AJa Sample Issue

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGY
Volume 117
No. 1
January 2013
ARTICLES
Erika Weiberg and Martin Finn: Mind or Matter? People-Environment

Interactions and the Demise of Early Helladic II Society in the Northeastern
Peloponnese
Giorgos Papantoniou: Cyprus from Basileis to Strategos: A Sacred-Landscapes
Approach
Includes Online Supplementary Content
1
33
Jennifer M. Webb and David Frankel: Cultural Regionalism and Divergent

Social Trajectories in Early Bronze Age Cyprus
59
Josephine Shaya: The Public Life of Monuments: The Summi Viri of the Forum
of Augustus
83
FORUM ARTICLE
Blythe Bowman Proulx: Archaeological Site Looting in Glocal Perspective:
Nature, Scope, and Frequency
Available Online as Open Access
Includes Online Supplementary Content
111
NOTE
Naomi F. Miller: Symbols of Fertility and Abundance in the Royal Cemetery
at Ur, Iraq
Available Online as Open Access
127
REVIEW ARTICLE
John K. Papadopoulos: Always Present, Ever Changing, Never Lost from
Human View: The Athenian Acropolis in the 21st Century
135
AJA ONLINE (www.ajaonline.org)

Book Reviews
Griffiths Pedley, The Life and Work of Francis Willey Kelsey: Archaeology, Antiquity, and
the Arts (S. Dyson)
Teeter, Religion and Ritual in Ancient Egypt (L. Bestock)
Wendrich, ed., Egyptian Archaeology (L. Bestock)
Ur, Urbanism and Cultural Landscapes in Northeastern Syria: The Tell Hamoukar Survey
19992001 (M.D. Danti)
lvarez-Mon and Garrison, eds., Elam and Persia (A. Zournatzi)

Anastasiadou, The Middle Minoan Three-Sided Soft Stone Prism: A Study of Style and
Iconography. 2 vols. ( J.L. Crowley)
McGowan, Ambiguity and Minoan Neopalatial Seal Imagery (A. Simandiraki-Grimshaw)
Karageorghis, Enkomi: The Excavations of Porphyrios Dikaios 19481958. Supplementary
Catalogue of Finds (L. Crewe)
Brisart, Un art citoyen: Recherches sur lorientalization des artisanats en Grce protoarchaque (N. Papalexandrou)
Greaves, The Land of Ionia: Society and Economy in the Archaic Period ( J.P. Stronk)
Frederiksen, Greek City Walls of the Archaic Period, 900480 BC (C. Balandier)
Franssen, Votiv und Reprsentation: Statuarische Weihungen archaischer Zeit aus Samos
und Attika (C.M. Keesling)
Adornato, ed., Scolpire il marmo: Importazioni, artisti itineranti, scuole artistiche nel
Mediterraneo antico. Atti del convegno di studio tenuto a Pisa Scuola normale Superiore,
911 novembre 2009 (K. Karoglou)
Bartosiewicz, ed., The Chora of Metaponto 2: Archaeozoology at Pantanello and Five
Other Sites (M. MacKinnon)
Colivicchi, ed., Local Cultures of South Italy and Sicily in the Late Republican Period:
Between Hellenism and Rome (D.G. Bartoli)
Moormann, Divine Interiors: Mural Paintings in Greek and Roman Sanctuaries
(E. Winsor Leach)
Gleba and Horsns, eds., Communicating Identity in Italic Iron Age Communities
(A. Tuck)
Bouke van der Meer, Etrusco Ritu: Case Studies in Etruscan Ritual Behaviour
(I. Edlund-Berry)
Landwehr, Die Rmischen Skulpturen von Caesarea Mauretaniae: Denkmler aus Stein und
Bronze. Vols. 3, 4 (N. Hannestad)
Magness, Stone and Dung, Oil and Spit: Daily Life in the Time of Jesus (D. Schowalter)
List of Books Received
ARTICLE
Mind or Matter? People-Environment Interactions

and the Demise of Early Helladic II Society in the
Northeastern Peloponnese
ERIKA WEIBERG AND MARTIN FINN
Abstract
when the event occurred and to comparisons of the

before and after. Tainter suggests that [a] society has collapsed when it displays a rapid, significant
loss of an established level of sociopolitical complexity.1 Complexity, in turn, is generally understood
to refer to such things as the size of the society, the
number and distinctiveness of its parts, the variety of
specialized social roles that it incorporates, the number of distinct social personalities, and the variety of
mechanisms for organizing these into a coherent,
functioning whole.2
The period from 2300 to 2100 B.C.E. on the Greek
mainland encompassed both what has been interpreted as the zenith of a 1,000-year phase of cultural
expansion and the beginning of a period of more
than 500 years characterized by relatively low societal
complexity.3 The transition between the second and
third phases of the Early Helladic period (i.e., Early
Helladic [EH] IIIII), which occurred ca. 2200 B.C.E.,
fits the Tainterian definition of the collapse of a complex society. In short, the process had already begun,
at least in some areas, in the final stages of the preceding Neolithic period. It reached a climax in terms
of site numbers ca. 2800 B.C.E. and in terms of societal complexity probably some 500 years later. These
The centuries surrounding 2200 B.C.E. (the year commonly used to mark the transition between the second and
third phases of the Early Bronze Age) were transformative times in the Aegean. At some locations, development
continued and accelerated; in many places, however, several societal characteristics and supraregional traits seem
to have been abandoned. Life continued through these
changes, but it appears to have been altered and simplified. In this review of previous research on the period, the
geographic focus is on the northeastern Peloponnese, and
the interpretative focus is on the human dimension behind the events. This case study explores the framework of
resilience theoryand the new questions it stimulatesto
form a better understanding of the actual composition
of the changes and their complexity. For archaeology, a
focus on resilience could be a focus on human creativity
in dealing with life through continually changing circumstances. We argue, therefore, that resilience theory offers
a compelling way to map and understand the cultural
change documented in the archaeological record of the
Mediterranean.*
introduction
What happens when the foundations on which a
society exists fundamentally change? The term collapse is often applied under these circumstances. This
term tends to draw research attention to the very time
* This article is an extended and reworked version of a

shorter paper presented at the conference Climate and
Ancient Societies: Causes and Human Responses held in
Copenhagen 2123 October 2009. The paper was published
as part of the project Urban Mind: Cultural and Environmental Dynamics. The results of this cross-disciplinary project aimed at the cognitive aspects of urbanism and climate
change were published in a book with the same name. In
this, Weiberg participated as an archaeologist, and Finn as a
paleoclimate specialist, and these responsibilities are carried
through in this article. We would like to thank the initiators of
the Urban Mind project, Paul Sinclair and Gullg Nordquist,
for their friendly support and for the opportunity to participate in that motivating endeavor. We are also very grateful
to Cyprian Broodbank, Karin Holmgren, Michael Lindblom
(who also produced many of the figures), Jeremy Rutter, and
American Journal of Archaeology 117 (2013) 131
the anonymous reviewers for the AJA for their many insightful comments. Any remaining shortcomings are of course our
own.
1
Tainter 1988, 4.
2
Tainter 1988, 23.
3
All dates used in this article are clearly generalized. The
date 2200 B.C.E. is used to refer to the Early Helladic (EH)
IIEH III transition, but it should be recognized that an exact
date determination will never be possible, and, most importantly, that any definition of time given today, in absolute or
relative terms, would have been completely irrelevant for the
people actually concerned. The absolute years used in this discussion are approximate but follow the dates in general use
in the literature (Manning 1995; Rutter 2001, table 2; Wright
2004, table 9.1; Pullen 2011a, table 1.2).
developments were subsequently reversed beginning

ca. 2200 B.C.E., when both the number and size of the
sites diminished, leaving a minimum number continuing into the Middle Helladic period (ca. 20001600
B.C.E.). The number of sites and their wide distribution over the landscape would not be equaled again
until approximately 1,000 years later, during the cultural and economic peak of Mycenaean civilization.
The end of the EH II period meant a discontinuation
of many material items and practices suggestive of
economic and administrative complexity, such as the
use of sealings. In architecture, most notably, the socalled corridor houses went out of use. The function
of the corridor houses remains disputed, but most
agree that the buildings must have been of central importance in Early Helladic society, economically and
politically.4 The disappearance of this type of building
in many ways defines the cultural transformation ca.
2200 B.C.E. As a whole, there are many indications
that the society moved from a common ground for
organization and administration (indicated by the
corridor houses and the sealings used for administrative purposes) and other supraregional concordances
in material culture (including a rather complex level
of craft specialization and advanced technical skills
within a dynamic and geographically extended sphere
of interaction) to more or less the opposite. All this
apparently happened during a relatively short period of time. Renfrew in 1972 defined the changes in
southern Greece as more marked than any other subsequently seen in Greek prehistory, or any previously
documented since the development of farming life.5
These circumstances have enticed researchers into
a discussion of the reasons for the apparent cultural
transformations. Several factors have been emphasized
and combined in attempts to analyze their impacts on
societal well-being. Although presented within an Early
Helladic setting, these factors share much with analyses
of societal collapse in other areas and periods. Indeed,
they accord well with the five-tiered set of factors of
societal collapse listed by Diamond: environmental
damage, climate change, hostile neighbors, friendly
neighbors, and societal response.6 Within the Early
Helladic context, environmental stresses included a
combination of deforestation, erosion, and climate
change. The hostile neighbors were early on identified as invaders (Haley and Blegen write of the coming of the Greeks),7 and the friendly neighbors can
4
On corridor buildings, see, e.g., Shaw 1987; Nilsson 2004;
Peperaki 2004, 2010; Weiberg 2007, 3757; ONeill 2008.
5
Renfrew 1972, 116.
6
Diamond 2005, 1115.
[AJA 117
be found in the trade networks of the coeval spheres

of the Aegean. Finally, the responses of Early Helladic
societies to any combination of these disturbances are
generally thought to have been unsuccessful. The result, in the end, was a wide-ranging cultural transformation, the demise of a complex society.
Here, we revisit these ideas and explanatory models in relation to societal changes that have long been
noted. Our aims are to reevaluate these theories and to
offer an updated perspective on the period surrounding 2200 B.C.E. We do not dismiss any of the factors
for change that have been previously suggested; elements of all of them surely influenced the Early Helladic worlds and were, to varying degrees, parties in
the change. Our basic concern is that too little attention has been given to the human component in the
developments. Terms such as collapse and breakdown often seem to imply total societal failurein
reality a rather unlikely scenario. More accurate narratives are likely to arise if scholars consider the complexity of most societies, allow individuals a more
prominent role in the changes, refrain from casting
the society as a working agent, and consider the
aftermaths of collapse in a more positive light. This
shift in emphasis marks much of the response to Diamonds work.8 Most recently, McAnany and Yoffee
have taken on the problems of simplistic reasoning in
relation to societal transformations and have argued
that resilience in the face of societal crisis, rather than
collapse, is the leitmotif of the human story from the
earliest civilizations to the present.9 So far, the Early
Helladic people have been given little or no room
to act on any problems of their time or to have any
part in the outcome of the events. The circumstances
of the Early Helladic collapse have therefore been
insufficiently explored. Similarly underestimated
are the limitations of time and scale on understandings of these events. One problem is the scopethe
geographic scale and chronological reachof the
material with which these theories are built, which
leads very easily to generalizations that obscure rather
than enlighten understandings of the past. Therefore,
we focus our discussion on the northeastern Peloponnese, the cradle of much research on the Early Helladic period and one part of the mainland where the
noted changes were especially marked.
We begin with a timeline of potentially meaningful
processes leading up to and beyond 2200 B.C.E. that
Haley and Blegen 1928.

