economic relationships between
urban areas and local and distant markets. The transformation of
the highly urbanized world of Late Antiquity represented a crucial
nexus of administrative, economic, political, and social
change.
The overall impact of these interrelated trends on the structure
of settlement varied across the
Early Byzantine world with some areas like Anatolia and the
southern Balkans seeing the rise of highly nucleated, fortified
cities, the displacement of urban populations to more dispersed
settlements, or the disappearance of urban areas almost entirely.
Cyprus remained insulated, but not isolated from these trends. The
military disruptions and contraction of urban space and populations
in Cilicia and Pisidia over the course of the 7th century almost
certainly led to the decline in nearby markets for Cypriot
commodities and trade in the region more generally.15 Likewise, the
more complex disruptions in the northern Levant, particularly
Antioch and environs, had an impact on regional markets.16 Even
when these disruptions did not affect urban areas on Cyprus
directly, as the cities on the island appear to enjoyed stability
until middle decades of the 7th century, they did destabilize the
longstanding economic, political, social, and even military
relationships between communities in the Eastern Mediterranean.
The transformation of the urban world in the 7th and 8th
centuries accompanied changes in the
structure of rural settlement. While rural life in the 5th and
6th centuries boomed alongside urban prosperity across most the
Eastern Mediterranean, scholars have long recognized a steep
decline in rural communities starting in the late 6th century in
the Balkans and continuing into the 7th century in Asia Minor and
the Levant.17 Fortifications appeared alongside or in the place of
rural farms and villages either as the home for garrisons or as
places of refuge for local populations rendered vulnerable by the
military instability of the borders.18 At the same time, detecting
the rise of villages
14 Haldon and Brubaker 2011. 15 Decker and Kingsley 2001. 16
Casana 2014. 17 Bowden and Lavan 2003. 18 Dunn 2005.
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as both centers of settlement and as the basic unit for the
emerging Byzantine economy has played a key role in efforts by
scholars to find the leading edge in the reorganization of
productive landscape in the post-antique era. Unfortunately,
relatively few rural sites have seen systematic excavation in the
Eastern Mediterranean and intensive pedestrian survey has struggled
to distinguish monasteries, villages, and rural churches, in the
archaeological record.19 While the regional perspectives offered by
intensive survey hold forth the potential to produce a Byzantine
landscape, at present the limitations of our methods have obscured
our ability to identify consistently the surface signatures of
short-term activities. Some of this has to do with ongoing
difficulties recognizing and dating 7th and 8th century ceramics on
the surface as various authors in this volume have noted and we
will discuss in greater detail later. It also involves our
difficulty in recognizing the signatures of small sites or
short-term occupation on the surface in any period.20 The ambiguity
associated with the basic structures of rural life during a
particularly dynamic period in Mediterranean history has led M.
Veikou to argue for the existence of new forms of settlement, third
spaces, in the landscape that subvert and defy the traditional
categories of settlement linked to Classical understandings of
rural and urban and monumental or temporary.21 Recognizing, for
example, evidence for occasional squatting or buildings made of
non-permanent materials like wood or mud brick on the surface
remains a challenge for understanding contingent activities in the
landscape.
Constructing a normative view of the Late Antique or Early
Byzantine countryside remains
difficult. Traditional notions of decline, contraction, and
abandonment have given way to more nuanced and regional
perspectives that complicate any universalizing perspectives.22 At
the same time, we are more aware of the interconnections or, to use
Horden and Purcells term, connectivity between micoregions, sites,
and communities in the Mediterranean basin.23 A systemic approach
to understanding the effects of instability of on interdependent
and connected communities reminds us how insular places like Cyprus
can nevertheless feel the effects of larger changes in prosperity
or integration elsewhere in the network. Indeed, the insularity of
Cyprus, in a literal sense, ensured its entrenched position within
a large and complex Mediterranean system and contributed both to
the islands resilience as well as its vulnerability to economic,
political, and social change in the region.24
Evidence for Settlement on Cyprus
Nowhere is the integrated position of Cyprus in the Eastern
Mediterranean more clear than in
the archaeological evidence for settlement. Traditionally,
scholars have relied on the careful study of ceramics, coins and
seals, and architecture to provide evidence for the extent and
character of settlement. These objects also represent the degree to
which Cyprus was integrated into a regional social and economic
system. Thus, each type of evidence presents its own interrelated
challenges that shape the kinds of landscape that these types of
artifact produce. The material culture provides evidence by analogy
for settlement as well as evidence for the connectivity and
economic strategies at play among the island communities.
Ceramics 19 Sanders 2004 for a summary of many of these issues.
20 E.g. Bintliff et al. 1999. 21 Veikou 2009. 22 Kourelis 2010. 23
Horden and Purcell 2000. 24 Leonard 2005.
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Ceramic evidence plays a key role in dating settlements,
establishing local and regional trade
connections, and understanding production within the Cypriot
economy. Fortunately, the last four decades have seen a massive
improvement in our ability to unpack the significance of ceramic
assemblages on Cyprus. The publication of production sites both on
Cyprus and in the wider region as well as significant assemblages
from sites like Anemurium on the Cilician coast have provided a
regional context for Cypriot assemblages.25 On Cyprus, excavators
have systematically published a range of deposits including both
urban centers at Paphos and Kourion and more rural sites like
Kalavassos-Kopetra, Panayia-Ematousa, and Dhiorios.26 Furthermore,
survey projects and less systematic publications offer a
substantial and diverse body of ceramic material from both major
sites and landscapes across the island.27 Finally, there is a
wealth of important material still awaiting publication from both
major sites whose excavations were disrupted by the 1974 invasion
and the salvage excavation of dozens of basilicas and significant
coastal sites at Pyla-Koutsopetria, Dreamers Bay,28 and Ay.
