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CYPRUS AND THE AEGEAN INTHE EARLY IRON AGE

The Legacy of Nicolas Coldstream


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CYPRUS AND THE AEGEAN IN THE EARLY IRON AGE

THE LEGACY OF NICOLAS COLDSTREAM


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Co-ordination: Lefki MichaelidouText editing: Ian ToddDesign/Typesetting: Akis IoannidesPrinting/Binding: Kailas Printers & Lithographers

The Bank of Cyprus Cultural Foundation and theEditor wish to thank the Department of Antiquitiesof Cyprus for permission to use on the book coverphotographs of vases from the Departments archive.

, Bank of Cyprus Cultural Foundation, Nicosia

Bank of Cyprus Cultural FoundationPhaneromenis , NicosiaP.O. Box , Nicosiawww.boccf.com

ISBN 978-9963-42-879-3


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CYPRUS AND THE AEGEAN INTHE EARLY IRON AGE

The Legacy of Nicolas Coldstream


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Proceedings of an archaeological workshop held in memory ofProfessor J. N. Coldstream( )

Monday, December Archaeological Research UnitUniversity of Cyprus


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Foreword

Editors Introduction:

Nicolas the symposiast and his brood of Greek symposiasts

Abbreviations

Chronological Table

John Nicolas Coldstream: a personal appreciation of his legacyDespina Pilides

Phoenicia, Cyprus and the Aegean in the Early Iron Age:

J. N. Coldstreams contribution and the current state of researchNota Kourou

Euboean mobility towards the north: new evidence from the SporadesAlexandros Mazarakis Ainian

Phokis and East Lokris in the light of interregional contacts at the transitionfrom the Late Bronze to the Early Iron Age

Antonia Livieratou

Cntents


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Cretan bronze stands of Cypriot types from sanctuaries and cemeteries:Cretan society in the Early Iron AgeGeorge Papasavvas

Creto-Cypriot and Cypro-Phoenician complexities in the archaeology ofinteraction between Crete and CyprusAntonis Kotsonas

Pondering the Cypro-Phoenician conundrum.The Aegean view of a bewildering termGiorgos Bourogiannis

External and internal migrations during the 12th century.

Setting the stage for an economically successful Early Iron Age in CyprusMaria Iacovou

The origin and use of metals in Iron Age CyprusVasiliki Kassianidou

Cypriot polities in the Early Iron AgeAnna Satraki

Cypriot sanctuaries and religion in the Early Iron Age:views from before and afterGiorgos Papantoniou

La production cramique de Kition au Chypro-Gomtrique IAnna P. Georgiadou

Aspects of hunting in early Greece and Cyprus:

a re-examination of the comb motif Vicky Vlachou

The originality of ancient Cypriot art and the individuality ofperforming practices in protohistoric Cyprus

Manolis Mikrakis

List of Contributors


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to the memory of an internationally ac-

claimed scholar and long-time friend of Cyprus; it is published by the Bank ofCyprus Cultural Foundation as a token of our gratitude for his invaluable contri-bution to the field of Cypriot archaeology. During a crucial period, when therewas no formal university programme on the history and archaeology of Cyprusanywhere in the world, Professor J. N. Coldstream had taken it upon himself toshow through his teaching, research and publications the significance of Cypriotmaterial culture as a vital component of Mediterranean archaeology. In recogni-tion of his work, Professor Coldstream was invited in by the Bank of CyprusCultural Foundation to give the Second Annual Lecture on the History and Ar-chaeology of Cyprus. This institution, the first that was formally approved by theBoard of Directors, and the oldest of the Foundations annual activities, was ini-tiated in 1985 with a lecture by the late Jean Poulloux, the French archaeologist

whose name has been inextricably linked with the excavations of Salamis. At thetime, Cyprus was trying desperately to heal some of the open wounds (still opentoday) inflicted by the invasion of : the occupation of territories had led tothe loss of archives and libraries, monuments and sites of primary cultural andarchaeo-historical value. Given annually by a distinguished personality in the fieldof history and /or archaeology, the Annual Lecture and its publication were partof a policy, the explicit target of which was to remedy these vast loses by updatingthe study of the cultural profile of the island with scientifically first rate papers.Each lecture was published as an elegant booklet that was widely distributed to

Foreword

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, a small group of Early Iron Age specialistsfrom Greece and Cyprus, who represent two generations of Greek scholars thathave followed in the footsteps of Professor J. N. Coldstream, met at the Archaeo-logical Research Unit of the University of Cyprus to honour his memory. Withthis meeting, the University of Cyprus and especially the members of the Archae-

ological Research Unit, which in the last decade has become the base of the Schoolof Cypriot Archaeology, wished to acknowledge a major debt owed to the lateProfessor Coldstream: in the s, as chairman or member of many selectioncommittees, Coldstream played a decisive role in electing the first professors ofarchaeology for the Department of History and Archaeology. This alone wouldhave been reason enough to devote a Workshop in his memory. There was, how-ever, a less obvious but more intimate purpose behind the meetingwhich is re-flected in, and should also explain, the choice of speakersas we wished to pay

tribute to aspects of his academic contribution that have had a long-term impacton the archaeology of Cyprus and also on the careers of his Cypriot students. Hisproductive and creative association with Cyprus, from where he regularly har-vested a rich collection of data, which he would then share with his circle of dis-ciples, fostered the opening of channels of communication and collaboration be-tween Greek colleagues working in the Early Iron Age of Greece and Cyprus.

Many years before the establishment of the University of Cyprus (), wherethe field of Cypriot archaeology finally found a long-deserved home in the Ar-

Editors Introduction: Nicolas the symposiastand his brood of Greek symposiasts


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chaeological Research Unit of the Department of History and Archaeology, NicolasColdstream, Professor of Aegean Archaeology at Bedford College, London (from), and then Yates Professor of Classical Archaeology at University College,London (as of ), was the only university teacher in Europe to have introduced

regular undergraduate courses and graduate seminars on the archaeology ofCyprus. Not many scholars, other than a few natives who were struggling to spe-cialise and also stay in Cypriot archaeology in the s and s (especially doctoralcandidates and post-doctoral researchers, like some of my Cypriot colleagues andmyself), are able to look back and appreciate the significance of Nicolass pioneer-ing academic agenda: he steadfastly, and against the temporal and geographicalconstraints of the established Classical Archaeology tradition, considered Cyprusan integral part of Aegean studies, in as much as he saw the Aegean not in isolationbut as the central part of the Mediterranean world. He taught, and lived by, this

credo to the end: he would travel on either side of the Aegean to study Greek pot-tery that appeared in assemblages in the Levant, in Italy, or elsewhere. He alwayskept onestep ahead of everybody else as he had anunmatched ability to sew everynew piece of evidence onto a big canvaswhere he mapped the multidirectionalmovements of artefacts, ideas and influences that speak of human contacts andare the stuff from which we can begin to approach the history of our sharedMediterranean landscape in the early first millennium .

The Mycenaean Seminar, which he ran so diligently in the Institute of Classical

Studies in London for many years, was not confined geographically or chrono-logically to the Mycenaean culture or even to the archaeology of Greece: it wasthe venue he used so that scholars would lecture in London on research projectsthat concerned the whole of the Central and East Mediterranean in the BronzeAge and Early Iron Age. Thus, promising young archaeologists of many nation-alities who had found a haven in his classes and in his tutoring were also urged torise to the podium of the Mycenaean Seminar, to present their research and de-fend their interpretations. But Nicolass tutorial method was not confined to the

Institute; he was a master in developing academic togetherness

or what onecould perhaps describe better as good manners and good company in the socialpractice of archaeology. Those privileged to know him would agree that organis-ing social gatherings, as a rule in his home, was an integral part of Nicolass schol-arly modus operandi. In this, his spouse Nicky Coldstream was his devoted ac-complice; nobody can possibly overlook her contribution. Herself a formidableMediaeval archaeologist, Nicky deserves an honorary degree in Aegean studies,not only for her exquisite drawings of the pottery that Nicolas would study andpublish but also for using her cooking skills to prepare what must certainly have

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amounted to a monumentally long list of dinners at their historic house, blessedby the young Mozart, at Ebury Street. There, shy and reserved juniors cameto sit next to, and converse with, senior scholarsand each other. Was it not thisthat the Greek Symposium was all about?With the Cyprus University Workshop

we attempted to emulate a gathering of old and new symposiasts who cherish thespiritual bonds that Nicolas nurtured between his students and himself, and like-wise among his students.

Like dozens of Nicolass one time students who are today distinguished scholars,Nota Kourou (University of Athens), Alexander Mazarakis Ainian (University ofThessaly), Irene Lemos (University of Oxford), Vasiliki Kassianidou (Universityof Cyprus) and Maria Iacovou (University of Cyprus), the five Greek professorswho were asked to convene the Workshop (their number was kept to a minimum

so as to give more time and scope to the second generation), had the good fortuneto studyand /or workwith Nicolas; but the primary force that brought us togetherwas the fact that it is through Nicolas that, since the s, we have come to knowand respect each other. It was Nicolas who showed us, by his own example, thatwe needed each others knowledge and first-hand experience of the intricacies ofall matters Aegean and Cypriot. The years went by, but mutual trust carried on;we have often relied on each others regional expertise; we have also referred toeach other, and exchanged, promising students who have helped to open up theCypro-Aegean web of communication and sustain a lively archaeological dialogue.

