Pottery Production at Idalion, Cyprus: Investigating First Millennium BCE Politics and Culture through Ceramic Petrography.

Summary

On the island of Cyprus, the first millennium BCE was a period of change in politics and culture brought about by new people, new governance, and new technology. This paper attempts to analyze these changes using one site. Idalion is located in the east-central part of the island. The polity went through many changes from its founding, c. 1200 BCE, through the first millennium BCE and I have begun to investigate some through petrographic analysis of pottery. Pottery production can represent social and political culture, as it is the result of the needs of society and the desires of economic elites. In craft production literature, much ink has been spilled theorizing how politics can effect production. My project attempts to validate some of these theories, as others in the field have done already; specifically one by Costin (1991) who suggests that craft production could be influenced by political power in some form or another. At Idalion, I have sampled pottery from several use-areas of the site and analyzed the sherds through petrography to track production practices through time and space. The results of this analysis show that some changes are related to political shifts and others are not.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20170