Georgios-Peyia,29 as well as a growing number of shipwrecks.30 The
distribution and chronology of ceramics on Cyprus provides a key
indicator of settlement as well as the integration of the island in
the wider economy.
Since the publication of John Hayes magisterial Late Roman
Pottery, our appreciation and
understanding of Late Roman fine wares in the Mediterranean has
much more solid footing.31 The continuous, incremental revision of
Hayess founding efforts have pushed the latest types of most common
Late Roman red slips - Phocaean red slip (Late Roman C), African
red slip, and Cypriot red slip (Late Roman D) ware - well into the
7th and even 8th century. The continued circulation of these red
slips has been central to arguments for the persistence of
Mediterranean trade and the production of red slipped fine wares
for over a century longer than traditional assessments. For
example, well-forms of Cypriot red slip (LRD) from Anemurium date
to middle decades of the 7th century.32 P. Armstrong, following H.
Catlings excavations at Dhiorios on Cyprus,33 has reminded us that
certain LRD forms including the common and long-lived Form 9 have
appeared in contexts dated securely to the middle decades of the
8th century.34 The recent publication of kilns nearby in Pamphylia
indicates that LRD ware was not produced exclusively on Cyprus and
may have entered the island on the western side and circulated
across the island from there.35 Sites further east have LRC and
African red slip in higher percentages than those to the west.
The production of various kinds of utility wares across the
island reflects a range of different
production strategies and economic networks. The best-known
kilns at Dhiorios appear to have produced cooking wares for both
local use and regional exchange at least until the 8th
century.36
25 William 1989. 26 Paphos: Meyza 2007; Kourion: Hayes 2007;
Kopetra: Rautman 2004, Panayia-Ematousa: Lund 2006, Jacobsen 2006;
Dhiorios: Catling 1972. 27 Manning 2002; Flourentzos 1996; Lund
1993; Moore and Gregory 2003; Catling 1970. 28 Leonard and
Demesticha 2004 29 Bakirtsis 1995; 1996. 30 The Wanger 2013. 31
Hayes 1972. 32 Williams 1977. 33 Catling 1972. 34 Armstrong 2009.
N.B. H. Meyza has muddied the waters by arguing that some of the
traditionally late forms of LRD could also appear early. 35 Jackson
et al. 2012. 36 Calting 1972; Armstrong 2009.
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Like LRD fine wares, Dhiorios ware are diagnostic and seem to
appear more consistently in assemblages on the western half of the
island than in the eastern parts. On a more local scale, M. Rautman
has identified a class of handmade wares that were almost certainly
produced on a household or village level for very local
consumption.37 At the village site of Kalavassos-Kopetra, these
vessels appeared in contexts contemporary with imported fine wares
like African red slip and locally produced cooking wares from
Dhiorios in the 7th century.38 The contemporaneity of
transmediterranean, regional, and local pottery has complicated our
chronological assumptions about the development and access to
various ceramic types on the island.
Perhaps the best known and most widely distributed ceramic type
from the island is Late Roman
1 amphora.39 As S. Demesticha describes in greater detail
elsewhere in this volume, the third generation of LR1 amphoras with
clearly 7th century dates circulated widely in the Eastern
Mediterranean and most likely reflected, at least in part, an
administrative convenience tied to the provisioning the military.40
It is clear that these amphora and their variants such as the
widely produced LR13, circulated into the 8th century suggesting
that at least some of the administrative and economic connections
of the empire persisted into the Byzantine world.41
Coins and Seals
The challenges associated with understanding the significance of
Late Roman coins from
excavated contexts on Cyprus is well-known, but rarely
discussed. Coins frequently serve to date the abandonment or
destruction of buildings in the 7th century and are assumed to be
the latest object in a level, fill, or on a surface.
Archaeologically, this is a problematic assumption stemming in
large part from the unimpeachable chronological authority of the
coin as a dated object. Unlike ceramic chronologies which have
proven particularly fluid in Late Antiquity, coins would appear to
associate archaeological features with political figures and
events. At the same time, coins remain dependent on supply, and
during periods of economic instability, archaeologists have to
consider most carefully the relationship between the frequency of
coins in circulation and their tendency to appear in archaeological
contexts.42
This is particularly significant for Cyprus where issues of
Heraclius and Constans II have often
played an outsized role in the dating of archaeological events
on the island.43 Not only did Heraclius briefly mint coins on the
island from 608-610 when he used the island as a staging area for
his revolt,44 but also during his reign troops cycled through
Cyprus to his campaigns during the Persian War in the Levant. The
frequency of coins dating to the reign of Heraclius and his
successor Constans II to pay troops staged on Cyprus contrasts
strongly with the nearly absolute collapse of currency supply in
the final quarter of the 7th century.45 The disruption of regional
mints owing to 37 Rautman 1998. 38 Rautman 2004; Rautman 2003, 212.
39 Riley 1979 and 1981. 40 Elton 2005: Demesticha 2013, 176. 41
Armstrong 2009. 42 For recent survey of numismatic evidence for the
7th century on Cyprus see: Zavagno 2011 and Metcalf 2009, 159-181.
For issues related to the use of coins in dating see Slane and
Sanders 2005; Sanders 2005. 43 A quick survey of R. Maguires 2012
catalogue of churches on Cyprus produced nearly a dozen churches
dated by coins of Heraclius or Constans II. This is not limited to
Cyprus, of course, but is an issue throughout the Levant, see:
Walmsley 2007. 44 Metcalf 2009, 159-161. 45 Metcalf 2009,
148-158.