The result is an energetic and highly mobile second generation of young EarlyIron Age scholars from Greece and Cyprus who can bridge the geographicalandacademicdistance between the archaeologies of a central Mediterranean region(the Aegean) and an eastern one (the island of Cyprus) with an insightful under-standing of regional differences and a sensitive appreciation of local identities.

In one way or another, the eight second generation representatives who were in-vited to the Workshop belong to this energetic category (the order of names fol-

lows the order of papers in the volume). Antonia Livieratou, now in the th Ephor-ate of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities in the Museum of Thebes, did herdoctoral thesis in the University of Edinburgh with Lemos on the transition fromthe Late Bronze to the Early Iron Age in the Argolid and Central Greece. GeorgePapasavvas, Associate Professor of Classical Archaeology in the University ofCyprus therefore, a senior member of the second generation is the Cretan stu-dent of Kourou, who came to Cyprus via Germany to do his doctoral research onan intriguing subject (the thesis was finished in Cyprus at the newly establishedArchaeological Research Unit), which was subsequently defended in the Univer-

EDITORS INTRODUCTION

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sity of Athens and has since been published by the Leventis Foundation (X K K, Nicosia ). Antonis Kotsonas is an-other formidable student of Lemos, who did his doctoral thesis in the Universityof Edinburgh on ceramic styles in Iron Age Crete, and is now an active post-doc-

toral researcher at the Amsterdam Archaeological Centre. Giorgos Bourogiannis,who was also urged to look towards Cyprus by Kourou, received his doctoral titlefrom the University of Athens, worked for the British Museum and is now post-doctoral research fellow, responsible for the Cypriot collection, in the Medelhavs-museet at Stockholm. Anna Satraki, my doctoral student since , was claimedby the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus soon after she had defended her the-sis: since , she has been Archaeological Officer responsible for the Larnacadistrict. As I write this Introduction, Satrakis monograph, , is being released by the University of Athens

in theArchaiognosia publication series. This concise interpretation of the politicalorganization of Cyprus from the Late Bronze Age to the end of the Cypro-Classicalperiod will serve for many years as the most up to date research guide and historytextbook for teachers and students alike. Where Satraki ends, Giorgos Papanto-niou, another one of our cherished University of Cyprus students that went on toearn his doctoral title under the guidance of Christine Morris in the Departmentof Classics at Trinity College Dublin (where he is currently a post-doctoral re-searcher), picks up the thread: his masterful, Religion and Social Transformationsin Cyprus: From the Cypriot Basileis to the Hellenistic Strategos (Leiden ) will

appear in theMnemosyne Series of Brill any time now. Anna Georgiadou, theyoungest of all contributors, is an Athenian turned Cypriot ceramic expert: aftershe had devoted her MA thesis to the problem of Cypro-Geometric IIher pointof departure was Nicolass paper, On chronology: the CG II mystery and its sequel(in Iacovou, M. and Michaelides, D. (eds), Cyprus. The Historicity of the GeometricHorizon. University of Cyprus, Nicosia, , ) she came from Aix-en-Provence to Cyprus where, for the last four years, she has been studying Cypro-Geometric assemblages from all over the island. Georgiadous doctoral thesis (Les

ateliers de la production cramique de la priode Gomtrique Chypre (XIe VIIIe s. av. J.-C.), which will be submitted jointly to the Universities of Aix-en-Provence and Athens, will serve as a much-needed handbook of the Cypro-Geo-metric pottery, but it will also present a challenging codification of regionalceramic fingerprints. Manolis Mikrakis, is another student of Kourou, who foundhis way to Cyprus, where he has been working for the Department of Antiquities;in his dissertation, which was defended in at the University of Heidelberg,Mikrakis dealt with string instruments and the performance of music in theAegean and Cyprus during the Bronze and Early Iron Ages.

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Livieratou and Bourogiannis were unable to fly to Cyprus for the meeting butthey submitted their contributions for publication in the volume. Conversely,when due to other pressing commitments, Lemos announced that she could notmeet the deadline for the submission of her contribution, After Nicolas what?

The future of Iron Age studies in the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean, wedecided to accommodate a ninth second generation paper by Vicky Vlachou,who did her doctoral dissertation with Kourou on the Geometric pottery fromOropos, excavated by Mazarakis Ainian.

The Workshop was opened by the Director of the Archaeological Research Unit,Professor Demetrios Michaelides in the presence of our guest of honour: Dr NickyColdstream. It was addressed by the Director of Antiquities of Cyprus, Dr MariaHadjicosti, who on the previous day had kindly escorted the speakers and other

guests on a study trip that included Amathus and the Limassol District Museum,where Nicolas, always accompanied by Nicky, had spent time working on the pub-lication of some of the earliest Aegean imports to Cyprus.The Director of theBank of Cyprus Cultural Foundation, Mrs Lefki Michaelides, spoke next andpromised to have the Workshops proceedings published in recognition of Pro-fessor Coldstreams early association with the Foundation: backin , he gavethe Second Annual Lecture on the History and Archaeology of Cyprus, on The Orig-inality of Cypriot Art. Little did I know as I returned to Cyprus at the end of from post-doctoral research under Nicolass aegis at the Institute (made possible

through a BSA Centenary Bursary), that the author of the first book I wouldeditas part of my handle-it-all administrative duties at the newly establishedCultural Foundationwas going to be Professor Coldstream. Published inNicosia in as a pamphlet, The Originality of Cypriot Arthas since been citedin hundreds of works and, not surprisingly, it has also found its place in many ofthe papers in this volume.

Professor Vassos Karageorghis, old friend and associate of Nicolas, talked with un-

derstandable emotion of Nicolas Coldstream: The man, the scholar (the contentof his contribution was published in CCEC 38 (), ). Dr Despina Pilides,one-time student of Coldstream and now Curator of Antiquities in the Departmentof Antiquities of Cyprus, gave a lively presentation of Nicolas as teacher and aca-demic advisor. er contribution, John Nicolas Coldstream: A personal apprecia-tion of his legacy, is a most appropriate opening paper for the volume.

The invited speakers had not been asked to address a specific research problembut instead to present research topics they were currently working on and wanted



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MARIA IACOVOU

to share. Thus, the papers do not necessarily talk to each other; they stand on theirown and, had they been presented as individual seminars at the Institute in Londonsome years ago, we trust that Nicolas would have been there. This created a minorproblem, but a problem nonetheless: the papers order of presentation in the vo -

lume. It was easy to put Pilidess contribution first; it was also reasonable to chooseto continue with Kourous Phoenicia, Cyprus and the Aegean in the Early IronAge: J. N. Coldstreams contribution and the current state of research. After that,however, I had to improvise: I introduced a (quasi) geographical approach startingfrom the north Aegean, with Mazarakis Ainians Euboean mobility towards thenorth: new evidence from the Sporades, and moving south, first on the Greekmainland, with Livieratous paper, Phokis and East Lokris in the light of interre-gional contacts at the transition from the Late Bronze to the Early Iron Age, andthen on to Crete: Papasavvass Cretan bronze stands of Cypriot types from sanc-

tuaries and cemeteries: Cretan society in the Early Iron Age and Kotsonass Creto-Cypriot and Cypro-Phoenician complexities in the archaeology of interactionbetween Crete and Cyprus fuelled the endlessly fruitful dialogue between the twomegalonisoi. I then inserted Bourogianniss Pondering the Cypro-Phoenician co-nundrum. The Aegean view of a bewildering term, so as to begin to sail towardsCyprus and the East. The next five papers are studies firmly rooted in Cyprus. Theyare Iacovous External and internal migrations during the th century . Settingthe stage for an economically successful Early Iron Age; Kassianidous The originand use of metals in Iron Age Cyprus; Satrakis Cypriot polities in the Early Iron

Age; Papantonious Cypriot sanctuaries and religion in the Early Iron Age: viewsfrom before and after; and Georgiadous La production cramique de Kition auChypro-Gomtrique I.

I decided to end the volume with two contributions upon which Nicolas wouldhave looked with a twinkle in his eyes because of their pictorial theme: VlachousAspects of hunting in early Greece and Cyprus: a re-examination of the combmotif, and Mikrakiss The originality of ancient Cypriot art and the individu-

ality of performing practices in protohistoric Cyprus. When Nicolas dealt withpictorial pottery, he allowed himself to express joy and humour and became onewith the ancient potter-painter. Nicolass scholarship, writes Gerald Cadogan inNicolas Coldstream (), commenting on his unforgettable descriptionof the hippalektryon vessel, was and is human and humane, often humorous,blessed with a probing eye [], imaginative and empathetic in his speculationsabout what the ancient artists, craftsmen, merchants and patrons thought andchose (BSA (), ). I left the paper by Mikrakis to the end because itis a tribute to Nicolas the passionate piano player, who would have a lot in com-


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mon with Mikrakis in terms of musical interests; also, because the title and contentof the paper is an elegy to the lecture Nicolas gave in Nicosia in .