deMenocal and Cook 2005; Tainter 2008.
9
McAnany and Yoffee 2010, 1011.
7
8
2013]
THE DEMISE OF EARLY HELLADIC II SOCIETY IN THE PELOPONNESE
may help contextualize the changes at the transition

from EH II to EH III. This sequence will form the basis of our review of the factors previously suggested
to have guided those developments. This review is
followed by a discussion of the human dimensions in
the noted transformations. Although there were no
doubt many factors leading to those transformations,
we argue that a fundamentally changed society is to
a large extent the result of a mental process.10 Keys
to understanding cultural transformation are likely
to be found in that process, which in turn generates
material culture. In the final section, we introduce
the framework of resilience theoryan inspiration
and motivation for a reevaluation of the events and
processes of the Early Helladic periodto highlight
internal interactions within Early Helladic society and
the positive effects of change. We hope to begin to
formulate a nuanced and extended view of the second half of the Early Bronze Age in the northeastern
Peloponnese.
patterns in the argive landscape

Site numbers and locations fluctuated during the
entire Early Bronze Age.11 Likewise, new practices and
new types of material culture were being introduced
into the lives of the Early Helladic people at various
points during the third millennium B.C.E. This has
prompted researchers to divide the Early Bronze
Age into a number of periods, phases, or cultures
that highlight the changes.12 For the purposes of this
article, we focus on settlement history and illustrate
the developments by dividing the history of the Early
Bronze Age Argolid and Corinthia into three stages
marked by socioenvironmental changes.13 According
to present evidence, these three stages are parallel to
Cf. Knappett 2005; McEnroe 2010.

For important discussions on the interpretative problems of survey findings in relation to settlement patterns, see
Whitelaw 2000; Wright 2004; Pullen 2011b. For results of extensive surveys, see, e.g., Kilian 1984; Weisshaar 1990.
12
E.g., Renfrew 1972; Rutter 1979; Wiencke 1989; Broodbank 2000.
13
For other reviews of settlement patterns in the Early
Bronze Age Peloponnese, see Wiencke 1989, 49799; Forsn 1992, 17696; Whitelaw 2000; Rutter 2001; Pullen 2003,
2011b; Wright 2004; Alram-Stern 2011. For overviews of surveys conducted on the Greek mainland, see Rutter 2001,
97108, fig. 1; Pullen 2008; 2011b, pl. 2.1. For an overview of
research on individual settlements, see Pullen 1985; Forsn
1992; Alram-Stern 2004.
14
The long duration of the Final Neolithic period (1,400
years) in comparison with the EH I period (ca. 450 years),
however, should be kept in mind when considering these periods and their impact on the landscape (Pullen 2011b, 21,
10
11
the three periods of the relative chronology of the

Early Helladic period, but it is probable that in reality the process was more gradual and less generalized
than any relative chronology.
Peopling the Landscape
The first stage is the intensified peopling of the
landscape beginning around the transition from the
Neolithic period to the Bronze Age. Some field surveys in the focus area have noted a rise in the number
of sites in the Final Neolithic period, while in other
survey areas the earliest increase that could be documented was at the advent of the Early Bronze Age
(figs. 1, 2).14 A substantial rise during the Final Neolithic period was documented in the Berbati-Limnes
area: an increase from two, or possibly four, Late Neolithic sites to 19 definite Final Neolithic findspots.15 As
discussed below, the increase in the number of sites
and their wide distribution indicate a change in landuse patterns. Most of these new sites are quite small,
and their locations and finds suggest a combination
economy based on both agriculture and herding.16 In
the Berbati-Limnes region, the transition to the Early
Bronze Age is defined by a decrease in the number of
sites, whereas in the southern Argolid, EH I is the first
major phase with plentiful material (in the latter area,
field surveys have documented only three definite sites
from the Final Neolithic period but 23 from EH I).17 In
the southern Argolid, two of the three Final Neolithic
sites also show EH I activity, and in the Berbati-Limnes
region, seven of the 11 EH I sites, or two-thirds, were
used also during the preceding period.18 Locales that
were given up in the latter region include, most notably, the Klisoura ravine (i.e., the portal toward the
Argive Plain), the hills between Berbati and Limnes,
fig. 2.2). Furthermore, if one calculates the number of cites

per century for each period, as Pullen has most recently argued one should do (Pullen 2008, 23, 26), the graphs in fig.
1 herein would look somewhat different, but the general picture would not be altered. Fig. 1 illustrates the number of sites
found in each survey area. Except in the case of the Phlius
Basin, a selection was made by the surveyors to qualify the definition of a site. So far, the Early Bronze Age site numbers
for the two further intensive surveys conducted in our focus
areathe Eastern Korinthia Archaeological Survey and the
related Saronic Harbors Archaeological Research Project
have not been published (Pullen 2011b [with further references]) and could not be included in fig. 1.
15
Johnson 1996, esp. 6572.
16
Johnson 1996, 656.
17
Pullen 1995, 7, 1011.
18
Pullen 1995, 7; Forsn 1996, 77, fig. 2; Johnson 1996, 66,
fig. 37.
[AJA 117
Fig. 1. Comparison of the number of sites identified by five intensive surveys in the northeastern Peloponnese. The
data are taken from Runnels et al. 1995; Wells and Runnels 1996; Mee and Forbes 1997; Casselmann et al. 2004; Wright
2004 (drawing by E. Weiberg).
Fig. 2. Intensive survey areas in the northeastern Peloponnese: A, Phlius Basin; B, Nemea Valley Archaeological Project;
C, Berbati-Limnes Archaeological Survey; D, Argolid Exploration Project; E, Methana Survey Project; F, Eastern
Korinthia Archaeological Survey/Saronic Harbors Archaeological Research Project (including both intensively and
extensively studied regions) (drawing by M. Lindblom; modified from Cherry and Davis 2001, fig. 10.4).
2013]
Choosing Focus
Around the transition to the EH II period, ca. 2700
B.C.E., the spread into the landscape seems to have
halted. This marks the beginning of a slow and gradual consolidation of settlement spanning the EH II
period. Variations are evident during these 450 years
in terms of both the number of settlements and their
material expressions. At present, there is no known
evidence that would enable us to treat these variations
as separate stages; the specific chronological outlines
are blurred by the practice in many archaeological
publications of refraining from detailed dating within the EH II period.21 The variations will instead be
highlighted below as important tendencies during a
longer process suggestive of the gradual formalization
of the settlements as well as settlement consolidation
or nucleation. The degree of the latter is difficult to
assess, but its general occurrence is indicated by the
growing investments in certain locales, the depopulation of others, and the growing functional and spatial
diversification between sites.22
In the Berbati-Limnes area and on the Methana peninsula, the number of sites decreased with the onset
of the EH II period (see fig. 1). No such decrease appears in the Nemea Valley or the Phlius Basin,23 or in
the southern Argolid. For the latter region, however,
a certain amount of clustering during this time is acknowledged,24 and the many individual sites within the
limited region of the Fournoi Valley should perhaps
not be viewed as definitely distinct from one another.25
The change in the number of sites between EH I and
EH II is not very significant, but it does indicate some
changes in socioeconomic practices, including site
differentiation in terms of socioeconomic functions
and site size, enabling enhanced discussions of site
hierarchies.26 Incipient nucleation has been suggested for the Berbati-Limnes area, where in EH II some
sites grew, probably at the expense of others that were
abandoned after the EH I period.27 Figure 3 illustrates
the geographic distribution of published settlements
with defined early EH II occupation.
From at least early EH II, certain locales gained
importance over others in the surrounding area. As
noted by Wiencke, central places were first established
at this time, a development that is marked above all
by intensified construction and specialized activities
at specific locales.28 Pullens recent publication of the
settlement at Tsoungiza provides a welcome and detailed analysis of early EH II activities at one of these
emerging centers.29 Like Tsoungiza, these topographical centers had, in many cases, been occupied for
some time; many upheld their positions within their
respective regions into the second half of the EH II
period (fig. 4) and throughout much of the Bronze
Age with few, if any, interruptions. The distance
19
Forsn 1996, fig. 1; Johnson 1996, fig. 2. Findspot 12 in
the Miyio Valley was resettled in EH II as one of only two new
activity areas from EH III (Forsn 1996, 118).
20
Pullen 2008, 23. Douzougli-Zachos (1998, 34) notes that
several EH I sites on the Argive Plain were located 12 km
from their Final Neolithic counterparts, which were then
abandoned. Habitation may then have been relocated from
Lerna to Kephalari Magoula, from the Aspis of Argos to Makrovouni, and from Aria to the Talioti Valley locations. See
Weisshaar (1990, 21, pl. 1) for the documentation of 33 EH I
(Talioti-phase) sites on the Argive Plain. See also Alram-Stern
(2011) for a recent discussion of EH I settlement distribution.
21
One example is the decrease in the number of sites commonly placed at the transition between EH II and EH III (see
fig. 1). In relation to this, Rutter (2001, 12224) has suggested
that archaeologists may have inflated the suddenness of the
events by neglecting to date assemblages precisely. Cf. Jameson et al. (1994, table 4.8), who classifies EH III as dispersed
and EH IIIMiddle Helladic as nucleated.
22
The actual size of settlements can seldom be accurately
deduced, making population estimates a very delicate issue.
For attempts, see, e.g., Jameson et al. 1994, 54247, tables B.1,
B.2.
23
The Early Bronze Age results from the Nemea Valley Archaeological Project are not yet published in enough detail to
allow an evaluation of the apparent rise in site numbers from
EH I to EH II. The numbers in fig. 1 are based on primary
sites, which are defined by Wright (2004, 121) as measured
sitesi.e., those with a sherd distribution that allows an estimation of the settlement size at different timesa definition
that may disfavor smaller EH I sites.
24
Jameson et al. 1994, 35354.
25
Pullen 2008, 267.
26
Kilian 1984, 623; Pullen 1985, 34466; 2008, 26; Konsola 1986; Forsn 1992, 195; 1996, 119; Jameson et al. 1994,
35862.
27
Forsn 1996, 119. E.g., findspots 405 and 414 grew at the
expense of findspots 408 and 518. Based on a combination
of estimated site size and material cultural diversity, Forsn
(1996, 119) proposes a three-tier hierarchical order: the main
settlement of Mastos; three middle-level sites, one in each of
the three main regions of the survey (findspots 12, 39, 414);
and three isolated farmsteads in the Berbati Valley (findspots
35, 308, 405).
28
Wiencke 1989, 499500; see also Pullen 2011b, 201.
29
Pullen 2011a.
and the high-altitude Miyio Valley.19 In all, this new