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the Arab conquests resulted in an almost singular dependence of
Cyprus on currency minted in Constantinople. Moreover, disruptions
to the regional economy and the ambiguous condominium arrangement
on the island all contributed to a massive drop in the number of
large, easily recognized coins available on the island.46
The significance of this situation is that we should approach
buildings dated on the basis of
coins alone and, in particular coins of Heraclius and his
successor with renewed caution. The presence or absence of coins
within an archaeological context reflects more complex processes
than archaeologists have sometimes allowed. The irregular supply of
currency to the island in the last decades of the 7th century poses
a challenge to dating levels based on coins as well as
understanding the economic and political integration of the island.
The date of the rural site of Kornos cave, for example, has been
dated on the basis of a coin early in the third year of Contans IIs
reign, although the investigator of the cave admitted that a date
as late as the early 8th century was possible, he preferred to
associated the cave with the Arab raids of the 650s.47 As D.
Metcalf has shown, lead seals have demonstrate that the island
remained connected to administrative structure of the Byzantine
state.48 In fact, a small group of seals from the coast near Polis
have suggested that the northwestern part of the island remained in
contact with the Byzantine fleet stationed along the Cilician coast
as late as the end of the 8th century49. G. Sanders offers a
possible solution to this by suggesting that the seeming absence of
numismatic evidence might reflect circulation of very small issues
common in the 7th and 8th centuries which would have slipped
through typical 1 cm sieves unnoticed unlike the larger imperial
currency of the 6th and 7th centuries.50 The smaller coins served
local residents and represent a resilient, if ultimately more local
economy that remained monetized, but in a way that benefited
small-scale exchange rather than the consistent influx of imperial
funds. Until we have more systematic study of small issues, the
value of coins for dating the transformation of settlement on
Cyprus will remain limited and the continued dependence of large
imperial issues reveals the codependence of connectivity and
archaeological visibility that shaped the value of ceramics in our
understanding of settlement in these tumultuous centuries.
Architecture
Identifying architecture datable to the 7th and 8th centuries on
the island remains bound up in
issues of ceramic chronology and our use of coins. The
traditional narrative saw the Arab raids destroying many of the
traditional wood-roofed basilicas on the island. Scholars have
argued that communities rebuilt some of these buildings after the
destruction and, in a handful of cases, changed from wood roofs to
barrel vaults. This phenomenon is most evident on the Karpas
peninsula where a well-documented group of these churches stand:
Panagia Chrysiotissa (Afentrika), Asomatos church (Afentrika), Agia
Varvara (Koroveia), Panagia Afentrika (Sykhada), and Panagia
Kanakari (Lythrankomi). These churches have attracted significant
scholarly attention,51 but there is no stratigraphic or
archaeological study of these buildings, and they remain dated on a
basis of style and historical probability. A similar process of
barrel-vaulting appears to have occurred at the south basilica at
Polis-Chrysochous in northwest Cyprus. Recent archaeological work
has securely dated
46 Zavagno 2011 for the problems associated with identifying
Arab coins consistently. 47 Catling 1970. 48 Metcalf 2009; Metcalf
2004. 49 Metcalf 2009, 101-102. 50 Sanders 2005. 51 Most recently
Stewart 2010 with references. See, in particular, Megaw 1946.
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this transformation to the second half of the 7th century.52 It
remains impossible, however, to associate the building with a
specific historical event like the Arab raids.
There exists only a handful of buildings that can be clearly
associated with the Arab raids. The
most dramatic example comes from Soloi where a long inscription
dedicated the reconstruction of the basilica after it was damaged
during the Arab raids.53 At Paphos, there are a series of poorly
preserved buildings near the Limeniotissa basilica which featured
Arabic inscriptions. One of these buildings used spolia from the
Limeniotissa church and featured a series of Arabic inscriptions
suggesting that this entire neighborhood postdated the Arab
invasions and garrison in Paphos.54 At Salamis-Constantia it
appears that the house of lHuilerie was modified for industrial
uses in the later 7th or early 8th century,55 as were the churches
of Campanopetra and of St. Epiphanius.56 The evidence from these
sites, however, remains relatively provisional as the buildings in
Paphos are relatively unpublished and those from Salamis remain
dependent on the vagaries of numismatic and ceramic evidence
presented without comprehensive stratigraphic documentation. The
fragmentary picture derived from architecture does not offer enough
of a foundation for an architectural typology that could shed light
on the extensive corpus of unpublished or under-documented
buildings from the end of antiquity.
Urban Settlement
Much of the evidence from Cyprus comes from the substantial,
excavated contexts in Cypriot
cities. This is fitting as Cyprus was among the most urbanized
areas of the ancient world (and even modern times). Situated
largely on the coastal plain, the cities of Cyprus connected their
agricultural hinterland and the important mineral resources,
especially copper, of the Troodos mountains to the larger
Mediterranean world through access to the sea. The urban landscape
of Cyprus, then, depended economically upon connectivity and access
to markets and trade networks that crisscrossed the region with the
cities serving administrative functions for their regions. First
Paphos and, then, Salamis-Constantia from the 4th century served as
provincial capitals for the Roman province. Throughout the 6th and
7th centuries, the island enjoyed substantial administrative
contact, access to maritime trade, and prosperous hinterlands. This
economic situation created a scenario where the Late Roman
archaeology of Cyprus leaned heavily on the abundant artifacts
associated with this trans-Mediterranean connectivity including
imported and exported ceramics, coins, and, for the Early Byzantine
period, lead seals. The highly visible, widely distributed and
abundant evidence from the 6th and first part of the 7th century
presented a sharp contract with the more obscure and fragmentary
evidence from the end of 7th and 8th centuries. This dramatic
difference has tended to obscure the more fluid, but nevertheless
persistent evidence for economic activity on a much smaller and
more local scale.