We asked two very special and long-time friends of Nicky and Nicolas to be chair-

persons at the Workshop, and we thank them for the eagerness with which theyaccepted. Robert Merrillees, who had travelled with his wife Helen to Cyprus toshare the experience of the meeting with Nicky and the rest of us, chaired themorning session with his well known gusto. Nadia Charalambidou, a Cypriotscholar of Modern Greek literature, who had known Nicolas and attended hisclasses in the early s, chaired the last session, and gave a touching farewellnote, after which Professor Michaelides asked our guest of honour to the podium.It was then that Nicky had the Workshops last word, and as she did I realised thatNicolas and Nicky were last in Cyprus together in the late autumn of for the

conference, Parallel Lives, Ancient Island Societies in Crete and Cyprus, which wasjointly organised by the British School at Athens and the Universities of Crete andCyprus. In fact, the picture on our frontispiece shows Nicolas addressing the Con-ference with his lecture, Cypriot kingdoms, Cretan city-states: what parallels?,which will appear posthumously, and almost certainly simultaneously with thepresent volume (in BSA Studies (), edited by G. Cadogan, M. Iacovou, K.Kopaka and J. Whitley).

In editing the volume I decided that there was no point in trying to create another

list of Coldstreams publications as this has been admirably compiled by twoeminent colleagues in two parts: the first can be found in the Festschrift Klados;Essays in Honour of J. N. Coldstream (Bulletin of the Institute of Classical StudiesSupplement , ), which was edited by Christine Morris; the second, whichcompletes the first with Coldstreams publications that appeared after Klados, wasrecently compiled by Alan Johnston in an invaluable memoir published in theProceedings of the British Academy (), . I did think, however, ofputting together a Cyprus bibliography of Nicolas but soon realised that it would

have been against Nicolass own approach to try to isolate the Cypriot (and maybealso Levantine) papers, when in fact Cyprus and the Eastern Mediterraneanplayed their part in almost every article and book he published. As Robert Mer-rillees remarked in Nicolas Coldstream: a personal reminiscence (in CCEC38() ), Only he could have got away with linking Cyprus to all of its com-pass points. Robert was referring to Nicolass last public address about Cyprus,the lecture he gave in London at the inauguration of the A.G. Leventis Gallery ofCypriot Antiquities in , which was entitled, Cypriot interconnections North, East, South and West. Finally, I should add that the Chronological Table


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in the volume results from the joint efforts of the contributors, whom I thankonce again for their persistence and patience.

I express heartfelt thanks to Alan Johnston and Nicky Coldstream for guidanceduring the preparatory stages of the Workshop, and for sharing important insideinformation with me that spared me not a few embarrassing errors. My gratitudegoes to another life-long teacher not only because he once again stood by me, thistime when writing the Introduction, but also because it was he, Gerald Cadogan,who had first introduced me to Nicolas and Nicky Coldstream in the early yearsof the s in the Stratigraphical Museum at Knossos.

I was fortunate not to have to shoulder alone the organisation of the Workshop:as on many previous occasions, my colleagues at the Archaeological Research Unit,Vasiliki Kassianidou, Demetrios Michaelides and Giorgos Papasavvas shared theburden with me, and we all relied on the assistance of Irida Chrysafi, who was theUnits secretary at the time. The meeting and the journeys of those of our gueststhat had to come from abroad were financed by the University of Cyprus, and thespeakers dinner by the Cyprus Tourist Organisation. I should also like to thankDr Pilides for her immediate response to my request for new and good quality il-lustrations of Greek imports from Amathus which, in the able hands of a book

Nicky Coldstream closing the Workshop at the Archaeological Research Unit of the Universityof Cyprus on December .


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designer as finicky and as creative as Akis Ioannides, were made into a book coverthat Nicolas would have certainly loved. This book has acquired physical substancedue to the combined efforts of Lefki Michaelidou, who is directing the CulturalFoundations publication programme, Akis Ioannides, who is enamoured with the

art of book design and Ian Todd, a distinguished archaeologist, who accepted toread, correct and improve the English, and in one case the French, text (and ref-erences) of papers written by Greeks; I thank him for his patience and kindness!It was my privilege to work with all three of them on this volume.

As I submit the proceedings to be printed, it seems to me that a wonderful cycle,in which Nicolas was vigilantly following the careers of many of his Greek stu-dents, has come to a close. We shall be blessed if we can do half as much for ourstudents. Syndedemenoi is the title of the Greek edition of a fascinating book by

Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler, which was originally published in with the meaningful title, Connected The Surprising Power of our Social Networksand how they Shape our Lives (Little, Brown and Co.). When I came across it in, I immediately knew what I would like one to remember when reading thisIntroduction about Nicolas the symposiast and his brood of Greek symposiasts:the reader should not try to seek in the volume a well-defined connecting theme,other than the general one of Cyprus and the Aegean in the Early Iron Age; it isprimarily the authors of the papers that form the connection: the first generationwas connected through Nicolas, while the students of Nicolass students form the

second generation and relate to each other through their teachers. Together wecontinue to celebrate the lasting impact of his legacy. Consequently, the papers inthis volume are a collection of cameos submitted to the memory of a belovedteacher that built the network which brought us together.

Maria IacovouSummer


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Bibliographic

AA Archologischer AnzeigerAAA Athens Annals of Archaeology,A A AAASOR Annual of the American Schools of Oriental ResearchADelt AEphem AJA American Journal of ArchaeologyAM Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archologischen Instituts,

Athenische AbteilungAR Archaeological ReportsARDA Annual Report of the (Director of the) Department of AntiquitiesASAtene Annuario della Scuola archeologica di Atene e delle Missioni

italiane in Oriente

AWE Ancient West and EastBAR, Int. Ser. British Archaeological Reports, International SeriesBASOR Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental ResearchBCH Bulletin de Correspondance HellniqueBICS Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, University of LondonBSA Annual of the British School at AthensBSA Studies British School at Athens StudiesCCEC Cahiers du Centre dtudes ChypriotesClAnt Classical Antiquity

Abbreviations

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JHS Journal of Hellenic StudiesJMA Journal of Mediterranean ArchaeologyMed. Arch. Mediterranean ArchaeologyOJA Oxford Journal of Archaeology

PAE PBSR Papers of the British School at RomePBF Prhistorische BronzefundeRA Revue ArchologiqueRDAC Report of the Department of Antiquities, CyprusSCE Swedish Cyprus ExpeditionSIMA Studies in Mediterranean ArchaeologySMEA Studi Micenei ed Egeo-AnatoliciWA World Archaeology

Chronological

The main terms are in some cases preceded by E (Early), M (Middle), L (Late),

S (Sub)

BA Bronze AgeLC Late CypriotLH Late Helladic

SM SubmycenaeanIA Iron AgePG ProtogeometricG GeometricEO Early Orientalising


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Chronological table

1400

1350

1300

1250

1200

1150

1100

1050

1000

950

900

850

800

750

700

650

600

550

500

450

400

350

Late Cypriot IIB

Late Cypriot IIC

Late Cypriot IIIA

Late Cypriot IIIB

Cypro-Geometric I

Cypro-Geometric II

Cypro-Geometric III

Cypro-Archaic I

Cypro-Archaic II

Cypro-Classical I

Cypro-Classical II

Late Minoan IIIA

Late Minoan IIIB

Late Minoan IIIC

Subminoan

Early Proto-Geometric

Middle Proto-Geometric

Early Geometric

Late Proto-Geometric

Proto-Geometric B

Late Geometric

Archaic

Classical

Late Helladic IIIA

Late Helladic IIIB

Late Helladic IIIC

Submycenaean

Early Proto-Geometric

Middle Proto-Geometric

Late Proto-Geometric

Early Geometric*

Middle Geometric*

Late Geometric

Archaic

Classical

* Coincides with the Sub-Protogeometric (I III) phases of Euboea and related areas.


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ABSTRACT

The role of Cyprus as producer and exporter of copper in the Late Bronze Age is well

known and adequately documented. We know the form in which copper was traded:

the preferred type of ingot was the oxhide shape, but plano-convex ingots were also

used. We also know the volumes of shipment that could be sent at any one time: the

Amarna letters mention as many as ingots sent to Egypt on one go, while the ship

that sank at Ulu Burun was carrying oxhide ingots. We even know the distance

that Cypriot copper travelled within the Mediterranean and beyond: recently copper

oxhide ingots whose lead isotope fingerprint is consistent with the Cypriot field were

found as far west as Marseille and as far north as Oberwilfingen in Germany.

At the end of the Late Bronze Age, when trading networks collapse together with

the societies of the Eastern Mediterranean all this changes. What happens, then, with

the Cypriot copper industry in the Iron Age? Was copper still produced on the island,

and where? How did the introduction of iron affect the copper industry and how was

this metal adopted and used in Cyprus? Furthermore, where did Cypriots get other met-

als, namely silver and gold which, as the evidence shows, were still important to them?

The aim of this paper is to investigate and present the available evidence in an at-

tempt to answer these questions.