distribution of sites seems to represent a change in
where Early Helladic peoplein contrast to the fashion of the preceding periodchose to settle. As noted
recently by Pullen, EH I sites in the southern Argolid
and in the Berbati Valley are found on lower slopes
and valley bottoms, while Final Neolithic sites generally are found upland and on hillslopes.20
[AJA 117
Fig 3. Map of the Corinthia and the Argive Plain in the first half of the EH II period, showing settlements mentioned in the
text: 1, Lerna; 2, Kephalari Magoula; 3, Makrovouni; 4, Tiryns; 5, Talioti Valley; 6, Asine; 7, Synoro; 8, Mastos; 9, findspot 35;
10, findspot 405; 11, findspot 414; 12, findspot 308; 13, findspot 43 (Vigliza); 14, findspot 44 (Vigliza); 15, findspot 39 (Vigliza);
16, findspot 12 (Miyio); 17, Zygouries; 18, Tsoungiza; 19, Petri; 20, Corinth; 21, Korakou; 22, Gonia (drawing by M. Lindblom).
between these main settlements averaged 10 km,30 a

distance that allowed a one-day round-trip by foot (or
by a small canoe of the kind used during the Early
Bronze Age, as estimated by Broodbank).31 This may
have been the preferred intersettlement distance in
the late EH II landscape in a time of increased socioeconomic complexity and perhaps competitiveness between the local centers. Clearly, however, this distance
cannot be generalized. In the southern Argolid, for
example, the proposed principal settlements were located closer together, possibly because of topography
each is the focus of its own small topographically
delimited regionand some specifics of the social setting. In the northern Corinthia, no central settlement
can as yet be defined. The socioeconomic organiza-
Wiencke 1989, 499.

Broodbank 2000, 1016.
32
Pullen 2011b, 28.
30
31
tion of this coastal region may have been different;

the settlements, such as those at Korakou and Gonia,
were more tightly distributed and possibly also more
stable over the long term.32
The process of settlement centralization was probably enhanced toward the middle of the Early Helladic period (a time comparable to Lerna III phases
BC). One strong indication is the construction at
this time of the first corridor houses.33 In fact, what is
most clearly indicated from the archaeological record
is that from around the middle of the third millennium B.C.E. the physical manifestations of the villages
became more substantial, and the level of monumentality increased, leaving a more lasting mark on the
landscape. These activities suggest an inclusion of a
33
See Wiencke (1989) for a discussion of the differences
between the first and the second half of the EH II period.
2013]
Fig. 4. Map of the northeastern Peloponnese in the second half of the EH II period, showing settlements mentioned in the
text. Probable central settlements are indicated with a 10 km radius illustrating the geographic interrelationships of these settlements. The labels A6, A33, C11, E13, and F32 indicate Argolid Exploration Project findspots mentioned in the text (drawing
by M. Lindblom).
greater number of people, as producers and/or receivers of the symbolic and practical outcome of this
process. A nucleation phase preceding 2200 B.C.E.
also seems probable based on survey results and occupation dates for some well-excavated and published
settlements in the Corinthia and the Argive Plain (fig.
5).34 At that point, most of the proposed central settlements remained, while most of the minor settlements
from early EH II had been abandoned (see fig. 3).
Among the surveys (see figs. 1, 2), only the record
from the Berbati-Limnes Archaeological Survey presents seemingly clear evidence for a reduction in site
numbers at this time. Thus, only Mastos Hill35 in the
Berbati Valley and findspot 12 in the neighboring

Miyio Valley have produced clear evidence of late EH
II occupation.36 The settlement at Synoro lacks material after the early phase of EH II.37 The whole Talioti
Valley seems to have been depopulated. This valley,
located between the main Argive Plain and the local
area of Asine, was rather densely occupied in EH I and
into early EH II, when it was finally abandoned.38 In
all, this suggests the movement of people from geographically marginal lands or from locations of minor
importance,39 as well as the complete abandonment of
some valleys (see fig. 4). On the Argive Plain proper,
smaller settlements seem to have been depopulated.
Wiencke 1989, 49799.

E.g., Forsn 2002. This excavated Bronze Age settlement
was not included in the Berbati-Limnes Archaeological Survey. See, however, Lindblom (2011) for the Early Helladic
findings from the later intensive survey of Mastos Hill.
36
Forsn 1996, 1035, 118.
37
Wiencke 1989, 498.
38
Douzougli 1987; Maran 1998, 1:89. The peak period
for this valley was probably EH I. The chronological extent
of Talioti Ware is unknown, and although a late EH I date is
most often set, Maran (1998, 1:89) does not rule out that
Talioti Ware could have been produced throughout the entire
EH I period in the Argolid (3100/30002700 B.C.E.). As for
the EH II period in the valley, Weisshaar (1990, 13) concludes
that the pottery from the largest EH I and EH II findspot in
the valley, Panagia (findspot 114), indicates an early EH II
datewhich suggests an abandonment bereits einige Zeit
vor dem Ende des Frhhelladisch IIand that the valley as a
whole followed a similar pattern.
39
Alram-Stern 2011, 2078.
34
35
[AJA 117
Fig. 5. Chronological information for the settlements from the Corinthia and the Argive Plain mentioned in the text. Solid
lines indicate definite occupation periods; broken lines indicate data that is uncertain because of low-intensity material and/
or incomplete publication (drawing by M. Lindblom).
The settlement of Makrovouni, north of Argos, was

one location that was abandoned after the first half
of the EH II period.40 In contrast to the surrounding
valleys, however, the plain did harbor at least two major settlements at this time: Tiryns and Lerna.41 The
distance between the two settlements is 9 km as the
crow fliesor as the boat goes, as both settlements
would have been situated on the coast during the Early
Helladic period. The structures and finds at these two
sites suggest that they became focal points for many
of the activities in the late EH II period.
Settlements may have become even more concentrated in late EH II, at least in the area of the Corinthia
and the Argive Plain. Some of the central locations in
this region were abandoned before the final phase of
the EH II period in favor of a few settlements that may
have evolved into intraregional centers (where the
development from the preceding stage was continued
and augmented). It seems reasonable to assume that
the abandonment of local centers was accompanied by
depopulation of their home valleys. One settlement,
which was abandoned early in the second half of the
40
Douzougli (1987) reports close to no finds from the period after a date comparable to Lerna III phase B.
41
These two settlements have produced only slight evidence of EH I occupation, and their position as relatively
large settlements can only be ascertained from a date sometime into the EH II period. It is interesting to note that Kephalari Magoula, rather than Lerna, seems to have been the main
settlement in the southwestern corner of the Argive Plain,
at least in EH I (Douzougli 1987, 17175; Douzougli-Zachos
1998, 34). Other potentially significant locations on the Argive Plain, based on their topographic and strategic positions,
are Argos and Mycenae, although the chronological specifics of these sites cannot be fully evaluated. For recent discussions of these sites, see Demakopoulou 1998 (Argos); Shelton
2010 (Mycenae). On the basis of the full Urfirnis coating on
the published pottery, the Argos assemblage discussed by Demakopoulou (1998) seems to date to an early phase of EH II.
2013]
EH II period, was Tsoungiza in the Nemea Valley.42

Zygouries in the Cleonae Valley43 and Corinth to the
north44 may also have been fully or partly abandoned
before the final phase of the EH II period (as it is
defined by ceramics at Lerna and Tiryns). The enticement at the time may have been residence in the
coastal regions, and so far Lerna and Tiryns stand out
in this regard.45
Much of the identity of Lerna and Tiryns is probably
attributable to their coastal position. It is evident that
during the last century of the EH II period, the development in these two centers did not stop but rather
accelerated. At Lerna, the main indicator of this is the
so-called House of the Tiles, which was built in Lerna
III phase D; also indicative is the refinement in the
seal motifs of the sealing deposit found in one small
room of this building.46 The House of the Tiles was
the second corridor house built at Lerna, replacing
Building BG, which was constructed nearby some 100
years earlier in early to mid Lerna III phase C.47 Noteworthy also is the suggestion by Pullen that a corridor
house existed at Zygouries during a time comparable
to Lerna III phase C. This building was apparently not
replaced within the excavated area, however, and the
area was eventually used for more ordinary housing.48 At Tiryns, architectural development continued
without interruption through several fire destructions
in the second half of the EH II period. The famous
Rundbau, a circular monumental building that was
probably multifunctional, was built on the highest
elevation sometime in the developed or late phase of
EH II and stood until the end of the EH II period.49
of the occupation changed. Both the House of the