Cities and Churches on Cyprus in the Prosperous 7th Century
Any archaeological understanding of the 7th and 8th centuries on
Cyprus occurs at the
intersection of larger regional consideration of settlement and
the challenges and potential of the
52 Caraher and Papalexandrou 2012. 53 Des Gagniers and Tinh
1985, 115-125. 54 Megaw 1988; Christides 2006. 55 Argoud et al.
1980. 56 For the Campanopetra: Roux 1998; For the St. Epiphanius
see: Stewart 2008, 63-90.
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archaeological evidence. At the same time, scholars have had to
accommodate the unique situation of Cyprus as both an island and
one of the most highly urbanized places in the ancient world. Late
Antiquity, in particular, witnessed a flourishing of Cypriot
urbanism with both longstanding urban centers like Kourion,57
Salamis-Constantia,58 Paphos,59 and Soloi seeing major building
projects and significant prosperity.60 These urban areas coincided
with a group of new settlement that A. Dunns has described as
non-civic, urban areas. These densely built up centers like Ay.
Georgios-Peyia and Pyla-Koutsopetria on the south coast of the
island occupy places between village life and well-established
cities while taking advantage of the thriving maritime networks
that intersect on the island.61 Unfortunately, the invasion of 1974
cut off several important urban sites from continued study, and
other sites remain published in only superficial or fragmented ways
making it difficult to grasp the totality of Late Roman Cypriot
urbanism.
It is clear that cities continued to attract the attention from
wealthy patrons well into Late
Antiquity, and their access to wealth contributed to the great
era of church construction on Cyprus during the 5th and 6th
centuries, it is likely that church building in urban areas
continued into the first half of the 7th century. The basilicas
constructed at this time tended to be smaller, but remained
architecturally elaborate. The Acropolis basilica at Amathus
featured an impressive atrium, porch, and ambulatory,62 and its
particular form seems to have inspired modifications to the South
Basilica at Polis-Chrysochous (ancient Arsinoe) which ceramic
evidence dates to the first half of the 7th century.63 The Amathus
basilica likely had a high profile patron befitting its location
and its use of spolia from the abandoned temple of Aphrodite at the
site. Megaw, Stewart, and others have often argued that the
modification of urban basilicas throughout the 7th century was a
response to the destruction of earlier - mostly 5th century -
buildings, but the archaeological evidence for this is unpublished,
grounded in architectural typologies, or completely absent.64
Whatever the reason for the modifications of basilicas on Cyprus
during this period, they represent the continued prestige of the
church in these communities and their ability to marshal wealth.
Bishops from Cyprus remained active in ecclesiastical politics
through the 7th and 8th centuries65, with prominent figures like
John the Almsgiver who was Patriarch of Alexandria in the early 7th
century. In the 640s, Leontius of Neapoliss composed two
significant saints lives, the Life of St. John the Almsgiver and
the Life of Symeon the Holy Fool, set in Alexandria and the smaller
urban areas in Syria respectively.66 Both of these texts depict
prosperous, dynamic communities, but while the former acknowledged
the first inklings of political and economic disruptions, the
latter showed a world filled with craftsmen, business owners,
trade, and community. Bishop Arcadius of Salamis-Constantia both
commissioned The Life of St. John the Almsgiver in the 640s, and
also deployed the wealth of the church for civic affairs. Arcadius
repaired the extensive aqueduct that fed the city from the
foothills of the Troodos in the reign of Heraclius.67
57 Megaw 2007. 58 Stewart 2008, 63-72. 59 Megaw 1988. 60 Gagnier
1985. 61 Bakirtsis 1985, 1986; Caraher et al. forthcoming. 62
Aupert 1996; Maguire 2012, 2.8-10. 63 Caraher and Papalexandrou
2012. 64 Megaw 1946; Stewart 2008, 2010. 65 Dikigoropoulos 1965. 66
Kreuger 1996. 67 Kreuger 1996.
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The cities of Amathus, Paphos, and Salamis appear to have
received fortification walls during the 7th century perhaps in
response to either the threat of Arab raids or the earlier threat
of the Persians.68 The extent, character, and date of these walls
remains difficult to assess. The fortifications at Amathus appear
to date to the reign of Heraclius.69 Megaw argued that Paphos saw a
new fortification wall sometime during the 7th century, but the
arguments for the dates of these walls and exact course remains
obscure. Metcalf was particularly critical of Megaws dating of the
wall of Paphos based on ungrounded, historical suppositions.70 The
walls at Salamis have generally been seen as a response to the Arab
raids rather than in anticipation of them, but the dating evidence
is problematically dependent on presence of burnt mortar that Megaw
dates to the second half of the 7th century.71 In general, the
fortification of these cities is consistent with practices across
the Mediterranean that saw the contraction of urban areas into
smaller, fortified enceintes. Walls at Soloi and Lapethos might
also date to the 7th century.72 The lack of archaeological evidence
to date these walls or even clearly identify phases has made it
impossible to associate these features with particular events or
developments in urban planning.
These transformations of the urban fabric provide only the
narrowest windows into the end of
Late Roman urban life. It is clear that civic urban sites and
non-civic urban sites saw prosperity into the 7th century. The site
of Polis-Chrysochous, ancient Arsinoe, has produced a massive
assemblage of early 7th ceramics from a fill level associated with
the South Basilica.73 This assemblage demonstrates local
connections to the ceramic kilns at Dhiorios and locally produced
Late Roman 1 amphoras. The assemblage also produced regional fine
wares including a full range of LRD or Cypriot Red slip. Curiously,
the assemblage produced a greater number of large LRD vessels,
particularly the Form 12 and Form 8 bowls that appear only rarely
elsewhere on the island.