The origin and use of metals in IronAge Cyprus

Vasiliki Kassianidou


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VASILIKI KASSIANIDOU

Introduction

The first half of the first millennium , in other words what is usually referredto as the Iron Age, constitutes one of the most important periods in Cyprus pasthistory. This is elucidated both by archaeological excavations on the sites which

once formed the city kingdoms of the island, and by the historical sources of theNear East and the Greek world. Yet little is known about the production and tradeof Cypriot copper at this time or about the use of iron, tin, lead, silver and gold.The aim of this paper is address this issue and to bring together archaeological,analytical and textual evidence on the production and use of metals in Cyprusduring the Iron Age.

Copper

The role of Cyprus as producer and exporter of copper in the Late Bronze Age iswell known and adequately documented. Excavations in practically every LateCypriot site have brought to light the remains of the installations and the wasteproducts of the copper industry (Muhly ; for recent discussions see Kassian-idouforthcoming, as well as papers in Kassianidou and Papasavvas ). Throughtheir study we can formulate models about the smelting technology of the period(Knapp and Kassianidou , ). We know the form in which copper wastraded: the preferred type of ingot had an oxhide shape, but plano-convex ingotsand oval ingots were also used. These are best illustrated in the cargo of the Ulubu-

run ship which dates to the end of the th century (Pulak , ; , ; , ). We even have a rough idea about the scale of production:in the eight letters from Alashiya found in the archives of Amarna (EA 33 40;Moran ) dating to the mid fourteenth century , ingots of copper aresaid to have been sent to Egypt over a period that cannot be greater than thirtyyears (Knapp and Kassianidou , ). The weight of oxhide ingots corre-sponds roughly to a talent which, depending on the measuring system, weighsbetween kg (Buchholz , ; Rice Jones , ). In other words Cyprus

sent to Egypt between to tons of copper metal in a span of less than years(Knapp and Kassianidou , ). We also know the size of shipment that couldbe sent at any one time: the ship that sank at Uluburun was carrying oxhideingots together with other types, totalling tons of copper which according tothe Lead isotope analysis is consistent with a Cypriot provenance (Gale and Stos-Gale , ).

We even know the distance that Cypriot copper travelled: oxhide ingots con-sistent with a Cypriot provenance are known from as far east as the Kassite palaceof Dur-Kurigalzu located near Baghdad (Brinkman , ; Muhly ,


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THE ORIGIN AND USE OF METALS IN IRON AGE CYPRUS

), as far west as Marseille (Domergue and Rico , ), as far north as Ober-wilfingen in Germany (Primas and Pernicka , ; Primas , ) and asfar south as Qantir in Egypt (Pusch , ).

At the end of the Late Bronze Age, when trading networks collapse together

with the societies of the Eastern Mediterranean, all this changes. What happensto the Cypriot copper industry in the Iron Age? Was copper still produced on theisland, and where? Did the demand for Cypriot copper diminish when iron be-came established?

In fact, iron never fully substituted for bronze, simply because it could not.Why this should be so, is clear when one considers the physical properties of themetal (Giumlia-Mair and Maddin , ). Although its ores are abundant andthus iron is readily available, iron could only compete with tin bronze if it hadbeen turned into steel, through a multi stepped process (Muhly , ).

Furthermore, while the hardness of steel rendered it an ideal material for the man-ufacture of tools and especially weapons, the high melting-point of the metal(1583 C) made it impossible for ancient smiths to melt and cast it in moulds.Thus its use was restricted to objects that could be forged. Finally, the vulnerabilityof iron to corrosion rendered it a base metal. As eloquently described by Pliny(Natural HistoryXXXIV.XL. 141): The same benevolence of nature has limitedthe power of iron itself by inflicting on it the penalty of rust, and the same foresightby making nothing in the world more mortal than that which is most hostile tohumanity (Rackham , ).

Bronze, therefore, continued to be used for the manufacture of vessels, worksof art and other objects. Consequently, copper not only did not cease to be a pop-ular material during the Iron Age but, in fact, it remained a valuable and soughtafter commodity. This is fully supported, according to Zaccagnini (, ) bythe numerous references to copper and bronze smiths, as well as, to works ofhandicraft such as statues, bas-reliefs, plates, bowls, basins, cauldrons, (ritual)weapons, etc. in the Neo Assyrian and Neo Babylonian texts. According to Gium-lia-Mair and Maddin (, ): As late as the Roman Empire and even later, the

most common metals employed for items of daily use, personal decorations orprecious objects of furniture, were copper-based alloys. Significant quantities ofiron were used for weapons and implements for farming, but copper, togetherwith its alloys, remained an extremely important and very expensive material formany centuries. I believe, therefore, that the introduction of iron did not have anegative effect on the Cypriot copper industry or economy which was alwaysmainly based on the export of copper.

That there was no recession in the production of copper after the transition tothe Iron Age is fully supported by the archaeological evidence, according to which


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copper is still being produced in Cyprus in the first millennium . The evidencecomes mainly from the cupriferous foothills of the Troodos mountains wherethere are the scattered remains of ancient mines and smelting workshops (Fig. ).

It should be pointed out that it is extremely difficult to date the few galleries

which have survived modern methods of mining. The only exception being thosegalleries, which due to the weakness of the host rock, had to be supported withtimber. The environment in the mines is such that the wood is well preserved andit, therefore, provides suitable material for radiocarbon dating. Wooden supportswere found at the mine of Kokkinoyia in Mitsero, and radiocarbon analysis de-termined that some date from the th th centuries (Panayiotou , ).Zwicker (, ) recorded ancient wood used to support galleries in the minesof Kambia (Pitharochoma and Peristerka) which are close to the village of Politiko,ancient Tamassos. A sample of mining timber from Peristerka was dated by ra-

diocarbon and was found to date to , while two others gave a date of and respectively, offering clear evidence that these mineswere being exploited during the Archaic and Classical periods. Similar dates werefound when mining timber from Pitharochoma (Zwicker , ), as well as, apiece of mine wood from Skouriotissa (pers. comm.. C. Xydas, CEO of the Skou-riotissa mine) were subjected to radiocarbon dating.

Furthermore, during the Sydney Cyprus Survey Project (SCSP) we detectedthe remains of two ancient mining spoil heaps, on the section of the modern opencast mine of Agrokipia (Fig. ). The nature of the stratified material and the form

of the deposits all indicate that the heaps consist of waste that derives from mining,mineral dressing and roasting (Kassianidou a, ). The stratified depositsyielded no ceramic sherds but plenty of charcoal which was used to determinethe age of the deposit with radiocarbon dating. Two of the samples gave a date of while the other two ranged between (all at % confi-dence) (Kassianidou a, ). From these unimpressive, in terms of archaeo-logical finds, ancient spoil heaps, we have solid evidence for the continuation ofthe copper industry in the Iron Age.

On the hill of Kokkinorotsos, which is located ca. km to the southwest ofPolitiko, a metallurgical site was also recorded by SCSP dating roughly to the sameperiod. According to radiocarbon dating the metallurgical processes could bedated between (at % confidence) (Knapp , ). Chemicaland microscopic analysis of the slag showed that it represents multiple stages ofthe production of black copper from sulphide ores (Kassianidou b, ).

Slightly later in date is the well preserved smelting workshop of Ayia VarvaraAlmyras where a small mine, crushing and grinding tools, slag and a series ofroasting and smelting furnaces have been excavated (Fasnacht , ). The


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earliest phase of production atAlmyras dates according to the excavator to around , namely the Cypro-Archaic Period. Also dating to the Archaic period is apartially preserved smelting installation that was excavated in the area of SouthMathiatis (Fasnacht and Georgiou , ).

Some new evidence on copper production in the Classical period has recentlycome to light when a number of ancient slag heaps were investigated as part of aresearch project entitled Reconstructing woodland vegetation and its exploitationby past societies, based on anthracological analysis and interpretation. The projectis coordinated by the author and is undertaken by Maria Socratous as part of herdoctoral thesis. It is funded by the Research Promotion Foundation, the Republicof Cyprus and the European Structural funds for Cyprus. Its focus is the anthra-cological analysis of charcoal samples collected from ancient copper slag heapsin order to identify the preferred species of wood used as fuel for the smelting

process, as well as the ancient woodland vegetation in the copper bearing foothillsof the Troodos. In three of the four mining districts that fieldwork was under-taken, namely Mitsero, Troulloi and Kalavasos, evidence of copper productionfrom the Archaic through the Hellenistic period was revealed.

In the mine of Kokkinoyia in Mitsero the substantial slag heap has alreadybeen recorded by the Sydney Cyprus Survey Project (Van Lokeren , )(Fig. ), Among the stratified layers of the heap, which currently measures .min length and m in height, pottery dating to the Archaic and Classical periodswas collected (Van Lokeren , ). However, no charcoal was collected, which

is why Socratous and the author returned to the site. One of the samples we col-lected was radiocarbon dated and produced a calibrated date between and (at .%). More dates will be procured in the near future but at the mo-ment the evidence shows that the heap dates to the Classical period.

