Sacred Landscapes and the Territoriality of Iron Age Cypriot Polities: The Applicability of GIS

The River as an Economic Asset: Settlement and Society in the Xeros Valley in Cyprus

“…Preliminary GIS mapping of the agricultural soils and settlement activity [7] (Figure 2) has shown that the main settlements lie in the middle of less fertile soils; this should probably be seen as a very wise choice on behalf of its inhabitants, making use of less productive areas for their settlements' built space, as well as for less demanding cultivations, such as vegetable gardens and olive groves or as pasture land. In addition, the region immediately north of the Xeros River valley is within the copper zone of the Troodos ophiolite ( Figure 3); however, the good quality mines (pillow lavas and basal group formations richer in copper) are actually located on the other side of the Troodos Mountain range at Mathiatis, as evidenced also by the archaeological evidence [4] (p. 543, figure 1). Our team is already investigating how environmental changes and/or tectonic activity may have contributed to riverbed shifting, and how these may have affected people and settlement activity diachronically.…”

“…In these attempts, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have proved to be very useful, and their employment has assisted us in contextualising rural sites within their habitation and economic frameworks, maintaining in mind, at the same time, the problems around their deterministic nature (cf. [4] (p. 552, with references) [5] (pp. 149-150).…”

Central Place Theory Reloaded and Revised: Political Economy and Landscape Dynamics in the Longue Durée

“…A sense of notional liminality or frontier has been noted in the case of the extra-urban sanctuary sites of Myrtou-Pigadhes and Agia Irini close to the north coast of Cyprus, the former at the entrance of the Panagra Pass and the latter at the edge of the fertile Morphou plain, as analysed by Giorgos Papantoniou and Giorgos Bourogiannis [74] in this volume. As also discussed elsewhere by Papantoniou [23,50,75], extra-urban sanctuaries were located in frontier/liminal zones and served as both contact and confrontation points between the different Iron Age polities of Cyprus, rather than as merely points of symbolic territorial demarcation and definition. Similar conclusions have been drawn in the case of the Etruscan city of Populonia in the early Iron Age by Giorgia Di Paola [76] in this volume, who sees liminality in the context of Populonia's territory not so much as a 'marginal' environment associated with wilderness but as a landscape acquiring new connectivity trajectories through the foundation of hilltop fortresses within a hierarchical settlement network.…”

“…A similar approach, using Thiessen polygons, has been undertaken in Cypriot archaeology to suggest a hypothetical model for the territorial expansion of Iron Age polities [49]. As noted by Papantoniou and Vionis [22] in the present volume and in different occasions previously [50] (pp. 549-550), the problem of the Thiessen polygons method is that it is operating on a featureless space, not taking into account topographical parameters, archaeological and textual evidence, while the concept of hierarchy or political dominance expressed by territoriality is predetermined, drawing definite spatial and political boundaries.…”

“…Nowadays, various GIS analyses (e.g., Viewshed, Cost-Surface and Least Cost Path) comprise a useful means for exploring the spatiality of sites (i.e., the hierarchical arrangement of sites) and their relation with topography and the environment, social and economic variables. The relationship between extra-urban sacred space and the formation of political and cultural identities was recently examined in the context of Iron Age Cyprus by employing a series of GIS analyses [50] (p. 542). An equivalent approach was followed for the first time in the case of the sacred landscapes of late antique Naxos [21] (pp.…”