At the ex-urban site of Pyla-Koutsopetria on Larnaka bay, a
built up area including at least one
basilica extended for over 40 ha along the coastal plain.74 The
site represents an example of a non-civic, urban site like
elsewhere on the south coast of the island. The assemblage
demonstrated a much greater degree of Mediterranean connectivity
into the 7th century with a wide range of imported fine wares from
North Africa (African Red slip) and Asia Minor (LRC and LRD wares).
The number of Dhiorios wares was vanishingly small indicating
another source of cooking and kitchen wares perhaps either in the
Levant or somewhere on the eastern half of the island. Evidence for
economic activity comes from the massive assemblage of Late Roman 1
amphoras suggesting that this site served as a emporium for the
local agricultural areas. The early 7th century text called the
Pratum Spirituale mentioned an emporium called Dadai on Cyprus
which had a monastery with a particularly pious monk,75 and sites
like Pyla-Koutsopetria, Dreamers Bay, or Ay. Georgios-Peyia
represent other examples of this kind of built up site without
civic identity.
Challenges at the End of the 7th and 8th Centuries
68 Ballandier 2002; Megaw 1985. 69 P. Aupert et P. Leriche 1988;
Aupert 1996, 194-197. 70 Megaw 1972; Metcalf 284-285. 71 Balandier
2003; Stewart 2008, 73-74 n. 75 for a full discussion of these
issues; Metcalf 2009, 276-281. 72 Zavagno 2013, 8-9; Christides
2006, 21-24. 73 Caraher et al. Forthcoming. 74 Caraher et al.
Forthcoming. 75 Moschos, Prat. Spirit., 30.
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The limits of our evidence have a much more significant impact
in our understanding of Cypriot urbanism in the second half of the
7th and the 8th centuries. The difficulties associated with
identifying the Arab raids in the archaeological record and the
persistent belief that these raids must have defined life on the
island in this period have shaped in profound ways our
understanding of urbanism.76 It may be useful, however, to keep in
mind Dikigoropouloss observation from 1961 that the destruction of
wood-roofed basilicas need not have been caused by the Arab raids
and might have just as easily been the result of an earthquake or
some other disaster.77 More importantly, Dikigoropoulos noted that
the decision not to rebuild these buildings, which evoked the
apogee of Late Roman urbanism, was as much a result of depopulation
from the plague and responses to the changing economy.78 Thus,
urban change emerges less as a catastrophic event and more as a
process taking place over decades.
Salamis-Constantia and Paphos have stood apart in considerations
of late 7th and 8th century
urbanism on Cyprus. While neither city has received systematic
excavation focusing on the 7th and 8th century, a mosaic of
fragmentary evidence from these sites provides narrow windows into
the life of these communities. For Salamis-Constantia, as we have
noted, the city gained a new fortification wall that primarily
encompassed the precinct of the church of St. Epiphanios, but
excluded much of the ancient city. There was also a pair of
cisterns constructed inside the walls to provide the community with
water in the event of a siege.79 Likewise there is evidence that
the Huilerie complex which was originally a house, was developed as
an industrial complex including an oil press and the bath-gymnasium
complex also saw some repairs and modifications.80 The church of
St. Epiphanius saw rebuilding in the early 8th century and
modifications sometime later according to C. Stewarts recent
analysis which has archaeological grounding based the parallels on
pottery under the bema floor that has parallels with admittedly
unstratified material from Kornos cave.81 The Campanopetra basilica
continued to stand outside the smaller enceinte and attract
visitors throughout the 7th and 8th century.82 The bishop of
Salamis-Constantia remained a prominent figure in ecclesiastical
politics and his see a safe harbor for those resisting the
iconoclast policies advancing elsewhere in the Byzantine world.83
The community itself was wealthy and seems to have preserved many
of its traditional trading relationships especially with the
Levant.84 The pilgrim Willibald visited the churches at
Salamis-Constantia in 723 and left us his famous observations of
the island where those Cypriots dwell between the Greeks and the
Saracens, and were disarmed, because a great peace and friendship
was then in force between the Saracens and the Greeks.85
The city of Paphos may have been the home of an Arab garrison
after the conclusion of the
second raid on the island in 653.86 Excavations in various areas
of the post-Roman city do not provide a comprehensive picture of
urban life, but evidence from Megaws excavations at Saranda
Colonnes, the University of Sydneys work at Fabrika hill, and
various excavations associated with
76 Zavagno 2011-2012, 121-122 for a summary of the traditional
view. 77 Dikigoropoulos 1961. 78 Papacostas 212-214 for the
so-called condominium churches 79 Stewart 2008, 73. 80 Zavagno
2011-12, 142; Yon 1980; Argoud et al. 1980 81 Stewart 2008, 74-75
provides Dikigoropoulos unpublished report on the excavations at
St. Epiphanius. 82 Megaw 2006; Roux 1998. 83 Dikigoropoulos 1966 84
Zavagno; Metcalf 2009; Stewart 2008 85 Wright 1969,14. 86 Zavagno
2013, 9-10; Megaw 1988; Christides 2006, 51-58, 65-66; But see
Metcalf 2009, 285.