Tiles and the Rundbau were destroyed and not rebuilt.
Freestanding apsidal houses replaced the agglomerated housing complexes of the preceding period. A
decrease in housing complexity seems to have taken
place. This marked the third stage of development
in the northeastern Peloponnese in the Early Bronze
Age and lasted until about 200 years before the end
of the Early Helladic period. Most field surveys show a
distinct drop in the number of sites at this time, if not
earlier (see fig. 1).50 In the Berbati-Limnes region, the
upland findspot 12 was abandoned, and only the Mastos Hill in the Berbati Valley was occupied in EH III.51
In the southern Argolid, four of the most long-term,
stable sites also continued into the EH III period.52
Our knowledge of the postEH II history of some
places is still somewhat vague. In all, the evidence suggests that many of the major settlements occupied in
the final phase of the EH II period continued to be
settled in EH III, but on a less significant scale (see
fig. 5). There seem to have been few or no new sites
occupied at this point. The settlement of Tsoungiza,
however, was reoccupied early in the EH III period.53
Forsn suggests that Zygouries may also have been
reoccupied in this phase;54 Petri may have been as
well, although perhaps somewhat later.55 These events
might signal a reoccupation of the interior. This trend,
however, seems to have lasted no more than 100 years.
Thus, Tsoungiza and Zygouries, as well as Prosymna
at around the same time, were deserted by the end of
the EH III period, not to be occupied again until late
in the Middle Helladic period.56
theories of change: the argolid and

corinthia during the early bronze age
Staying Put
The expansion phases at Lerna and Tiryns were
brought to a halt ca. 2200 B.C.E. Both settlements were
continuously inhabited, but the material expressions
With the above variations in mind, we turn now to a

review of the previously suggested theories concerning
42
Pullen 2011a, 1415, table 1.2; 378; 9056. Petri, in contrast, seems to have been occupied until the latest phase of EH
II (Kostoula 2004).
43
Forsn 1992, 689, fig. 3; see also Maran 1998, 1:16364,
17980.
44
Lavezzi 2003, 73.
45
Although it seems likely that there were local centers to
the north and along the coastline of the Corinthian Gulf that
paralleled some of the activity at Lerna and Tiryns, no corridor houses are as yet known from this region. A building
thought to be a corridor house has, however, been excavated
at Helike, 75 km west of Corinth along the Corinthian Gulf
(Katsonopoulou 2011).
46
Heath 1958; Weingarten 1997; Wiencke 2000, 213304.
47
Wiencke 2000, 18597.
48
Pullen 1985, 206; 1986; Maran 1998, 1:164.
49
Maran 1998, 1:162, 19798.
50
In the preliminary publication of the survey in the Phlius
Basin, however, no division is made between EH II and EH III

(Casselmann et al. 2004, fig. 19).
51
Forsn 1992, 535; 2002 (in which Forsn dismisses the
argument for an early EH III hiatus at the location); Lindblom 2011.
52
See Jameson et al. (1994) for sites A6, E9, E13, F5/F32;
see also Pullen 2011b, 26. The same sites show occupation in
the Final Neolithic, EH IIII, and Middle and Late Helladic
periods.
53
Pullen 2011a, 54344.
54
Forsn 1992, 679, fig. 3.
55
Kostoula (2004, 1145) dates the EH III pottery to Lerna
IV phase 2 at the earliest.
56
Forsn 1996, fig. 3. The suggested abandonment of
Tsoungiza before late EH III is not supported by the recent
publication of the settlement in which Pullen (2011a, 543
44) defines the late phase, equivalent to Lerna IV phase 3, as
the time of the enlarged EH III settlement.
10
the EH II/III transition, considering specifically the

three most popular factors of previous models: environment, climate, and migration.
Signs of Environmental Stress
Environmental changes have long been identified
as factors contributing to the Early Bronze Age cultural transformations in the northeastern Peloponnese. Wide-reaching erosional episodes following
intensified land use (and abuse) are most frequently
cited. Studies have suggested there were episodes of
soil instability and subsequent sedimentation in the
area during the prehistoric periods. Zangger outlines
two episodes on the Argive Plain (fig. 6);57 the most
extensive one was marked by the culmination of the
transgression of the postglacial sea rise on the plain
and was radiocarbon dated to a maximum age of
2564 220 B.C.E.58 Between this time and the end of
the EH II period, alluvial sedimentation caused the
recession of the shoreline by some 700 m,59 as well as
the partial filling of Lake Lerna, a freshwater lagoon
separated from the Argolic Gulf by a thin beach barrier formed by sedimentation from the mouth of the
Inakhos River.60 By the end of the Early Helladic period, large parts of the Argive Plain were covered by
floodplain deposits (stream flood deposits and overbank loams) 13 m thickthicker along the coast
and most extensive on the inner plain and around
the streams.61 Furthermore, during the course of the
Early Bronze Age, just south of the Argive Plain, the
inhabitants of Asine saw the island they occupied being transformed into a headland by the deposition of
eroded material. Although a small bay was formed,
it, too, slowly filled.62 According to Zangger, all this
was caused by the erosion of soil from the foothills
along the edges of the plain (the soil was carried toward the plain via the extensive drainage system of the
same mountains), by the flooding of the ephemeral
Zangger 1991, 1993, 1994a.

Zangger (1993, 502) also identifies a less extensive episode, defined as Late Neolithic/Early Helladic and put into
the time frame of 45002500 B.C.E.
59
Zangger 1994a, 19596.
60
Zangger 1991, 1113. Zangger (1991, 13) proposes that
Lake Lerna had two phases of maximum extent, the second
of which dates to the Hellenistic period.
61
van Andel et al. 1990, 384; Zangger 1993, 17.
62
Zangger 1994b, esp. 23132.
63
Zangger 1993, 17; see also van Andel et al. 1990, 38384,
fig. 4.
64
van Andel et al. 1986, 1990. Studies were initiated within the Argolid Exploration Project (van Andel and Runnels
1987; Jameson et al. 1994, esp. 17294, 355).
65
E.g., van Andel et al. 1986, 1990; Zangger 1993; Whitelaw
57
58
[AJA 117
streams and rivers, and by the deposition of loam.63

Farther south in the Argolid, the Pikrodafni alluvium,
one of four observed Holocene episodes of increased
sedimentation, is similarly noted in coastal areas but
more broadly dated based on the inclusion of EH II
sherds in the debris and on Late Helladic material on
top of the alluvium. The Pikrodafni alluvium is widely
estimated to date to 25001000 B.C.E. but is generally
treated in Early Helladic contexts.64
These processes of erosion and sedimentation in the
region of the Argive Plain and in the southern Argolid
have often been associated with the general societal
development of the Argolid. There has been a wide
consensus that one major cause of the loss of soil from
upland areas was an intensification of agricultural
activity, which was especially focused on the upland
areas during the first half of the millennium, when
the number of sites peaked.65 It has been argued that
the introduction of the deep plow and draft animals
made it possible to till these new rain-fed soils deeply
enough to ensure the arability of land away from the
spring-fed lowland.66 Intensified herding is also seen
as part of the puzzle; grazing herds are suggested to
have caused damage to unstable upland soils.67 Van
Andel and colleagues have cautioned that it would be
rash to attribute the EH III decline to the soil erosion
documented by the Pikrodafni.68 Nevertheless, one of
their conclusions is that after a long use of the landscape, ultimately damage was inevitable.69 In all, the
general juxtaposition of these erosional episodes and
a proposed drop in settlement numbers after the EH
II period have led researchers to cite these erosional
episodes (sometimes classified as catastrophic)70 in
their explanations of the decline.71
The issue is more nuanced, however. Based on the
evidence currently available, erosion episodes during
the Early Bronze Age in the northeastern Peloponnese seem to have been confined to coastal regions
2000, 144.
66
van Andel and Runnels 1987, 845; Pullen 1992; Zangger
1993; Jameson et al. 1994, 353; Johnson 1996, 66.
67
Whitelaw 2000, 154.
68
van Andel et al. 1986, 113. See also van Andel and Runnels (1987, 93), who argue that political upheaval was a more
likely cause than environmental difficulties.
69
van Andel et al. 1986, 113.
70
Pope and van Andel 1984; van Andel et al. 1986; Wells
1994. Van Andel et al. (1990, 392) note the problem of actually knowing how catastrophic the consequences of erosion
actually were.
71
E.g., Forsn 1992, 260; Wells 1994; Wells and Runnels
1996, 45556; Maran 1998, 1:25559; Whitelaw 2000, 152;
2013]
11
Fig. 6. Sedimentation history of the Argive Plain (drawing by M. Lindblom; adapted from Zangger
1993, fig. 21).
(the Argive Plain, Asine, and survey locations in the

southern Argolid). The general date of these episodes
is the second half of the Early Bronze Age, with an onset ca. 2500 B.C.E. Geomorphological analyses have
been carried out in the inland valleys of the Argolid
and Corinthia (in relation to the archaeological survey
projects in the Phlius Basin and the Nemea Valley), but
no heightened sedimentations have been linked to the
Early Bronze Age.72 This is especially emphasized by
Maran, who concludes that although the Early Helladic activity in the Phlius region was quite extensive, no
connection can be made in this region between geomorphological changes and the EH II/III decline.73
It should therefore be clear that no straightforward
connection can be made between Early Bronze Age

land use and environmental degradation.
Based on the chronology available, the periods of
increased sedimentation during the Early Bronze Age
should be tied to the increased consolidation of settlement during the second half of the EH II period.74
Therefore, erosion seems an unlikely cause for the depopulation of the greater landscape but a much more
likely result thereof. We suggest that a convergence of
population resulted in a need for much more intensive
and localized cultivation and herding. In this scenario,
erosion was accelerated by increased deforestation on
nearby foothills and possibly by increased carelessness, such as shortened fallow in times of prosperity
72
Two pronounced prehistoric sedimentation phases in
the Phlius Basin have been identified, one during the Neolithic period (with a peak ca. 7000 b.p. [calibrated]) and one
during Middle and Late Helladic times (beginning ca. 4000
b.p., with a peak in one locality ca. 3000 b.p.) (Casselmann
et al. 2004, 717, fig. 10). The prehistoric episode evidenced
in the Nemea Valley also predates the Early Bronze Age and
belongs to the Neolithic period (Wright et al. 1990, 58791).
(The dating of stream-deposit unit H1 was determined by the
inclusion of Early Neolithic pottery and an Early Bronze Age

