Art and Society in Cyprus from the Bronze Age into the Iron Age

Dramatic social and political change marks the period from the end of the Late Bronze Age into the Iron Age (c.1300–700 BCE) across the Mediterranean. Inland palatial centers of bureaucratic power weakened or collapsed c.1200 BCE while entrepreneurial exchange by sea survived and even expanded, becoming the Mediterranean-wide network of Phoenician trade. At the heart of that system was Kition, one of the largest harbor cities of ancient Cyprus. Earlier research has suggested that Phoenician rule was established at Kition after the abandonment of part of its Bronze Age settlement. A re-examination of Kition's architecture, stratigraphy, inscriptions, sculpture, and ceramics demonstrates that it was not abandoned. This study emphasizes the placement and scale of images and how they reveal the development of economic and social control at Kition from its establishment in the thirteenth century BCE until the development of a centralized form of government by the Phoenicians, backed by the Assyrian king, in 707 BCE.

1. Introduction; 2. Setting the record; 3. Sizing up images; 4. The human perspective; 5. Deposits and pots; 6. Pits and imports; 7. From scholars to potters; 8. Conclusions.

This study emphasises the placement and scale of images and how they reveal the development of economic and social control at Kition from its establishment in the thirteenth century BCE until the development of a centralised form of government by the Phoenicians, backed by the Assyrian king, in 707 BCE.

Joanna S. Smith is Associate Professor of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University. Member of the Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton, a former visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and National Lecturer for the Archaeological Institute of America, she has received fellowships from the Fulbright Commission, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, the Anastasios G. Leventis Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She is the author of Script and Seal Use in Cyprus in the Bronze and Iron Ages and Views from Philamoudhi, Cyprus.