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the citys destroyed Early Christian basilicas show that the city
continued as a nucleated settlement into the 7th and 8th
centuries.87 It is likewise clear that the city saw an influx of
Arab settlers and visitors in the aftermath of the Arab
invasions.88 The prevalence of Arab inscriptions in the city, the
apparent construction of a mosque there, and the appearance of Arab
coins suggested to Megaw and others the presence of an Arab
garrison in the city.89 Megaws suggestion that the Arab garrison
divided the city into a Christian and Arab quarter rests on very
limited evidence.90 The withdrawal of this garrison in 683 has some
grounding in historical sources, but in general, the continued
presence of Arab coins, particularly those excavated from the site
of Saranda Kolones at Paphos,91 and Arabic inscription dated to the
8th century indicates that the Arab presence in the city was not
exclusively tied to the military garrison.92 In fact, the continued
appearance of Byzantine coins and inscriptions suggests that the
situation at Paphos, like at Salamis-Constantia, may have more
closely approximated the kind of middle ground recently
appropriated by L. Zavagno in his study of the 7th to 9th on the
island.93
The site of Kourion provides an alternate perspective on the
nature of urban change in later 7th
century Cyprus.94 The urban area of the site appears to have
been largely abandoned by the final quarter of the century. Dated
on the basis of late issues of Constans II and a single coin of
Justinian II, the major episcopal complex and basilica appear to
have collapsed in the final decades of the 7th century probably as
a result of an earthquake.95 Evidence survives for some ad hoc
efforts to stabilize the damaged church and continued 8th century
habitation on the basis of a handful of Arab coins dating to after
695, an Arab funerary inscription as well as some Byzantine small
issues and lead seals including one of the Bishop Damianos from
around 740.96 Megaw argues that most of the 8th evidence is the
work of salvage operations and that the city was large abandoned
because of the failure of the citys water supply after the late 7th
century earthquake. This also prompted the moving of the episcopal
seat to Episkopi with its barrel-vaulted church at Serayia which
included spolia from the episcopal precinct at Kourion.97 The
evidence for occupation around the church at this site is quite
scant. If we see the founding of the church at Episkopi as a
separate matter from the complete abandonment of Kourion in the
later 7th century, an image appears of the city that is startlingly
similar to that at Paphos or even Salamis. The site appears to have
endured significant decline in the closing decades of the 7th or
start of the 8th century, but at the same time there is strong
evidence for Arab and Christian interaction at the site throughout
the 8th century suggesting that the city continued to represent
some appeal as a settlement.
The history of Cypriot urbanism in the later 7th and 8th
centuries remains opaque. The absence
of systematic archaeological excavation and the comprehensive
publication of excavated sites presents only a fragmented image of
Early Byzantine urban life. Despite these limitations, we can see
some general directions. First, as events, the Arab raids had far
less of an effect on urban areas than
87 Megaw 198x; Green et al 2004; Gabrieli et al. 2007; Rowe
2004. 88 Megaw xxxx; Metcalf 2009, Christides 2006 xx-xx. 89 Megaw
1988; Christides 2006 90 Metcalf 2009, 285. 91 Metcalf 2003, 92
Christides 2006, 53-58. 93 Zavagno 2013. 94 Megaw 2007. 95 Megaw
2007, 174-176. 96 Dunn (in Megaw) 2007, 539-540. 97 Megaw 1993.
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conventional wisdom would have us believe. It is clear that the
sites of Salamis-Constantia, Paphos, Soloi, and even Kourion
recovered to some extent from either raids or seismic events. Soon
to be published evidence from the urban site of Polis-Chrysochous
shows continuous modification of church architecture into the 8th
century.98 Next, we can see that urban sites became places for
interaction between Arabs and Christians on the island. Traditional
views of the Arab presence on Cyprus looked for evidence of a
garrison or military occupation in the 7th century. The evidence
from urban centers, however fragmentary it is at present, would
seem to indicate that Arab speaking civilians spent time on the
island, engaged in economic activity, and perhaps even settled in
urban areas on the island. Finally, Cypriot cities seem to have
maintained economic and political connections with the wider
Mediterranean world throughout this period. If Cypriot urbanism
historically depended in part upon the islands position astride
trade routes and the islands connection to the wider region, the
transformation of the political and economic networks in the
region, including the rise of Arab involvement in trade and the
political and military instability as Cyprus became a middle ground
between two different political systems, invariably shaped the
character of Cypriot cities.99
The Cypriot Countryside
The same problems with evidence that impact our understanding of
the 7th and 8th century
urban landscapes exist for our understanding of settlement in
the countryside. The first two-thirds of the 7th century are a
continuation of the prosperity of Late Antiquity. Marcus Rautman
aptly describes rural Cyprus of this era as a busy countryside.100
David Pettegrew in describing this period in Greece, noted that our
ability to recognize widely distributed and abundant Late Roman
ceramic types, like transport vessels with ridges or grooves or
highly diagnostic red slip wares, complicating comparisons between
the highly visible Late Roman landscape and the less visible
countryside.101 Pettegrew does well to identify the difficulty of
studying the Late Roman landscape at the precise intersection of
archaeological methods and historical processes. While he does not
provide a simple solution to this problem, he nevertheless offers a
key reminder that the nature of rural land use and economic
integration often dictates its visibility in the countryside.
A Prosperous Countryside For much of 6th and 7th century, the
countryside of Cyprus was densely occupied. Building on
the basic organization of rural settlement established under
centuries of Roman rule and the resulting economic integration of
the Eastern Mediterranean, Late Roman settlement represented a
continuation and intensification of rural land use and
settlement.102 Extensive and intensive pedestrian survey and
excavation have documented Late Roman activity on landscapes from
the Troodos mountains to valleys and coastal plains of the southern
coast.103 It is probably not an exaggeration to say that the
Cypriot countryside is among the best-documented landscapes in
the
98 Caraher et al. forthcoming 99 Zavagno 2013. 100 Rautman 2000
101 Pettegrew 2007 102 Leonard 2005; Rautman 2003; for a wider view
of the East see Decker 2009. 103 Rautman 2003; Srensen and Rupp
1993; Caraher et al 2014; Given and Knapp 2003; Srensen and
Jacobsen 2006; Toumazou et al. 2012; Clarke and Todd 1993; Dikaios
1971; Fefjer 1995; Manning et al. 2002; Given et al. 2013; Najbjerg
et al. 2002; Plat Taylor and Megaw 1980; Rowe 2004; Hadjisavvas
1997; Catling 1972; Catling and Dikigoropoulos 1970; Swiny and
Mavromatis 2000.