site on the surface.) Although the Berbati Valley has been
mentioned in relation to the Early Bronze Age (e.g., Pullen
1992, 48), the dates of the erosion episodes in this valley remain unclear (Whitelaw 2000, 144).
73
Casselmann et al. 2004, 53.
74
See Fuchs and Wagner (in Casselman et al. 2004, 17; see
also Fuchs 2007) on the importance of considering in which
cultural phases erosion and sedimentation occurred.
12
and negligence in upholding measures for soil maintenance.75 The concentration rather than dispersal of
habitation would then have been decisive. However,
although some centralization was likely a factor in the
inland regions of the Nemea Valley and the Phlius
Basin, it apparently did not result in any large-scale
environmental alterations in those locales. That erosion did take place on the Argive Plain could indicate
enhanced activities in this region in late EH II.76
The Climate Factor
Climate change is often identified as a factor contributing to changes in the human presence in the environment. The general trend toward a drier climate would
be one such change, and Zangger cites the postglacial
climate optimum and the high sea levelalong with
new agricultural techniquesas key factors for sedimentation.77 The general formation of debris flows,
such as the Pikrodafni, was attributed by van Andel and
colleagues to drier climatic conditions, which would
have reduced the tree coverage (possibly also caused by
active land clearing) and would have led to sheet erosion followed by the deposition of these flows.78 Changes in the rainfall patterns, such as years of exceptional
rains, was mentioned as a possible additional trigger
for this type of erosion.79 Scholars have furthermore inferred climate changes based on late third-millennium
proxy data from the Near East, particularly Weiss data
from Tell Leilan, Syria.80 Weiss argues that climate
forced changes at the site, and he cites comparanda
from several other regions and cultures throughout the
eastern Mediterranean and the Near East.81 In Egypt,
Mesopotamia, Palestine, and the Indus Valley, climate
75
As suggested by van Andel et al. 1986, 11317, 12526; see
also Dusar et al. 2011.
76
Cf. Van Andel and Zangger 1990, 147; Forsn 1996, 119.
The pollen data from the former Lake Lerna seems to support this scenario ( Jahns 1993, figs. 5, 6). Jahns (1993, 197)
identifies a period starting ca. 2500 B.C.E. (around the middle of her subzone IIIa) when [w]oodland clearance and
other kinds of land use seem to have increased; the period
was marked by an increase in pine and in evergreen woody
species. In a recent reinterpretation of the data, however,
Butzer (2005, 1780) deems the values for the period from
3500 B.C.E. indicative of fairly modest land use intensity
including partial clearance and upland grazing (causing an
expansion of the maquis)acknowledging that this stands
in stark contrast to some other interpretations of the period.
77
Zangger 1993, 83.
78
Van Andel et al. 1986, fig. 6; 1990, 38182. Wetter conditions, according to van Andel and colleagues, would have led
to stream flood deposits caused by the erosion of gullies and
more concentrated runoff.
79
Van Andel et al. 1986, 11617.
80
Maran 1998, 2:45253; Lavezzi 2003, 734; Shelmerdine
[AJA 117
sequences suggest a rapid increase in aridity ca. 2200

B.C.E. that might relate to the (arguably global) 4.2 ka
(i.e., 4200 b.p. [calibrated]) drought event.82 Based on
these findings, Wilson concludes that [i]t is difficult to
believe that the Greek islands and mainland would not
also have been affected, possibly with a prolonged period of crop yields, and consequent social disruption.83
Assessing the impact of climate on erosion and
on events in general ca. 2200 B.C.E. is not, however,
unproblematic. For example, few detailed climate sequences (i.e., detailed enough to allow unambiguous
interpretation of proxy data and dating precision)
are available from Greecenone from central and
southern Greecethat could inform a contextualized and integrated view of the climate and possible
correlations to ancient societies. Furthermore, Finn
and Holmgrens recent survey of available climate
series data from the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean regions has produced results that question the
practice of using climate data from other regions to
posit climate-based explanatory models within the
mainland Greek context.84 As illustrated in figure 7,
an overall transition from the generally wetter Early
Holocene is clearly distinguishable beginning ca.
3450 B.C.E. and is followed in certain areas by fully
developed aridity ca. 22502050 B.C.E.85 Regional differences are nevertheless evident in the climate data
and indicate discrepancies, for instance, between the
Near East and Greece.
Roberts and colleagues recently argued for patterns of climate heterogeneity (i.e., local variability)
throughout the Mediterranean basin, highlighting
the importance of proximity between climate and
2008 (esp. the chapters by D. Pullen, C. Broodbank, D. Wilson, and S.W. Manning). The consensus on this point was also
emphasized by Moody (2010) in her review of Shelmerdines
(2008) The Cambridge Companion to the Aegean Bronze Age.
81
E.g., Weiss et al. 1993; Weiss 1997; see also Dalfes et al.
1997; deMenocal 2001; Weiss and Bradley 2001; Staubwasser
and Weiss 2006.
82
E.g., Mayewski et al. 2004; Booth et al. 2005. Discussions
of the 4.2 ka event relate the dry periods in the Near East to
global climatic changes that encompassed widespread cooling in the North Atlantic and severe drought in midcontinental North America (Weiss and Bradley 2001; Booth et al.
2005). The global character of the droughts ca. 2200 B.C.E.
has recently been discussed and questioned (Mayewski et al.
2004; Wanner et al. 2008; Finn and Holmgren 2010).
83
Wilson 2008, 98.
84
Finn and Holmgren 2010; Finn et al. 2011.
85
For detailed references relating to each proxy record indicated in fig. 7 herein and for an extended discussion about
climate variability in the eastern Mediterranean, see Finn et
al. 2011.
2013]
13
Fig. 7. Climate variability in the eastern Mediterranean: top, general temporal climate evolution in the eastern Mediterranean
(bars represent the number of proxy records, which indicate wetter and drier conditions); bottom, geographic representation
of the climate in the eastern Mediterranean as recorded by proxies during the period 24502050 B.C.E., highlighting regional
incoherence (drawing by M. Finn).
14
archaeological data.86 The dry climate within the zone

from Anatolia and the Levant to the Indus region underwent sudden and drastic changes (dry events) ca.
2200 B.C.E., which means that societies faced drastically more arid conditions. However, both the abruptness
and the geographic extent of these climate processes
point to complex local conditions governed by, for
example, topography, making regional inferences
complicated.87 Although the Bronze Age as a whole
was a period of increasingly dry conditions, there is
no direct evidence for a climate event in the Peloponnese, and aridity was apparently not as severe there as
it was farther east.88 The period of arid conditions in
the Near East marked a regionally delimited step in the
overall transition from the wetter Early Holocene to
the drier Middle and Late Holocene.89 Such long-term
changes may have caused problems for agriculture
and triggered changes in vegetation, which could have
led to erosion. In other words, climate change could
have been a factor in the societal and environmental
developments of the second half of the Early Bronze
Age. It is difficult, however, to consider local climate
conditions, especially in the case of southern Greece,
because of the lack of pertinent climate data. A direct
comparison between circumstances in the Near East
and those in our study area is therefore not advisable,
considering the differences, for example, in climate
variability, precipitation, and lifestyle between the two
areas.90 At present, there is no straightforward evidence for the direct impact of climate change on the
history of the societies in northeastern Peloponnese.
Migration (and Invasion)
In 1928, Blegen noted that the Early Helladic culture seems to have been overrun and overwhelmed
by a fresh and vigorous invasion, and EH civilization
was brought to an endabrupt in some places, more
gradual in others.91 Some 30 years later, Caskey elaborated on the idea, and his theory has been the focus
of much subsequent research. The theory is founded
mainly on two facts: (1) the appearance of new features of material culture after 2200 B.C.E., and (2) a
Roberts et al. 2011a.

Finn et al. 2011; Roberts et al. 2011a. The ultimate cause
of these events is also a matter of ongoing debate (e.g., Weiss
and Bradley 2001; Arz et al. 2006).
88
Roberts et al. (2011b) suggest that regions with more
precipitation were less sensitive to changes in precipitation
than semiarid and continental regions (with 200350 mm per
year). This means that Greek societies, with ca. 600 mm per
year, would have had better chances to deal with any similar
changes.
89
Finn et al. 2011; Roberts et al. 2011b.
86
87
[AJA 117
string of settlement destructions by fire around the

same time. At the center of all this was the settlement
of Lerna, which was excavated in the 1950s by Caskey.92
He found that the House of the Tilesthe second of
two corridor houses at the sitehad been destroyed
by violent fire, an event that was followed by the introduction of a largely different material culture. He
returned to Blegens idea of hostile invaders, suggesting that a foreign invasion created widespread havoc
in this region and brought to an end the bright flowering of human society which has left its traces in the
material remains of the second EH period.93 Other
scholars then followed the detailed ceramic sequences
he had established for Lerna and moved the dates of
similar breaks/destructions elsewhere from the end
of the Early Bronze Age to some 100 years earlier. All
these episodes were thereby made contemporaneous.94
Since then, scholars have been able to show that the
appearance of new features of material culture was not
so sudden, nor were the destructions as contemporaneous, as once believed by Caskey. Forsn proposes the
compromise that although the number of destroyed
sites was somewhat higher ca. 2200 B.C.E., sites were
destroyed throughout much of the Early Bronze Age.95
In response, Maran, giving the example of the Mycenaean period, points out that cultural deterioration
and a breakdown of sociopolitical hierarchies are not
necessarily followed by cultural change. With respect
to this, destructions not followed by visible change/
discontinuity in architecture should not be given the
same weight as destructions that are followed by such
change. As argued by Maran, destruction followed by
architectural change did in fact occur more commonly
at the EH IIIII transition,96 but the cultural transformation is now viewed as a process played out during a
longer period of timea Wendezeitrather than a sudden event.97 As a result, invasion theories have fallen
out of fashion. The differences noted between EH II
and EH III material culture, however, cannot be as
firmly dismissed. Therefore, many scholars continue
to pursue the idea of migration (without hostility)
to understand these changes. Although, as shown by
Contra Fuchs 2007.

Haley and Blegen 1928, 150.
92
For the final publication of the architecture of EH II
Lerna, see Wiencke 2000.
93
Caskey 1960, 301; see also 299303.
94
The theory and its effects are summarized by Forsn
1992, 1213.
95
Forsn 1992, 251.
96
Maran 1998, 1:22223.
97
Maran 1998, 2:460.
90
91
2013]
Forsn, new features of material culture seem to

have arrived at different times and should be seen as
signs of continuous contacts during the EH IIMH
period,98 the apparent contact with areas to the north
(Thessaly and Macedonia), northwest (Albania and
Dalmatia), and east (the Cyclades and western Anatolia) is often connected to the movement not only of
ideas and material culture but also of people.99
15
necks in the food supply and, in the end, an unsustainable lifestyle that led to the EH II breakdown. He also
argues that the cultural change that appeared afterward was caused by the influx of foreign people into
the power vacuum created by the breakdown.105 At the
heart of this argument is the addition of people from
the west Balkans who used the disorganization in the
Helladic area to take control of the southerly points of
an important northsouth maritime trading route that
covered the Adriatic and Ionian Seas.106 This means
that these newcomers were not the cause but the effect
of the destabilized sociopolitical structures.107
Multidimensional Kulturwandel
Maran has presented the most complex and wellargued interpretive framework for the Kulturwandel, or
cultural change, after 2200 B.C.E.;100 in this model, he
assigns a key role to migrating people. He combines
strands of many earlier theories and emphasizes that
the best explanation for the cultural transformation
can be found in a complex combination of influential factors. He further acknowledges that the factors
may vary between regions and that einem regelrechten Zusammenbruch der hergebrachten gesellschaftlichen Organisationsform can only be documented
in the Peloponnese.101 Using Tainters studies of complexity as a problem-solving tool,102 Maran argues that
intensified problem-solving schemes were carried out
during the second half of the EH II period (fig. 8).103
He characterizes EH II development in southern
Greece as progress toward a more complex and increasingly expensive social structure and destabilized
sociopolitical functions.
Environmental factors also serve as fundamental
triggers in Marans theory. He emphasizes this point
by stating that it is kaum mehr daran zu zweifeln, da
am Zusammenbruch der Periode der Korridorhuser in der Argolis, und wahrscheinlich allgemein in
Sdgriechenland, in entscheidendem Mae Umweltfaktoren beteiligt waren.104 Relating the findings by
Weiss, Maran argues for climate-driven changes that,
in combination with agricultural misuse, caused the
loss of arable land through episodes of soil instability.
In combination, these circumstances created bottle-
In Marans model, therefore, the only really active

players in the history of the period were the so-called
outsiders, the foreigners moving in and bringing with
them new material culture and new techniques. We
are not in a position to question Marans argument
that people from the west Balkans had an increased
presence in the Peloponnese ca. 2200 B.C.E. We do,
however, feel the need to question the impact of such
a presence. Many of the arguments explaining the
events around the EH II/III transition take a rather
deterministic standpoint; humans, for example, are
cited as the cause of erosion, but as a generic group
rather than as intentional individuals. We believe it
is inadequate to list the material causes for change
without also highlighting the people involved. Erosion
does not in itself bring about decreased settlement
numbers, nor does climate cause a ceramic style to
change. People do. People need to be allowed to take
in and react to new circumstances.108 As recently stated
by Yoffee, [a]ny attempt to reduce ancient states to
vague and undifferentiated societies. . . disregards
the very pulse of the past.109 Even in the face of triggering events or processes, the future is to a large extent shaped by people in the present.
The most critical development in the Early Bronze
Age Peloponnese may not have been the EH IIIII
Forsn 1992, 257.