Also dating from the Classical to the Hellenistic period, according to two char-coal samples that were radiocarbon dated (the first produced a date of and the second at .% confidence), is a small slag heap near themine of Troulloi. The ore deposit of Troulloi is of great interest as it is the copper

mine that is closest to the city-kingdoms of Salamis and Kition.Finally, the slag heap north of the village of Kalavasos was recorded as wellduring this project. We have not yet received the results of radiocarbon analysison our samples but charcoal samples collected by Zwicker (, ) have beendated and revealed that the copper production dates to the Classical and Hellenis-tic period. The slag heap is of particular interest as it covers the remains of a build-ing which is clearly of an earlier date (Fig, ). A small trial excavation by the De-partment of Antiquities recovered several female figurines indicating that thisbuilding was once a sanctuary which is preliminarily dated to the Classical Period


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(Flourentzos , ). Figurines are still visible in the disturbed deposits infront of the structure. They are female and many form parts of composite modelsof women dancing (Fig. ). Once the sanctuary was abandoned the area was takenover by an extensive copper smelting industrial workshop, the presence of which

is indicated by the extensive slag heap. Whether the sanctuary was already some-how involved in copper production is something to consider, especially takinginto account the evidence from other contemporary urban and religious centresdiscussed below. Apart from the mines and the primary smelting workshopswhich are located in the Troodos foothills, within the pillow lava geological for-mation, metallurgical activities have also been recorded in some excavated IronAge urban centres. The most important are the Northern workshops of the templecomplex at Kition, which were still active in the th century, thus providing ev-idence for the continuation of the copper industry into the Iron Age (Karageorghis

and Kassianidou ). These workshops were then abandoned, but the FrenchMission uncovered limited metallurgical debris during the excavation of the laterIron Age sanctuary at the locality of Kition-Bamboula. Perhaps the richest depositsof Iron Age workshops within an urban centre are those recently excavated byMaria Hadjicosti (, ) at Idalion. Their study and publication will shed muchneeded light on the technology of this period.

Recent excavations at the site of Peristeries near Polis tis Chrysochou, ancientMarion, brought to light the remains of a monumental building dating to the Ar-chaic period. The building consists of a complex of rooms and open spaces (Pa-

palexandrou , ). In one of the rooms of the building, Room , a tuyrewas found in situ in association with a metallurgical installation and small quan-tities of slag (Papalexandrou , ). Based on the pottery the building hasbeen dated to the th century (Papalexandrou , ) and based on thearchitectural remains it has been argued that this may have been the palace of thecity kingdom of Marion in this period (Papalexandrou , ). It is significantthat the building is close to the road that leads east from Polis to the rich coppermines of Limni that are located at a distance of km: it has been argued that the

specific location was chosen in an effort to control access to the copper mines(Papalexandrou , ). Near the monumental building, at a distance of ca. metres to the northwest, is the contemporary sanctuary of Polis-Peristeries(Smith ). Interestingly, small quantities of slag were recovered from thetemenos of the sanctuary. Apart from these scattered pieces, a deposit of slag wasfound buried near the entrance of the sanctuary. As the deposit also included theskull of a bull, this deposit has been identified as votive in nature (Smith ,). Furthermore, the excavation of a bothros associated with the sanctuarybrought to light small quantities of slag and probable refractory materials, ceramic


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wasters and hundreds of broken murex shells (Smith, ). As these re-mains reflect craft production, the excavator was led to the conclusion that work-shops associated with the sanctuary would have been located in the direct vicinitybut, have not yet been uncovered.

Metallurgical workshops were also found in association with the sanctuary ofAphrodite at Tamassos. In the building complex to the west of the temple a varietyof archaeometallurgical debris was collected (Buchholz and Untiedt , ).Among the finds were remains of furnaces, tuyres and slag, which seems to havebeen derived from the smelting of copper sulphide ores (Zwicker , ).Zwickers study of this material revealed that casting was also taking place in theseworkshops. The association of metallurgical workshops with sanctuaries seemsto be a practice which survived since the Late Bronze Age.

Some of the copper produced in the Iron Age would of course have been ex-

ported. Is there any evidence to support this statement? At the moment the latestevidence available for the export of Cypriot copper in the form of oxhide ingotsis provided by the examples found in Sardinia (for a recent compilation of the ev-idence see Lo Schiavo a). According to Lead Isotope analysis all of the oxhideingots found in Sardinia are most probably made of Cypriot copper (Gale ,; Begemann et al. ) and they date to the th and th century (LoSchiavo a, ). This means that, according to the Lead Isotope analysisCypriot copper is still being cast and traded in the form of oxhide ingots until theth century. There is no evidence that the use of this type of ingot continues after

the th century and unfortunately we do not know what the Cypriot copper in-gots looked like in the Iron Age. As a result there is no direct archaeological evi-dence for the trade of Cypriot copper after the th century . Moorey (,) supports the view that plano-convex ingots were still used in the early partof the first millennium in Assyria, which indicates that this type of ingot is theone that remained in use after the Late Bronze Age.

Iacovou (forthcoming) recently put forth the suggestion that in the Early IronAge perhaps copper was exchanged in the form of obeloi. She bases this proposi-

tion on the well-known use of iron obeloi as a form of currency in the premone-tary society of Iron Age Greece (Karamessini-Oeconomides , ) and onthe fact that in Cyprus, as in Greece, obeloi have been found in fractions or mul-tiples of six. The best known example from Cyprus is the inscribed obelos ofOpheltas from T. 49 of the Palaepaphos-Skales necropolis which was found to-gether with two other examples (Karageorghis , ) (Fig. ).

Written sources of this period do not offer much information regarding thetrade of Cypriot copper in particular or even the trade of metals in general. Thelack of texts that mention the trade of copper may have to do with the transfor-


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mation of the trading systems with the transition to the Iron Age. As pointed outby Sherratt and Sherratt(, ): merchant enterprise rather than state ownedexchange became the dominant mode of trading activity. As a result they arguethat: This had important consequences for the nature of the documentary record,

since trading activity was no longer reflected in state records and the literature ofthe ruling class, so that the economic history of the first millennium has been sys-tematically distorted both by the nature of the evidence and the theories whichhave grown up to rationalize it (Sherratt and Sherratt , ).

According to Zaccagnini (, ), however, Assyrian historical sources,starting with Tukulti-Ninurta II ( ) indicate that the Assyrians pro-cured copper from Cyprus. He goes to on say The main areas whence the Assyr-ians got their copper were inner Syria and Phoenicia, the Aramean settlementsalong the Euphrates and those along the Habr up to the triangle. I surmise that

Cyprus was the original source for the Phoenician, Syrian and Euphrates copper,whereas the Habr copper could have come from Anatolian deposits (ErganiMaden?), probably the same source that had been exploited in the second mil-lennium (Zaccagnini , ).

Interestingly copper is conspicuously absent in one of the few historical doc-uments mentioning Cyprus dating to this period. This is the well known stele ofSargon II ( ) which was found in Larnaca in , which dates to (Stylianou , ). In this Sargon II speaks of the seven kings of Ia, whichis identified with Cyprus, and states that: (these kings) heard from afar, in the

midst of the sea, of the deeds which I was performing in Chaldea and the Hittite-land, their hearts were rent, fear fell upon them, gold silver, furniture if maple (?)and boxwood, of the workmanship of their land, they brought before me in Baby-lon and they kissed my feet (Stylianou , ). Copper is not among the giftsthat the Assyrian king receives from his Cypriot vassals (Stylianou , ) butcopper from Yamana, a term which is believed to refer to Cyprus is mentionedin two mid-sixth century texts from Uruk (Moorey , ).

It is only in later Greek sources that Cyprus mineral wealth and rich copper

mines are praised. The earliest such reference is thought to be a well-known pas-sage from the first book of the Odyssey ( ) where Athena, disguised asMentes, tells Telemachos that: And now have I put in here, as thou seest, withship and crew, while sailing over the wine dark sea to men of strange speech, onmy way to Temese for copper; and I bear with me shining iron. Temese was al-ready identified with Tamassos in Later Antiquity. For example Eustathios (Philo.et Scr. Eccl.: Commentari ad Homeri Odysseam. Volume , page , line ), dis-cussing the identity of Temese, states that there is also a Temese in Cyprus where,according to Strabo, chalcanthes is produced, which is used in the preparation of


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medicines and the production of ink. In the well known passage where Strabopraises the fertility of Cyprus (GeographyBook XIV.vi.v), in fact, he mentionsTamassos, while on a different occasion he states that: The next city after Lausbelongs to Brettium, and is named temesa, though some men of today call it

Tempsa People say that Homer has in mind this Temesa, not the Tamassus inCyprus (the name is spelled both ways) when he says to Temesa, in quest for cop-per. And in fact copper mines are to be seen in the neighbourhood, although nowthey have been abandoned (Jones , ). In any case the passage in theOdyssey has occasionally been used as evidence for the importance of Cypruscopper mines in the Early Iron Age (e.g. Muhly , ; Karageorghis , ).Furthermore, it has raised some questions because of the exchange of iron forcopper it describes (Karageorghis , ).