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Eastern Mediterranean. At the same time, the chronology,
function, and character of rural activities remain hampered by some
of the same chronological and methodological limitations that have
shaped our knowledge of urban areas. As many scholars have noted,
the quality of unstratified surface data depends in large part on
the quality of well-published, stratified deposits.104 While Cyprus
is unique in possessing a number of excavated rural sites, they
have still only provided the narrowest windows into the character
of 7th century settlement across the island.
We have already discussed the emergence of built-up, urban,
non-civic sites that exceed 10 ha in
size on the island like Pyla-Koutsoptria or Ay. Georgios-Peyia
in the 6th and 7th centuries. These sites almost certainly
represent emporia through which local agricultural goods entered
the Mediterranean market and important agricultural products, table
wares, and other commodities came onto the island. The massive
quantities of Late Roman 1 amphora at Pyla-Koutsopetria on Larnaka
bay, for example, suggests that the site functioned to export olive
oil and possibly wine.105 A similar scatter of LR1 sherds appears
at Dreamers Bay, another emporium type site on the south coast of
Cyprus, indicating that these coastal sites may have served similar
functions across the island.106 It seems probable that these
emporia complemented the existing urban areas along the coast to
support both local trade as well as the demands placed by the state
on Cypriot producers. The incorporation of Cyprus into the
quaestura Iustiniani exercitus along with parts of the Balkans and
Aegean clearly oriented some part of the economy toward the
west.107 Likewise, Bakirtsis has seen the development of the
coastal site of Peyia as a response to the movement of annona from
Egypt to Constantinople.108 The growing corpus of evidence from
shipwrecks and offshore assemblages along the Cyprus coast
indicates that cabotage continued as well.109 The development of
these emporia in the countryside undoubtedly reflect the vibrancy
of the regional trade, the productivity of the Cypriot countryside,
and the demands placed on the island by the state.
Further inland from these large, well-developed areas, smaller
villages populated the river valleys
along the south slope of the Troodos mountains. Village sites
like Kopetra in the Kalavassos Valley or, in hinterland of Kourion
at Alassa, represent a second level of settlement that likely
served as both primary production sites as well as points of
contact between the coastal economy and sites situated on
unproductive ground and involved with the extraction of copper from
the slopes of the Troodos.110 Rautmans excavations at Kopetra
demonstrated that village life was relatively well integrated in
local, regional, and trans-mediterranean economies. Imported fine
wares, transport amphora, Dhiorios type cooking pots as well as
more locally produced handmade pottery demonstrate the range of
economic connections that shaped the character of village level
settlement on Cyprus. Similar assemblages appeared at the rural
site of Panyia-Ematousa in the hinterland of ancient Kition.111 The
material from these sites dates to at least as late as the middle
decades of the 7th century. In short, the few village sites
systematically excavated on Cyprus reveal communities engaged in a
wide range of economic relationships and embedded in the
Mediterranean economy.
104 Sanders 2005 for this important critique. 105 Caraher et al.
forthcoming; Caraher et al. xxxx. 106 Leonard and Demesticha 2004.
107 Chrysos 1993; Lokin 1986; Elton 2005. 108 Bakirtsis 1995. 109
Leidwanger 2013. 110 Rauman 2003; Flourentzos 1996. 111 Lund 2006;
Jacobson 2006.
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The presence of imported fine wares in areas documented through
intensive pedestrian survey suggests that 6th and 7th century fine
wares are not concentrated just at village sites. While we have not
identified a significant number of villae rusticae in the Cypriot
countryside, it seems probable that they existed particularly on
the coastal plains where a certain amount of monoculture allowed
for economies of scale. The villa rustica situated on the arid
Akamas peninsula site of Ay. Kononas may represent the exploitation
of marginal areas suitable to niche farming strategies that are
dependent upon strong extraregional connections for staples.112
Monasteries represent another kind of rural activity on a similar
scale and with a material signature as villae rusticae or even
small settlements.113 Rautman argued that the site of Sirmata at
Kalavassos-Kopetra likely represented a monastic establishment, and
as we have noted, textual sources indicate that other monastic
establishments existed on the island dating to the 7th century.114
Production sites like the kilns at Dhiorios or those on the coast
near the town of Zygi and the recent evidence for extractive
activities in the Troodos indicate that Late Roman period witnessed
ongoing, non-agricultural production on a significant scale.115
Finally, most of the large-scale surveys on the island have
produced a massive quantity of small (
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start of the 8th century based on ceramic evidence and coins,
but as we have noted, problems remain with this approach.122
Production sites like Dhiorios continued further into the 8th,123
and there is no reason to imagine that the site of Kornos cave did
not continue into the latest decades of this century.124 The
coastal site of Pyla-Koutsopetria and Ay. Georgios-Peyia appear to
have been abandoned by the start of the 8th century. Elsewhere the
Cypriot countryside shows signs of continued activity. For example,
we can date, albeit in a tentative way, the series of small,
barrel-vaulted churches on the Karpas Peninsula. Charles Stewart
has argued in the basis of the phasing of the buildings and
comparanda elsewhere in the Eastern Mediterranean that the
barrel-vaulted churches date to at least to the 8th century and
perhaps as late as the 9th.125 While we should probably be hesitant
to accept the dates of buildings on the basis of architecture
alone, the date assigned by Stewart is rather later than previous
scholars have assigned, and it suggests that communities on the
Karpas continued not only to exist, but to invest in architectural
innovation. This short list of exceptions, however, does little to
displace the general impression of settlement contraction, and
economic and demographic decline in the 8th century.