Forsn 1992, 1520 (with references and a summary of
theories launched by various scholars); Maran 1998, 2:45152.
100
Maran 1998.
101
Maran 1998, 2:443.
102
Tainter 1988.
103
Maran 1998, 2:45253.
104
Maran 1998, 2:452.
105
Maran 1998, 2:45254.
106
Maran (1998, 2:31155) identifies the incoming people
as originating from the west Balkans based on a comprehensive treatment of the history of this regionin particular, the
Cetina culture, its chronological parallelization to early EH
III, proposed parallels in material culture between the west

Balkans and the EH II/III Peloponnese (in terms of ceramics, figurines, graves, and grave finds), and the geographic
position of the west Balkans and the potential engagement
of the west Balkan people in the trading network of the Adriatic and Ionian Seas. This network was one of three major
regional trading networks (Interaktionsrume) envisioned
by Maran (1998, 2:437, pl. 71A) to have operated between the
west coast of Asia Minor and the east coast of Spain during the
Early Bronze Age.
107
Maran 1998, 2:45355.
108
Whitelaw 2000; Tainter 2006, 2008.
109
Yoffee 2010, 189.
98
99
human dimensions
16
[AJA 117
Fig. 8. Diagram of Marans (1998) theory, with indications of internal factors (solid borders) and external factors (dotted
borders) (drawing by E. Weiberg).
transition itself but the increased socioeconomic

centralizationand probably a gradual convergence
of populationthat occurred during some hundred
years before it. This was when the patterns of dispersed
habitation that had been developing since the Final
Neolithic period were disrupted. The disruption resulted in changes not only in how and where people
lived but also to some degree in how they made their
living, as well as in the framework of values making
up the basis for that life. The process leading to these
changes in settlement habits probably started with
an initial expansion into the landscape before 3000
B.C.E. It was, however, clearly not a smooth transition.
Multiple turning points along the timeline leading up
to and beyond 2200 B.C.E. indicate fundamental lifestyle changes for the people concerned. They would
have had options and probably significant choices to
make in relation to those options at various points
along the timeline. Some of these turning points can
be found in the varying settlement patterns outlined
110
Wiencke 1989.
above. There is thus much to support the argument

by Wiencke that development accelerated during the
second half of the EH II period.110 An increasingly
complex spiral of change is the essence of the explanatory model presented by Maran, but the roles of the
human actors remain obscured.
We suggest that a consideration of regional identities would add to our understanding of the course of
events. Here, we define regional identity as a common set of values and ideas in relation to economy,
politics, and material culture that is shared to varying
degrees by inhabitants of a region. This value base,
then, fuels a sense of belonging and affinity. This does
not exclude the possibility that there may be parallel and even competing identities to which larger or
smaller groups of individuals adhere, identities that
are defined on other grounds, such as gender, social status, age, ideology, ethnicity, and so on. In the
case of regional identities, geographic and historical
context is fundamental. From this perspective, it may
2013]
be argued that the dispersal of settlements into new

areas during the Final Neolithic or the beginning of
the Early Helladic period meant a more intensive and
extensive use of the landscape. On a cognitive level,
this may have led to more articulated ideas of the actual geographic and topographic limitations within
the greater landscape and to a growing receptiveness
to distinctions among different regions. It is not unreasonable to believe that people at this time began
to identify with the landscape itself and with the other
people who inhabited it, or that this identification
helped shaped the notion of a home region. The
formation of central settlements and the clustering
of habitations are both plausible continuations of this
process; both resulted in the regional identity becoming concentrated at one or a few specific locales. It
is especially striking under these circumstances that
many of the locales chosen were topographically distinct and that their respective residential areas were
located on or around hillocks or mounds elevated
above the valley floors, making them topographic
eye-catchers within their local surroundings (fig. 9).
As such, they probably functioned as markers of the
settlements and markers of a settlement identity that
was apparent both to the inhabitants and to any visiting outsider.111
As part of the societal delineation, considerable architectural work was instigated at most local centers.
Architecture, secular and ritual, is often seen as both
representing and stimulating the definition of identities, as both means and results of that process.112 Other
means and results are language, dress, and various
items of material culture. In archaeological terms,
because of the conditions for preservation, possible
identity markers most often boil down to iconographic
presentations, weapons, dress items, sculpture, vessels
of metal and stone, and pottery, which are suggested to
have been varyingly embraced by different individuals
and groups of people based on age, status, ethnicity,
gender, and the like.113 The Early Bronze Age context is
notable for what can be regarded as supraregional sets
of indicators, which display many similarities between
regions, as well as for more regionally varied features.
On the EH II mainland, the former comprise, among
other things, corridor houses, fortifications, seals, the
ceramic koine, and the social and economic system
within which these material objects were both outcomes and tools. Local choices made in relation to the
Weiberg 2011b, 456.

See McEnroe (2010) for a recent evaluation of the role
of architecture in the construction of identities in Minoan
111
112
17
Fig. 9. Modern views of prehistoric locales: top, Zygouries;

center, Mastos Hill in the Berbati Valley; bottom, Tsoungiza
(E. Weiberg).
Crete.
113
Insoll 2007.
18
[AJA 117
stimuli of the changing times provide the distinctive

northeastern Peloponnesian ingredient that shaped
the definition of this particular region. One argument
(albeit ex silentio) is that the mortuary customs common in the Cyclades and the east-central Greek mainland during the transitional Early Bronze (EB) I/II and
onward were apparently not adopted by the people of
the northeastern Peloponnese. Our knowledge of the
mortuary traditions in the Early Bronze Age Corinthia
and Argolid is in fact extremely limited. The invisibility
of these graves indicates a much differently fashioned
view of mortuary deposition and display.114 In iconography, the few human renderings and the more common
animal ones (in contrast to the fashion on the Cycladic
Islands)115 suggest less focus on individuality in favor
of a more pronounced significance of traditional and
(it is likely) community-based ideals.116
In addition, we may also list practices that seem to
illustrate a relationship with the past on a local level.
For the EH II Argolid, architectural planning marks
connections between settlement layers, which suggest
a largely benevolent attitude toward the past as well as
a desire to use the past to make statements in the present.117 Similarly, the prominence of sauceboats among
the pottery shapes of the northeastern Peloponnese
during EH II may be seen as signifying two things: (1)
people in this region participated in an international
sphere of drinking rituals,118 and (2) traditionalism in
the society of the EH II Argolid led to the rejection
of new kinds of drinking sets, such as the Lefkandi I
complex of pottery shapes introduced in the Aegean
in late EB II.119 As outlined by Maran, there seems to
have been a cultural code for the use of different
pottery shapes that directed welche Gefformen in
welchem Kontext und auf welche Weise zu verwenden
waren and thereto eine unterschiedliche Akzeptanz
fr Innovationen im Keramikrepertoire.120 This varying acceptance of innovations (not only in ceramics)
may have been inscribed in the cultural code and thus
defined by a regional identity.
Other contemporaneous stimulimany of the
same Anatolian and/or Near Eastern derivation as the
Lefkandi I drinking shapeswere fully accepted and

also further developed by the people of the northeastern Peloponnese.121 Sealing practices represent one
idea that was set to full use in late EH II.122 The fortifications and fortified buildings in the region, such as
the Rundbau at Tiryns, may also have been built at that
time.123 A fortification and corridor house will often
appear together as a unit (and were likely ideologically
related), an arrangement that does have contemporaneous parallels beyond the Aegean.124 Thus, although
the corridor-house form appears to have been developed primarily from local and smaller-scale antecedents,125 the full realization of the building complexes,
perhaps in relation to size and function, may also have
been inspired by external connections. This shows that
the communities of the Argolid and Corinthia were
indeed at the forefront of EB II development and
that they embraced external stimuli and their locally
colored adaptations. In combination with enhanced
activities at Lerna and Tiryns, it may also signify an increase in cultural values bound up with long-distance
travel and its products, an ideational framework that
may have favored coastal communities. Considering
the increasing supraregional correspondences in late
EH II and the visibility of new features in the material
cultural repertoire that suggest widely varying influences, this process must have started during earlier
parts of the Early Helladic period.
An increasing number of studies of communal
feasting in Early Helladic contexts, primarily those
related to corridor houses and mortuary scenes, give
indications of how social identities were upheld.126
The formation of central settlements and processes
of nucleation may be two further signs of the formation and upkeep of identities based on a common set
of ideas and a willingness of people to live closer together. Individual settlements would, over time and
as a result of active architectural measures, become
fixed points for communal and individual histories,
which in turn would enforce the willingness to stay.127
The natural compartmentalization of the Greek mainland may have contributed to the creation of these
Weiberg 2011a.
Broodbank (2000, esp. 24749) discusses notions of individuality and social power in the Early Bronze Age Cyclades.
116
Weiberg 2010.
117
Weiberg 2007, 11351.
118
119
Rutter 1979, 1995.
120
Maran 1998, 1:27374. See also Pullen (1995, 402) for
variations in the ceramic repertoire during the Final Neolithic and Early Helladic in the southern Argolid.
121
Cf. Broodbank 2000, 28387; Rahmstorf 2006.
122
Aruz 2008; Weiberg 2010. See Pullen (2011b, table 2.1)
for a survey of sites with seals, sealings, and seal-impressed

objects.
123
Maran 1998, 1:19799.
124
Maran 1998, 1:195 (with references).
125
Shaw 1987. See also the recent discussion by Pullen
(2011a, esp. 28997) of House A at Tsoungiza, the beginning
of monumental building in the Early Bronze Age Aegean,
and the development of corridor houses.
126
Peperaki 2004; Weiberg 2007, 35069; ONeill 2008; Pullen 2011c.
127
Weiberg 2011b, 578.
114
115
2013]
regional identities. For example, the nature of the