Direct evidence (albeit much later) for the export of Cypriot copper to the Aegean

comes from inscriptions, such as the one found in Eleusis (IG II2 ) which spec-ifies that copper from Marion was to be used during the building of the PhiloniosStoa (Philios , ). The inscription dates to the late th century .

I believe that the Iron Age trade of Cypriot copper, can, furthermore be indi-rectly deduced from the flourishing economy of the island during this period. Forexample, the tombs of the th and th centuries excavated in the necropolisof Skales near Palaepaphos, were not only furnished with elaborate bronze arte-facts (Fig. ) and weapons, but they also included a significant quantity of goldjewellery (Maier and Karageorghis , ). As will be argued later on, the

gold must have been imported to the island through maritime trade and in ex-change for a local commodity. This most probably was copper.

Iron

The transition to the Iron Age is of course defined by the introduction of a newmetal: iron. The discussions on what led to the transition to the Iron Age are stillgoing on and the issue has not really been resolved. Muhly (, ) in a re-

cent article put forth the following radical suggestion: The warriors or freeboot-ers of this period (th and th centuries ) in reality probably pirates andplundererswho looted the tombs of their predecessors, represent the very he-roes whose exploits are recorded in the Homeric poems, Odysseus is of coursethe outstanding example These warlords wanted readily available weaponsclose to hand. They were not interested in long distance trade routes bringingsupplies of copper and tin from distant lands. They wanted immediate access toweapons with good sharp blades, all the better to massacre the opposition. Heconcludes: There can be no doubt that iron technology was developed in order


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to produce a considerable quantity of weapons with good sharp cutting edges(Muhly , ).

What is the evidence for the use and production of iron in Cyprus? MariaMichael, a graduate student in the Department of History and Archaeology of

the University of Cyprus has recently submitted her Masters thesis which is a data-base recording all the iron objects that date from the Late Bronze Age down toand including the Geometric Period. With her permission I will use her work todiscuss the production and use of iron in Cyprus during the Iron Age. The firstiron objects appear in the Late Bronze Age. Between LC I and LC IIC only artefacts are recorded (Michael , ). Most are knives that were deposited inburials (Michael , ). The iron knife with bronze rivets is according to Sher-ratt (, ) one of the earliest and most prominent manifestations of early util-itarian iron (Fig. ). In the LC IIIA there is a marked increase in the number of

recorded iron objects which rises to , most of which are still knives (Michael, ). Although the majority were found in burial contexts more are be-ginning to show up in settlements. This increase in number of objects in generaland in the settlements in particular led Sherratt (, ) to the conclusion that:these objects were neither kept solely for purposes of funerary display nor care-fully guarded against the possibility of accidental loss.

In the LC IIIB the number of iron objects increases again to and althoughmost of them are still knives, the first weapons begin to appear. Among them areswords, knives and daggers from Idalion which are some of the earliest known

examples made of steel (Tholander ; strm et al. ). In the Geometricperiod, which spans the period from , a total of artefacts wererecorded, many of which are weapons such as arrow heads, swords (Fig. ) andspearheads. Knives are still the predominant type of tool but new types of objectsappear such as obeloi (Michael , ).

The significant number of early iron artefacts which sometimes outnumberthose made of bronze, as well as the presence of some of the earliest known artefactsmade of steel, led Snodgrass (, ) to the conclusion that Cyprus was one of

the first areas to make the transition to the Iron Age. This proposition is also ac-cepted by others (Muhly , ; Sherratt , ). Furthermore, it has been ar-gued that the island played a leading role both in the development and the dissem-ination of iron metallurgy (Muhly , ; Sherratt , ). Some scholars,however, have expressed their doubts on the matter for a number of reasons.

The first was the established belief that there are no iron ores on the islandand, therefore, iron could not have been produced in Cyprus, thus it could not bethe instigator of this new technology (Muhly , ; Karageorghis , ). Ihave argued elsewhere that, on the contrary, ochre and umber which are abundant


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in the Troodos foothills qualify as good iron ores (Kassianidou , )! Thereis absolutely no need to suggest that iron was produced in Cyprus from, either,re-smelting of copper slag (Snodgrass , ; contra Kassianidou , ), orores imported from Italy (Snodgrass , ) or from pyrite (Snodgrass ,

), an iron mineral which even today is only used for the production of sul-phuric acid.The other problem is the absence of iron smelting furnaces and iron slag from

the archaeological record of the island. However, this is not really a valid argu-ment, if one considers the fact that even today we know of only two workshops,

Almyras and Phorades, at which copper smelting furnaces have been found: yetthe production of copper cannot be questioned. This is of course due to the im-mense amounts of copper slag that are found on the island, while no iron slagheaps have yet been discovered. If, however, iron was smelted in the same areas

as copper, as the ochre and umber deposits are associated with the chalcopyriteorebodies, then iron slag may be mixed or obscured by those deriving from cop-per smelting: the two can only be differentiated by chemical and microscopicanalysis (Maddin , ). It is, therefore, entirely possible that within the mul-tiple layers of the large slag heaps, iron smelting slag is present which has not yetbeen identified. To this day the only excavated iron smiths workshop on Cyprusis the one found in Agios Georgios (PA.SY.DY) in Nicosia which has been datedto the Hellenistic period (Pilides et al. , ).

Finally, there is also the fact that ancient sources scarcely mention iron as one

of Cyprus products: iron is only mentioned in a passage by Pseudo Aristotle (Ph.) describing the mineral wealth of the island, while Strabo (GeographyXXXIV.ii.vii) informs us that the Telchines, the mythical creatures who were thefirst to work iron and copper, came to Cyprus from Crete before moving toRhodes. However the scarcity of literary references can also be accounted for. Be-cause of the abundance of its ores, even in the Roman period when the metal iswidely used, the ancient sources rarely specify known sources for iron, as was thecase with copper, gold or silver. According to Pliny (NH XXXIV. XLI. 142): De-

posits of iron are found almost everywhere (Rackham , ). Perhaps themetal was not associated with Cyprus in historical sources because Cypriot ironwas not destined for export.

In other words, there are no real reasons why Cyprus could not have been atthe forefront of the development and dissemination of iron technology. As arguedfirst by Wertime (, ) and then by others (e.g. Snodgrass , ), Cyprushad both the expertise and the necessary materials to do so. The fact that the treat-ment of iron is so very different from that of copper, indicates that iron smithingcannot have been developed in a bronze metalworking workshop: the bronze


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smith could not apply his expertise to produce the same object in a the new metal.It would have been developed in a smelting workshop where the primary product,the spongy amorphous mass of iron, would already have had to be hammered inorder to free itself from slag and other inclusions. Cypriot metallurgists who al-

ready had almost a thousand years of expertise with sulphide ore smelting, duringwhich some iron may have been accidentally produced, would have been the firstto come across this new material and the first to have tested it employing the toolsand skills of their trade (Charles , ; Gale et al. , ; Pickles and Pel-tenburg , ; contra Merkel and Barrett ). This seems to be confirmedby recent excavations at the site of Tell Brak (Shell , ).

Lead and tin

Lead and tin are the two other base metals that would have been essential to theCypriot smiths. This is especially true of tin, as it is the metal with which copperis mixed to produce bronze. Neither of them are present in the metalliferous zonesof the island and, therefore, both of them would have had to be imported. Theprovenance of lead can be rather easily addressed, as there are known rich depositsboth in Anatolia and in Attica, namely in Laurion. These two metalliferous areaswere most likely the sources for lead for Cyprus, as for the rest of the EasternMediterranean. Analysis of a few lead artifacts from Cyprus dating to the LateBronze Age indicates that this assumption is most probably correct. Lead Isotope

analysis indicates that three lumps of lead excavated at Hala Sultan Tekke and dat-ing to the LC IIIA are consistent with a provenance in the mines of the TaurusMountains, while a lead ring from Alambra dating to the MC I is consistent witha Laurion provenance (Stos Gale and Gale , ). From the LC IIC on-wards and particularly in the LC IIIA a number of lead artefacts were found to beconsistent with a Sardinian or even perhaps a South-Western Iberian provenance(Stos Gale and Gale , ). This is not surprising and is a rather welcomedevelopment in the study of the metals trade. The strong relations of Cyprus and

Sardinia, especially as regards the copper trade but also metalwork, in the thand th century are well known and have been the subject of numerous papers(Lo Schiavo ; ; Lo Schiavo et al. ; Kassianidou ; ). ClearlySardinian lead was one of the commodities that were given in exchange for theimported Cypriot copper. What comes as a total surprise is the identification ofthe Massif Central in France as the source for lead artefacts dating to the EC IIIand the MC I (Stos Gale and Gale , ), a period where there is no ev-idence whatsoever for contacts between Cyprus and the Western Mediterranean.These results, therefore, I believe are rather problematic.