Our view of the contracting countryside is both archaeological
and historical. The inscription
from the church at Soloi claimed that 120,000 individuals were
taken by Arab raids from the island.126 While this number is likely
outside the range of possibility,127 it does suggest that the Arab
raids removed a part of the population as slaves throughout the 7th
century.128 The long tail of the so-called Justinianic plague also
had a probable impact on the overall population of the island as
the hasty burial of 21 individuals in the Kopetra cistern
suggests.129 It is impossible to assess the effect of events like
the unusual and poorly understood effort by the Emperor Justinian
II to relocate the population of the island to the Hellespont in
the final decade of the 7th century.130 Likewise, we have little
idea how the influx of refugees from iconoclast persecutions
impacted settlement on the island,131 or how the departure of
individuals voluntarily or involuntarily must have transformed the
landscape. What we can observe, however, is that settlement in the
countryside, just like in urban areas, entered a period of
significant instability.
The economic boom of the 6th and 7th centuries was fed at least
in part by key location of
Cyprus in the ongoing geopolitical and economic drama of the
era. The impact of the annona trade, the transfer of Cyprus to the
quaestura Iustiniani exercitus, the arrival of Heraclius, and the
Persian War all created opportunities for Cypriot producers to
engage with a larger economy spurred by imperial policy. Likewise,
the longstanding stability of the Roman East produced a responsive
settlement structure prepared to accommodate expansion and
intensification under imperial and historical pressures. With the
end of the annona and the fall of Egypt, with the decline in
Byzantine military activity in the East, and with the military and
political disruptions of large-scale economic contact with
communities in Asia Minor, Syria, and the Levant,132 the conditions
that produced the Late
122 Feifer and Hayes 1995 123 Catling 1972; Armstrong 2009. 124
Catling 1970; Armstrong 2009. 125 Stewart 2008; 2010. 126 Des
Gagniers and Tinh 1985, 115-125. 127 Metcalf 2009, 400-401;
Papacostas 1999, 24. 128 Zavagno 2010-2011, 152; McCormick 2001 for
the possible significance of slaves and their archaeological
invisibility. 129 Fox 2003. 130 Metcalf 2009 450-455; Theophanes,
A.M. 6183. 131 Metcalf 2009. 132 Kennedy 2010; Walmsley 2007; 2008
for a more substantial understanding of the economy of Early
Islamic Syria.
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Roman settlement boom disappeared. This did not mean that the
long standing economic relationships vanished over night as the
presence of Arab coins on the island,133 the continued production
of ceramics for export at Dhiorios, and the persistent building
activity on the Karpas peninsula and urban sites showed. As much as
the 8th century might appear to represent a significant decline in
the intensity of activity on Cyprus, we might be more prudent to
observe that the busy countryside of the 6th and 7th centuries were
the exception.
Finally, the tools that archaeologist have at their disposal to
understand landscapes marked by
demographic and economic contingency remain crude. As is noted
throughout this volume, ceramic chronologies continue to drift
later as archaeologists continue to publish more stratigraphic
contexts. Numismatic dating offers a different set of problems
based as much on how archaeologists have interpreted coins as how
coins circulated in Cypriot communities. Excavators and survey
archaeologists alike have struggled to recognize evidence for short
term or contingent settlement on Cyprus. In times of economic and
demographic instability, we expect settlement strategies to become
more opportunistic as markets for produce underwent change and
access to resources shifted across the island. The use of handmade
pottery, documented by M. Rautman at sites across Cyprus from as
early as the middle decades of the 7th century,134 reveals that
communities had already developed local practices to manage the
relatively modest risk associated with dependency on imported
cooking wares. It seems likely that very small coins, nummi or
minimi, continued to circulate on Cyprus even as access to larger
imperial issues declined precipitously as administrative trade and
military activities in the region abated. Careful excavation has
only begun to reveal the persistent stirring of economic and
political life in the urban areas on the island.
It is particularly important to recognize that a dynamic,
contingent economy in the countryside
may remain virtually undetectable to intensive survey methods.
Short term, contingent activity calculated to weigh any investment
carefully against opportunities presented in a changing world is
almost predestined to leave little trace in the surface record
which is so vital to regional level studies of rural landscapes.
This is exaggerated all the more by the abundance of material
associated with Late Roman settlement prior to the end of the 7th
century. The 5th to 7th century economic boom appears to have
represented systematic, long term investment in the landscape in
response to sustained economic opportunities and relative political
stability. The abundance of material reflects both chronologically
and spatially extensive and intensive activities in the landscape
associated with production for export, integrated economic
relationships between, for example, copper production and
agricultural areas, and administrative pressures on the economy
that directed production toward the needs of the capital and the
military. By the end of the 7th century, the opportunities and
motivations for intensive investment in the landscape had
diminished significantly. In this situation, the economic activity
on the island and the structure of settlement may have taken on a
more opportunistic appearance. The impetus to invest intensively in
rural sites reduced the need to engage in practices that would make
these sites visible to archaeologists, ranging from the use of
imported fine wares to the construction of monumental buildings in
villages.
To say that the economy of Cyprus declined, then, risks
misunderstanding the complex
intersection between archaeological evidence and activities in
the past. The disruption of intensive economic networks that
existed in the Late Roman Eastern Mediterranean compromised our
ability as archaeologists to recognize settlement. It did not,
necessarily, compromise the settlement on the
133 Zavagno 2010-2011, 144; 2011; 2013. 134 Rautman 1998.
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island, but the faint traces of evidence for life on Cyprus in
the 8th century provides an enticing challenge for a more
sensitized archaeological practice.
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