Argive Plain itself, a topographically homogenous
area and the only coastal plain of its size in the northeastern Peloponnese, may have caused it to become
the ultimate regional identity marker, a circumstance
that, in turn, may have been a major contributing factor in the events of late EH II.
In all, there are many indications that the Argive
Plain was the location of exceptional developments in
the second half of the EH II period. The centralization
of activity in a limited geographic region would also
have meant the concentration of the impact of any
stressors. There are signs that society in and around
the Argive Plain was becoming increasingly complex
at that time, and some of the driving factors can surely
be found within a problem-solving spiral, as argued
generally by Tainter and case-specifically by Maran.
Because the Argive regional identity developed in
parallel with general socioeconomic trends, it is likely
that along with the economic system, the bases for
that identity became more and more inflexible and
frail. As a result, it may have been impossibleor
there may have been a lack of incentiveto recreate
societal cohesion if the value bases failed. As far as
we can tell today, the people of the Argive Plain and
surrounding regions chose not to uphold the thencurrent level, or type, of complexity after 2200 B.C.E.
In view of the contemporaneity of similar events in
many parts of the Aegean and beyond, one likely factor
at this time was the disruption of traditional trading
circuits. The upset of the bases for the acquisition of
any coveted trading goodswhether metals, jewelry,
textiles, food items, or more transient commodities
connected to supraregional drinking customs and interpersonal contacts128is likely to have uprooted the
grounds for those parts of the society dependent on
them. Within coastal settlements and probable trade
nodes such as Lerna and Tiryns, in an enhanced trading climate, any disruption may have had far-reaching
consequences.
interpreting change
What was the essence of the change during the two
centuries or so encompassing the EH IIIII transition? What was given up, what was kept, and how did
the change come about? Marked distinctions in the
archaeological record suggest that some of the cul-
128
Broodbank (2000, 258, 309 [with further references])
reminds us that knowledge of the world beyond ones own
environment may have been just as coveted as the traditional
type of traded goods.
129
For the history of resilience theory, see, e.g., Holling
2001; Folke 2006.
19
tural codes had shifted. The construction of corridor

houses and the use of fortifications, roof tiles, and
seals are relatively sophisticated activities. Practices
like these do not just suddenly appear; they must have
been adopted intentionally. Likewise, their disappearance from the archaeological record must indicate
purposeful responses to changes in life circumstances
and active choices to discontinue certain practices.
Resilience theory was developed within ecology as a
way to understand the interplay between change and
stability within complex systems, and it is a conceptual
framework that has found increasingly wide uses beyond ecology.129 Resilience is a measure of the capability within systems to deal with threats to the current
level of organization, or of the capacity to be flexible,
in the face of a variety of stresses.130 One important
function of that flexibility is the capacity for renewal
and reorganization.131 A key component of resilience
theory is the model of the adaptive cycle (fig. 10, left).
Developed by the ecologist C.S. Holling,132 this figureeight model of cyclical development and change helps
illuminate the dynamics and complexities of both
ecological and social processes, especially the interplay between them. An adaptive cycle comprises four
major functions, or phases: exploitation, conservation,
release, and reorganization.133 These functions work
on different temporal and spatial scales. The trajectory
from exploitation to conservation represents the major
slow sequence of change, including the accumulation
of capital and system buildup. During this phase, the
connectedness and stability of a system increase. According to the model of the adaptive cycle, the options
and thereby the positive potential for the future increase with the level of accumulated resources. At the
same time, however, the continuous increase in connectedness leads to the system eventually becoming
over-connected and increasingly rigid in its control. It
becomes an accident waiting to happen.134 The slow
trajectory from exploitation to conservation is therefore continually intersected by shorter periods of rapid
change, through the functions of release and reorganization. This back loop of the figure-eight model
is unpredictable and uncertain, but it also involves a
low level of connectedness, which makes it a window
for innovation and creative reformulation leading
ultimately to a new front loop of exploitation and
conservation. The resilience of the system fluctuates
Redman and Kinzig 2003, under Introduction.

Folke 2006, 253.
132
Holling 2001; Gunderson and Holling 2002.
133
Holling 2001, 39496.
134
Holling 2001, 394.
130
131
20
[AJA 117
Fig. 10. Hollings model of the adaptive cycle: left, stylized adaptive cycle and its four functions (drawing by E. Weiberg; modified from Holling 2001, fig. 4); right, stylized panarchy with its possible extensions in time and space (drawing by E. Weiberg;
modified from Holling 2001, fig. 6).
within the cycle. Resilience is at its highest in the back

loop, when connectedness is low, and it diminishes
in the front loop as connectedness extends within an
increasingly brittle system.135
According to Holling and others, a socioecological system comprises a nested set of these adaptive
cycles, which function in a hierarchical way on different levels of time and space to form a panarchy (see
fig. 10, right).136 It is generally argued that the slower
and larger levels of adaptive cycles set the frameworks
within which the faster and smaller ones may function.
Each level of adaptive cycles goes through individual
processes of accumulation and innovation, which may
or may not coincide with those of other levels. There
are likely many connections between levels. Two connections emphasized by Gunderson and Holling are
revolt and remember, which are especially important in periods of change and thus relevant for the
processes of the back loop of a cycle.137 The revolt
connection is a largely bottom-up function in which
change in lower and faster cycles may trigger change
in higher and slower levels. The remember connection is instead a top-down function in which renewal
in one cycle may be facilitated by drawing from the
accumulated potential in the buildup phase of a slower

and larger cycle.138
Deep-time perspectives are increasingly being used
to nuance the contemporary debate on environmental and societal issues.139 Some scholars have argued
that resilience theory and the concepts of the adaptive
cycle and panarchy may be fruitfully adopted within
archaeology and that archaeologists, with their focus
on long-term perspectives, in turn should begin to
play a more central role in development of resilience
theory and the study of contemporary socioenvironmental problems.140 As emphasized by Redman and
Kinzig, resilience theory bridges the gap between the
theoretical and the practical,141 which paves a way
for better cross-disciplinary communication. Human
systems, however, differ from nonhuman ecosystems.
Holling lists three specifically human features: foresight (or intentionality), communication, and
technology.142 Redman and Kinzig emphasize that
humans are in the unique position of both living the
changes and being able to manipulate them.143 In dealing with human systems of the past, we are well advised
to acknowledge all these special features of human
systems and relate them to our interpretations. This
Holling 2001, fig. 5.

Holling 2001, 39698, figs. 6, 7.
137
Holling 2001, 39798, fig. 7.
138
Redman and Kinzig (2003, under Characteristic Scales
and Cross-Scale Interactions) emphasize that in human
systems, the direction of these connections may very well be
reversed.
139
E.g., Crumley 1994; McIntosh et al. 2000; Tainter 2006;
Costanza et al. 2007; Sinclair et al. 2010.

140
Van der Leeuw and Redman 2002; Redman and Kinzig
2003; Redman 2005.
141
Redman and Kinzig 2003, under Contributions of Resilience Theory to Archaeology.
142
Holling 2001, 4012.
143
Redman and Kinzig 2003, under Elaborating the Phases of the Adaptive Cycle.
135
136
2013]
is a challenge in that the level of intentionality, the

force of communication, and the results of changes
in technology, for example, are never easily deduced.
The perspective of adaptive cycles and the idea of
nested cycles, however, bring a theoretical framework
to archaeology that has the potential to highlight variability as well as connectedness within and between
cycles at different points in time. It follows that, first, a
collapse does not mean the end; rather, it represents
an alteration. Second, the back loop of release to reorganization, commonly the least-examined sequence
in the cycle and thus one that is poorly understood,144
should be given the same (positive) attention as the
front loop of societal growth. As it is presented within
resilience theory, [i]t is a time of both crisis and opportunity145 in which frameworks for new cycles are
shaped. Third, the idea of nested cycles opens up the
possibility that change at one level need not cause
change in other levels and that only parts of a society
may be subjected to the changes noted.
argive resilience
To relate the history of the northeastern Peloponnese to the model of adaptive cycles, we need to
acknowledge the problem of scale. How does one
recognize the magnitude of changes recorded in the
archaeological material? Should they be defined as
the release phase of an adaptive cycle, or are they just
minor perturbations along the normal trajectory of,
for example, the conservation phase? It is necessary to
decide where (i.e., on which level in a society) to position each adaptive cycle or, say, the largest and slowest
cycle of a panarchy. We here follow the argument of
Redman and Kinzig that this determination can best
be made on a case-by-case basis that takes into account
the specifics of the definitions, scales, and objectives
of the research.146 In the present case, our aim is a
contextualized view of the events ca. 2200 B.C.E., and
we will focus on the geographic scale, outlining a system of interlocked and interdependent adaptive cycles
centered on the northeastern Peloponnese.
We mark the formulation process for a regional
identity as the largest and slowest working cycle, one
that works in parallel with or is manifested in the socioeconomic process and that functions on a time scale
of several hundred years. In this outline, the time of
release and reorganization that sets off this front loop
144
Holling 2001, 395; Redman and Kinzig 2003, under
Elaborating the Phases of the Adaptive Cycle.
145
Holling 2001, 395.
146
Redman and Kinzig 2003, under Contributions of Resilience Theory to Archaeology.
21
is seen in the Final Neolithic and earliest Early Bronze

Age, a time when people started to explore more extensively the potentials in the regional landscape. The
initial delineation of central places and the first signs
of nucleation in early EH II, a formative period, may
be viewed as belonging to a phase of exploitation. The
end of EH II could then represent the final phase of
the front loop, a period when steps were taken to conserve and preserve.
The exploitation phase is a time of growth in which
capital is accumulated, increasing the potential and
options for the future. These are circumstances that
seem to have been in place during the first half of the
Early Helladic period, early EH II especially, when
the yields from the lands probably increased and the
internationalized environment expanded.147 This was
a time of exploration and experimentation, when
much new knowledge and many new practices were
being integrated.148 The potential for individual and
communal well-being and social networking would
have been high. It is likely that the economic wellbeing and the potential for some surplus coming from
intensified and differentiated economies slowly increased over generations as techniques and strategies
were refined. An increasingly international climate
around the middle of the third millennium offered a
milieu in which some of this surplus could be realized.
It is also likely that an economic climate more dependent on trade developed at the same time, leading to
greater socioeconomic complexitywhich was fueled
by inequalities in the distribution of status (variably
defined) in the communitiesand a growing number
of specialists. Enhanced focus on the individual, rather
than the group, may also have followed, along with
the heightened significance within the community
of certain personae and smaller groups of families
ultimately, perhaps, at the expense of traditional
community ideals. This may, for example, be indicated
in the use of seals, which represent ownership and
control, and in the incipient practice of intramural
burial, which signals individual rather than communal
choices.149 The process toward increased societal complexity would have been a continuous one over some
centuries, additionally spurred at times by specific
events and ambitious individuals. In all, it would have
been a dynamic process of social change that initially
stimulated the formation of local centers, only to be
Renfrew 1972; Broodbank 2000.