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The question of the provenance of the tin is even more complicated and is

one that has been discussed in detail over the last forty years and since the pio-

neering doctoral thesis of J. D. Muhly entitled Copper and Tin. The Nature of the

Metals Trade in the Bronze Age, published in . It is beyond the scope of this

paper to discuss this issue (for a recent review see Pigott ). Suffice it to saythat both the textual evidence and recent archaeological discoveries in the East

seem to indicate that in the Late Bronze Age tin came to the Eastern Mediter-

ranean from the East (Maddin et al. , ; Muhly , ; Weeks ,

; Weisgerber and Cierny ). With the collapse of the trading systems of the

Late Bronze Age, this trade network was disrupted and eastern tin was no longer

available, either in the coastal regions of the Eastern Mediterranean or in Cyprus

(Zaccagnini , ). This is what may have created the incentive and the need

for the search for metals in the West. I have suggested in the past that the strong

contacts between Cyprus and Sardinia at the end of the Late Bronze Age mayhave had to do with the need for Cypriots to find new tin sources which, accord-

ing to the literature, were available on Sardinia (Kassianidou , ). This I

later withdrew (Kassianidou , ) as Valera et al. (a, ), have convinc-

ingly argued that Sardinian tin deposits could not have been exploited in Antiq-

uity. Like Cypriot gold and silver (see below), Sardinian tin is only a product of

the recent mining industry. There are, however, rich tin deposits in the Iberian

Peninsula (Meredith , ) and recent excavations at the site of Logrosan

have brought to light a Bronze Age mine and tin smelting site (Rodriguez Diaz et

al. ).

It has long been argued that Phoenician expansion to the West in the first mil-lennium was driven by the need to search for new metal sources, not only ofsilver but also of tin. The pressure to procure metals, especially precious metals,came from Assyria who according to Aubet (, ) appeared on the Mediter-ranean coast during the ninth century and demanded payments of tribute. Shenotes that the Assyrian tribute lists start with metals, followed in importance byivory, cloth, wooden furniture and perfumes. According to Zaccagnini (,

): The annals of Tiglath-pileser I are totally silent regarding tin imports / trib-utes, contrasted to the record of notable tributes of copper and bronze (cf. ARABI, , , ) from non-western areas, i.e., areas not supplied by Cypriotcopper. In other words, it is reasonable to surmise that the Late Bronze Age dis-turbances caused a two-way interruption in the trade routes that brought tin toSyria and the Levant and, vice versa, copper (and bronze) from Cyprus to upperMesopotamia via Syria. He argues that as Assyrian power on the Mediterraneancoast became more pronounced from the th century onwards the availabilityof tin from the East for the coastal areas and Cyprus would have been even more


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curtailed. This negative development would have made the need to search fornew sources in the West even more pressing (Zaccagnini , ).

What the archaeological evidence from Sardinia shows is that Cyprus alreadyhad strong trading links with the Central and perhaps Western Mediterranean (if

we consider the oxhide ingots that have been found on the coast near Marseillesand in Corsica (Lo Schiavo b and c)) in the th and th centuries ,namely long before the Phoenician expansion to the West which for Iberia is gen-erally placed sometime in the eighth century (Aubet , ). I have, there-fore, argued elsewhere, that perhaps it was the Cypriots who first ventured westin search for tin and silver (Kassianidou c, ; , ), a trade route thatwas then followed by the Phoenicians but never abandoned by the Cypriots (onthe relations of Cyprus and the Western Mediterranean see Kassianidou ;Crielaard ). To conclude, it is, therefore, most likely that in the Iron Age tin

from Iberia was imported to Cyprus.

Precious metals

Precious metals, namely gold and silver, were important (if not essential) com-modities for the Late Bronze Age and the Iron Age society of the island. It is inthe Late Bronze Age that significant quantities of gold jewellery begin to be de-posited in tombs in order to demonstrate the high status of the occupants (Pa-pasavvas ). This tradition continues well into the Iron Age with its most ev-

ident manifestation being the Archaic limestone sculptures (Yon , )and terracotta figurines (Laffineur ) of women who are richly adorned withgold jewellery (Fig. ). There are two pieces of evidence that provide support forthe idea that most of the jewellery depicted is actually made of gold. One is thediscovery of a gold necklace in Arsos, now in the Cyprus Museum, practicallyidentical to the one worn by many of these figures (Nicolaou , pl. XXVIIIa)and the other is that in the case of a number of terracottas where the colours arepreserved, many pieces of jewellery are painted yellow (Laffineur , ).

As for silver, the archaeological record shows that in this period, in Cyprus asin neighbouring regions, it was mainly used for the manufacture of vessels andjewellery (Kassianidou , ) (Fig. ). However, there were generally fewerobjects of silver deposited in the tombs than gold or bronze (strm , ).This was clearly demonstrated by Keswani (, ) who compiled in tablesthe types and quantities of grave goods made of different materials, deposited intombs of the Early through Late Cypriot period. As pointed out by Sherratt andSherratt (, ) who discuss a similar apparent absence of silver vessels inthe Cretan archaeological record: The absence of surviving precious metal vessels


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from Crete is no indication of the absence of such items from palatial tables it is rather the indication of the extent to which it was retained in circulation andmobilised when necessary. The absence of silver objects may, therefore, be dueto the fact that silver was regularly recycled, perhaps even more so than other

metals, and this is because silver served another very important role throughoutthe Middle East. Already from the Akkadian period, silver was used an index ofvalue (Moorey , ). Namely already since the Late Bronze Age, the valueof raw materials and finished objects was commonly expressed relative to that ofsilver. That silver objects were systematically removed from circulation and trans-formed to ingots is clearly seen in the texts of the Near East where, according toMoorey (, ): When payments were received in temples or palaces in un-coined silver currency (rings, wires, cut pieces, objects, fragments, etc.) they weredropped into a box the contents of which were then smelted in the official

foundry. When refired the metal was cast as ingots of standard size and finenessand deposited in the treasury.

Over the last twenty years archaeological excavations in the Levant havebrought to light a significant number of silver hoards consisting of broken jew-ellery and pieces of hacksilber namely broken pieces of silver ingots (for a seriesof papers on the subject see Balmuth (ed.) ). It is clear that in some cases thehoard in fact consisted of small batches of silver, stored in linen pouches (Thomp-son , ). It has been argued that because some of the bags were clearly tiedand sealed they must have formed a type of currency that was used in the earlier

part of the Iron Age and before the introduction of coinage (Kroll , ;Thompson , ). Interestingly such hoards are also known from Cyprus,the best example being the one found in omb in Amathus excavated by theBritish Museum at the end of the th century (Thompson , ; Smith, ) (Fig. ).

Cyprus, therefore, took part in this pre-monetary economic system whichused silver, (and not always copper) for economic transactions. I have argued else-where that this was probably the case also in the Late Bronze Age (Kassianidou

, ). The absence of silver objects may, therefore, be due to the fact thatsilver was regularly recycled, perhaps even more so than other metals, to be turnedinto bullion. The collection of silver and gold bullion would have been imperativefor the city kingdoms of Iron Age Cyprus: as vassals to the Assyrian kings theywere obliged to pay tribute in the form of precious metals (Stylianou , ).

Let us now consider probable sources for these metals. Searching through theweb one may come across a table published by the Cyprus Mines Service whichshows the amount of silver and gold produced in Cyprus in modern times(http://www.moa.gov.cy/moa/Mines/MinesSrv.nsf/all/8586AC4EB8686A2EC225


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74EA0031B407/$file/Gold%20and%20Silver%20exports.pdf?openelement). Ac-cording to their records, between and Cyprus exported just over .tons of gold and . tons of silver. This may lead someone to the conclusion that,in Antiquity, Cyprus produced precious metals as well as copper. In fact this was

not the case. Gold and silver are present in a geological deposit that modern minerscalled Devils mud because of its extremely corrosive nature: it contains a high per-centage of sulphuric acid (Bear , ). This deposit, which contained excep-tionally high values of gold and silver containing (up to gr/ton of gold and gr/ton of silver), was located between the sulphide ore deposit and the under-lying un-mineralised basaltic upper pillow lavas (Constantinou , ). Theprecious metals, however, are in colloidal form (Bear , ) and they are notvisible nor can they be collected by panning. Instead they have to be extractedthrough a series of fairly complex metallurgical procedures, none of which are

recorded on the island. Furthermore, it is clear that this geological stratum was ofno interest to the ancients: their galleries usually cut through it, in an effort toreach the copper deposits below (Bear , ).

As gold and silver were not locally available they would have had to be im-ported from elsewhere. Thus an equally well developed exchange system for pre-cious metals must have been operating in the Eastern Mediterranean and the NearEast parallel to that for base metals. The study of this form of trade, however, isnot easy, mainly due to the scarcity of archaeological evidence: gold and silver in-gots are rare. Thus, if we want to identify probable sources for the precious metals

found in Cyprus, we need to turn to economic geology.The most significant gold deposits in the Eastern Mediterranean are those of

Egypt and Nubia (Mller and Thiem , ). This was a well-known factamong the rulers of the Eastern Mediterranean, at least since the Late Bronze Age,as is candidly illustrated in the letters of the Great Kings to the Pharaoh of Egyptfound at Amarna (Kassianidou , ). An excerpt from letter EA 16 sent fromthe King of Assyria to the king of Egypt summarises all of the above: Is such apresent that of a Great King? Gold in your country is dirt; one simply gathers it

up. Why are you so sparing of it? I am engaged in building a new palace. Sendme as much gold as is needed for its adornment (Moran , ). Importantdeposits of gold are also located in Anatolia, within Lydia, the land of king Croesuswell known in Antiquity for his wealth, along the Black Sea coast in the Pontusarea (ancient Colchis, where Jason and the Argonauts sought the golden fleece)and elsewhere (Bayburtolu and Yildirim , ). In the Aegean, auriferousdeposits are known from the Cycladic islands of Siphnos and Thasos, and inMacedonia and Thrace (Williams and Ogden , ). However, I believe thatEgypt is the most likely source for the gold imported to Cyprus in the Iron Age.


