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

Abstract

Settled and Sacred Landscapes of Cyprus (SeSaLaC) is a systematic archaeological survey project of the University of Cyprus in the Xeros River valley in the Larnaka district in Cyprus. This article aims to present a first synthesis of the diachronic settlement pattern in the region. After a short introduction on the area and the SeSaLaC project, we attempt to identify and interpret settlement evolution and landscape changes in the region, from early prehistory to Late Antiquity. The contextualisation and evaluation of settlement changes in the Xeros River valley are carried out within a multi-layered framework along the main strands of approach presented in this Land special issue. The presentation and analysis that follows below is a work in progress.

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

“…[40][41][42] [97] have always comprised crucial elements of investigation in terms of centrality/liminality, economy and society in the framework of landscape archaeology. As shown by Papantoniou and Vionis [22] in this volume in the case of the Xeros River valley in Late Antiquity, the largest settlement of the valley-an 'agro-town' of 13 ha in size with an estimated population of 250 families-played a central role within its catchment area or 'settlement chamber'; it was located at the approximate centre of the region, it had easy access to fresh water sources (the Xeros River) and enough cultivable land to sustain the population of the valley, as well as overwhelming evidence for storage and transport at the central site and for the production of ceramic domestic wares within its catchment area. In a different context, Natalia Poulou and Anastasios Tantsis [98] in this volume argue that the location of bath-houses in eastern Crete in Middle Byzantine times was obviously determined by immediate access to fresh water (e.g., close to ravines), yet, their very existence usually denotes (along with other archaeological, toponymical and textual evidence, if available) their attachment to a nearby settlement of some status in the 8th-12th centuries AD, that being a bishopric, a town or an important rural settlement with certain amenities, playing the role of a local central place.…”

“…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.…”

“…Moving away from model-bounded approaches, central place theory is used here more flexibly to include all the places that may have functioned as spaces of economic or ideological centrality (even in a local context) in the past, including urban centres, agro-towns, countryside settlements, burial and ritual topoi. The idea of this volume derives from the methodological and theoretical frameworks we employ when approaching landscape phenomena and archaeological evidence from the Xeros River valley in Cyprus, in the framework of our Settled and Sacred Landscapes of Cyprus (SeSaLaC) archaeological project [20][21][22]. Given that landscape archaeology and intensive field-survey methodologies have evolved, providing more spatial, functional and chronological detail about the archaeological record for a given region, combined with a constant revision and refinement of ceramic chronologies, settlement archaeology and pottery distributions prove accurate tools for the exploration of landscape transformations and settlement systems.…”

The Cypriot Extra-Urban Sanctuary as a Central Place: the Case of Agia Irini

“…The cultural unity of the city-kingdoms of Cyprus includes regional variability created by inter-regional influences and stylistic comparisons. We view stylistic influence vis-à-vis with other aspects of material culture, epigraphic sources and topographical features, to further clarify the picture [4,31]. In addition, modern research on pottery further argues in favour of a more centralised production for each polity [32][33][34][35][36].…”

“…[46] (plate VIII.1, [47] (plate III, no. 5), [48] (plate XLII, nos [31][32]. One should also notice the similarities between White Painted I products from funerary contexts of Lapithos and the area of Agia Irini and those found in a poor cluster of tombs at Karanghas, about three miles from the coastal necropolis of Agia Irini [49] (p. 194).…”