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What about silver sources in the Eastern Mediterranean? Anatolia possessesnumerous important argentiferous ore deposits that were extensively exploitedin Antiquity (Bayburtolu and Yildirim , ; Moorey , ). TheAegean, especially the Cycladic islands, are rich in silver and lead (Gale and Stos-

Gale , ) The silver ore deposits of Siphnos, one of the Aegean islands,were already exploited by the Early Bronze Age (Gale and Stos-Gale , ; Pernicka et al. , ). The island of Thasos is also rich in silver. It wasthought that the exploitation of the silver deposits there only started in the Archaicperiod (Grabolle , ) but recent archaeological research has revealed evi-dence for silver production already since the Final Neolithic (Papadopoulos ,). The most important Aegean silver-lead deposit, however, is that of Laurionin Attica. It was believed that silver production at Laurion, at the site of Thorikos,began in the Mycenaean period (Conophagos , ). More recent excavations,

however, have shown that the date needs to be pushed back to the end of the Ne-olithic, namely the second half of the fourth millennium (Kakavogianni et al., ). Small scale production continued at the same site all through the Pro-togeometric period until the end of the th century (Conophagos , ).The production was intensified after the th century reaching its peak in the thand th centuries . In the rd century Laurion began to decline and it wasfinally abandoned in the st century (Conophagos , ).

It is, therefore, believed that during the Late Bronze Age, one of the mainsources for silver and lead for Cyprus was Laurion, something which seems to be

supported by the Lead Isotope analysis. The well-known silver ingots from Pyla-Kokkinokremos (Inv. No. and ) dating to the end of the th century ,which are believed to have been part of a silversmiths hoard (Karageorghis andDemas , ), were found to be have an isotopic fingerprint consistentwith the Laurion mine (Gale and Stos-Gale , ; Stos-Gale and Gale ,). What happens in the early part of the first millennium ? It is generallyassumed that production must have been disrupted or curtailed after the fall ofthe Mycenaean palaces. The demand for silver, however, was even greater in the

Iron Age, because the Assyrian Empire to which Cyprus had submitted, de-manded tribute in precious metals, namely gold and silver (Stylianou , ).According to Aubet (, ): Assyria demanded from Tyre things it could notobtain easily in other territories: at first iron for its war machine and later silver,gold and bronze. From the end of the eighth century Phoenicia was to be themain supplier of raw materials in the east, implying that Assyrian demand nowdetermined the expansionist tendency that was Tyres habitual policy, turned thistime towards the Mediterranean. It has been argued that this is what urged thePhoenicians to sail west and to settle in areas that are well known for their silver


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deposits (Aubet , and ). The richest such deposits are located in the socalled Iberian Pyrite Belt which extends in an East-West manner from some-where near Seville to the south of Lisbon, covering an area some km long byabout km wide (Salkield, , ). Indeed Lead Isotope analysis of silver in-

cluded in some of the Hacksilberhoards found on a number sites of the st mil-lennium Near East indicate the import of silver from Spain (Stos-Gale , ).I have argued elsewhere that the search for silver is what may, in fact, have led

Cypriots to Sardinia, which was known to the ancient Greeks as the , the island of the silver veins (Kassianidou , ). This is becauseSardinia possesses significant argentiferous lead-zinc ore deposits (Valera et al.b, ). As stated above, according to the Lead Isotope analysis, Cypriotcopper was exported in significant quantities to Sardinia. In Cyprus, however,there are no visible Sardinian imports such as pottery (the first Sardinian pot has

only just been discovered in recent excavations at Pyla-Kokkinokremmos (Kara-georghis ) or other finished objects in quantities that would show a reciprocalcommerce, although clearly something must have been given in return for copper.I believe that it is highly probable that the Cypriots exchanged their copper forSardinian silver (Kassianidou , ). And once in Sardinia they would alsoventure further west to the even richer Eldorado of the Iberian Peninsula. Thearchaeological evidence for contacts between Cyprus and Iberia in the Iron Age,although not extensive is significant (Kassianidou ) and it is very likely thatin the first millennium Spanish silver was, either directly or through the Phoeni-

cians, imported to Cyprus.

Conclusions

Clearly there is still much to learn about the production, trade and use of metalsin Cyprus in the Iron Age. In the coming year the University of Cyprus, througha research project entitled New Archaeological Research Network for IntegratingApproaches to Ancient Material Studies, which is a Marie Curie Initial Training

Network funded by FP7 will offer a doctoral and a post-doctoral fellowship theaim of which will be to address some of these issues. Thus hopefully in the nearfuture the Iron Age metallurgy of the island will be as equally well known as thatof the Late Bronze Age.


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Acknowledgements

I consider myself very privileged to be counted amongst those who have been taught CypriotArchaeology by Nicolas Coldstream. During the Cyprus seminar of Prof. Coldstream de-cided that it would be a good idea if his graduate students got some hands-on experience, andthus he suggested that we should publish the finds from a plundered Late Bronze Age tomb

excavated at Kaimakli in the s and donated to the Institute of Archaeology by Joan Du PlatTaylor. This collaborative effort was published in the Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies.I took over the small finds and thus I got my first publication. I am, therefore, much indebtedto Nicolas Coldstream with whom I stayed in touch even after joining the faculty of the Ar-chaeological Research Unit of the University of Cyprus. This workshop and this paper are asmall thank you for everything he has done for Cypriot Archaeology, the University of Cyprusand for me personally.

strm, L. . The Late Cypriote Bronze Age. Other arts and crafts, in The SwedishCyprus Expedition Vol. IV Part 1D. Lund.

strm, P., Maddin, R., Muhly, J. D. and Stech, T. . Iron artifacts from Swedish excavationsin Cyprus, Opuscula Atheniensia , .

Aubet, M. E. . The Phoenicians and the West. Politics, Colonies and Trade. Second ed. Cam-bridge.

Balmuth, M. S. (ed.) . Hacksilber to Coinage: New Insights into the Monetary History of theNear East and Greece: a Collection of Eight Papers Presented at the th Annual Meeting of

the Archaeological Institute of America. New York.Bayburtolu, B. and Yildirim, S. . Gold and silver in Anatolia, in Yalin, . (ed.),

Anatolian Metal IV. Der Anschnitt Beiheft . Bochum.Bear, L. M. . The Mineral Resources and Mining Industry of Cyprus. Geological Survey De-

partment. Bulletin No. . Nicosia.Begemann, F., Schmitt-Strecker, S., Pernicka, E. and Lo Schiavo, F. . Chemical composition

and lead isotopy of copper and bronze from Nuragic Sardinia, European Journal of Archae-ology(), .

Brinkman, J. A. . Twenty minas of copper, in Rochberg-Halton, F. (ed.), Language,Literature, and History: Philological and Historical Studies Presented to Erica Reiner. Amer-

ican Oriental Series, vol. . New Haven.Buchholz, H. G. . Keftiubarren und Erzhandel in zweiten vorchristlichen Jahrtausend,Prhistorische ZeitschriftXXXVII/1, .

Buchholz, H. G. and Untiedt, K. . Tamassos. Ein Antikes Knigreich auf Zypern. SIMA Pa-perback . Jonsered.

Charles, J. . The coming of copper and copper-base alloys and iron: a metallurgical se-quence, in Wertime, T. and Muhly, J. D. (eds), The Coming of the Age of Iron. NewHaven, London.

Conophagos, C. . (Ancient Laurion). Athens.Constantinou, G. . The mining industry of Cyprus in modern times, in Marangou,

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Crielaard, J. P.. Surfing on the Mediterranean web: Cypriot long distance communicationsduring the eleventh and tenth centuries , in Karageorghis, V. and Stampolidis,N. C. (eds), Proceedings of the International Symposium Eastern Mediterranean: Cyprus Dodecanese Crete, 1th th cent. , Rethymnon, 1. Athens.

Domergue, C. and Rico, C. . propos de deux lingots de cuivre antiques trouvs en mer sur

la cte Languedocienne, in Rivet, L. and Sciallano, M. (ed.), Vivre, Produire et changer:Reflets Mditerranens. Mlanges Offerts Bernard Liou. Arch. et Hist. Rom., . Montagnac.Fasnacht, W. . Excavations at Ayia VarvaraAlmyras: a review of twelve years of research,

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Chypre, XIII IV s. av. J.C., CCEC 32. Paris.Fasnacht, W. and Georgiou, G. . An ancient copper smelting furnace at the modern gold

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