Renfrew 1972; Wiencke 1989; Maran 1998; Broodbank
2000; Rahmstorf 2006; Day and Doonan 2007.
149
Weiberg 2010, 2011a.
147
148
22
furthered by their presence and by the achievements

of their inhabitants. Urbanization then, if that is how
this sequence of events should be characterized, is
the result rather than the cause of the noted change.
The formation of arguably urban mind-sets was one
important key to what would come.150
Societal resilience would have been very high during the first half of the Early Bronze Age but did likely
diminish as socioeconomic complexity escalated and
the physical manifestations of society took on firmer
and more materialized forms. The communities of the
northeastern Peloponnese seem to have been positive environments for societal growth and innovation
during much of the Early Bronze Age. During almost
1,000 years, the area followed a slow but steady escalation toward increased complexity, with no real signs of
threat to the overall well-being (although individual
settlements had their ups and downs). In many respects, the northeastern Peloponnese appears to have
been at the forefront of development in the Aegean.
With the model of adaptive cycles, it is clear that any
formulation of a regional identity or development of
its socioeconomic framework is to be seen as a continuous process of adaptations to and incorporation of
new factors and circumstances throughout the cycle.
With growing connectedness developing incrementally with increased societal complexity, however, the
potentials are increasingly circumscribed in the conservation phase by attempts to control and preserve
the accomplished level of complexity. Thus, destabilizing forces may be important for societal well-being,
maintaining diversity, flexibility, and opportunity.151
At a certain point, however, the system can no longer
incorporate change; resilience is lost, and the society, or the identity, becomes unsustainable. In the increased specialization of the material culture in the
northeastern Peloponnese during the EH II period, we
can trace the extent of accumulation in the trajectory
from exploitation to conservation. Increased control,
or centralization, can be identified, for instance, in
the gradual concentration of settlements, the monumentalization of settlements, and the use of seals. It is
also possible to propose that these developments led
to overconnectednessboth in terms of social, interpersonal connections (such as connections between
families and between trading partners) and in terms
of a centralized organizationwith too many parties
depending on the outcome of others. The dominance
Weiberg et al. 2010, 188.

Redman and Kinzig 2003, under Introduction.
152
Holling 2001, 39596.
153
Rahmstorf 2006; Aruz 2008.
150
151
[AJA 117
of coastal centers just before the end of the EH II period suggests that the international atmosphere, most
acutely realized at these locations, was an increasingly
important component in these mind-sets. Any such reliance on a limited number of resourcesgeographic,
economic, and/or ideationalmust have limited also
the inherent potentials in the system. If one or more
of these resources failed or if the returns were diminished, the system would be triggered into a release, or
a creative destruction.152 Reorganization and reformulation would follow.
Climate change is one factor that could overturn
socioecological systems. A shift toward a drier climate,
as evidenced farther east, would have caused problems
in an agricultural community. There is at present no
compelling evidence for any direct and severe effects
of climate change on Argive life during the Early
Bronze Age. We may, however, be dealing with the
indirect effects of climatic conditions much farther
east, which may have triggered disturbances in existing trading networks. In a trading environment that
was perhaps increasingly focused on the outcome of
contacts with Anatolia and the Near East,153 a breakdown of contact networks in the Near Eastern interior
may have helped upset the societal balance on the
Greek mainland. The mainlanders would have felt the
effects of the changes both in the voyaging patterns
in the Aegean and in their access to different types
of traded goods. These effects would have been felt
also by other neighboring regions in the Aegean, but
not everywhere did this development take the same
negative turn. There were also settlements and regions
within the Aegean sphere where life continued without
major breaks into and through the last centuries of
the third millenniumfor example, Kolonna on Aegina, Palamari on Skyros, and Heraion on Samos.154 At
Kolonna, a settlement in the Saronic Gulf that always
mixed mainland and island traits, the use of the last
corridor house was discontinued at about the same
time as in the nearby Argolid; there were changes in
the town plan, but activities continued at a similar (or
larger) scale, as was manifested in the construction
of a monumental fortification wall.155 As argued by
Maran, the demise of cultural complexity at so many
locations in the Aegean seems to have meant not the
collapse of the existing networks but rather a restructuring and even an intensification of them, with people
at the strategic intersections moving into more active

Walter and Felten 1981. For a summary, see Forsn 1992,
11417.
154
155
2013]
23
positions.156 This meant to Maran that there was new

room for people from the west Balkans (whom he sees
as responsible for the cultural transformations of the
Peloponnese) to maneuver and for traders from Crete
to begin to dominate farther south, a move that their
strategic outpost on Kythera facilitated.157 Whatever
the actual impact (if any) of these events on the Helladic mainland, these success stories in the Aegean
and neighboring regions suggest that there were additional factors that influenced the developments in
the northeastern Peloponnese and that we should
be looking also for stresses on a more localized level.
Erosion was very much a local affair in the Argive
coastal zones during the late EH II period. It seems
clear now that this erosional event can no longer be
seen as the cumulative effect of a long-term and unchanged system of widespread farming but should perhaps rather be seen as the more short-term effect of a
change in settlement and possibly in administration.
Furthermore, although this sedimentation has been
called an environmental catastrophe, there is no real
evidence to support the suddenness that seems to be
indicated by that term. The indications are rather in
favor of the opposite. Scholars have established that
Tiryns was settled throughout the Early Bronze Age.
Possible evidence of flooded areas during that time158
suggests only that some intrasite movements and other
countermeasures were necessary; levees, for example, are thought to have been one measure taken to
control the recurrent flooding of the nearby river.159
Furthermore, there are indications of site continuity
through episodes of soil instability from elsewhere on
the Argive Plain.160 In all, there is really no compelling
confirmation that erosion alone would have had the
wide-reaching effects on Argive life that have often
been inferred by scholars.
This brings us back to the potentially decisive role
of a regional identity. The changes in our focus area
need not have been caused by erosion, climate, or disruptions to trading networks and voyaging traditions.
In the northeastern Peloponnese, something must
have added to the forces of change. We argue that
this something can be found in the way the people in
the region handled the turbulences of the time, decisions that in turn were influenced by the destabilized
social and economic structure and, perhaps most importantly, by an increasingly untenable set of social
valuesnamely, a hitherto strong but progressively
disintegrating regional identity. In comparison with
agents in the Cyclades, traders in the northeastern
Peloponnese most likely played a less dominant role
in the Aegean sphere of interaction. They nevertheless shared the fate of lost complexity at the end of
EB II, and their history stands in stark contrast to the
history of late Prepalatial Crete. Some answers about
these diverging cultural trajectories may be found in
the rapidly spinning changes of the late EB II period,
which affected the Cyclades and the mainland much
more than they affected Crete (probably as a result of
the active choice of disengagement coming from one
or both sides). That Crete at this time was at the periphery or even outside this common sphere of interaction is one likely key to the divergent histories of
that island.161
So, in the terminology of the adaptive cycle, it seems
reasonable to regard the process of regional identity
as forming one of the largest cycles, which would have
to some degree set the conditions for shorter and
faster cycles (see fig. 10, right).162 It follows that this
process would have guided some decisions in lowerlevel cycles in the panarchy. In this framework, however, bottom-up effects are also emphasized. This is
especially significant when considering the effects of
a collapse phase in a lower cycle. Collapse in a lower
cycle could trigger a transition from conservation to
collapse in a higher cycle at a time when that higher
cycle is vulnerable. In the northeastern Peloponnesian
framework, one may view variations in the trading
pattern as belonging to an intermediate-level cycle.
The beginning of the Early Bronze Age in the Aegean was a time of innovation in long-range interaction
and a time of reformulation of trading patterns.163
In this early phase, it seems, Cycladic traders came
out on topfor example, by increasingly controlling
the environment in which certain resources, such as
metals and obsidian, could be extracted, an environment where procurement had previously been guided
solely by direct access.164 Trade from the point of view
of the northeastern Peloponnese was different, and a
cycle illustrating it would probably need to be short-
Maran 1998, 2:44344.

Maran 1998, esp. 2:44350. For Kythera, see also Broodbank and Kiriatzi 2007.
158
Sterile sandy and stony layers separate the EH II and EH
III layers in several excavated areas around Tiryns (Gercke et
al. 1975, 2830; Alram-Stern 2004, 597).
159
Chatzipouliou 1980, 124; Zangger 1994a, 198.
Zangger 1993, 389, fig. 22 (soil profile AP-SP-14, near

Argos); 3940, fig. 23 (soil profile AP-SP-02, in the upper
Inakhos riverbed).
161
Wilson 2008, 100.
162
Holling 2001, 39798, fig. 7.
163
Broodbank 2000.
164
Broodbank 2000, esp. 29299.
156
157
160
24
[AJA 117
One major question is how our modern perception of these sociocultural processes corresponds with
how the changes and events were understood and experienced by the inhabitants of the Argive Plain and
Corinthia during the Early Bronze Age. Many factors
including timemust be considered. In terms of the
timing of the events, we are unlikely ever to know the
actual sequence and will therefore never be able to fully
reconstruct the scenarios. Considerable chronological
leeway is necessary, given the inexactness of our dating
methods. If we allow for the time frame of a generation, a collapse may turn into the slow disintegration of one way of life and the innovation of another.
Short-term effects, such as the violent destruction of
the House of the Tiles, may be only incidents along
the perceived timeline. Thus, the alternation between
long periods of accumulation and shorter periods of
innovation and reformulation is a positive aspect of
the adaptive-cycle model, because both can still be of
relatively long duration.165 This diminishes the decisive
aspect of the term collapse. Rather, the concept of
release more aptly incorporates varying durations.
On one level, the release and reorganization processes during the EH III period appear to have been
slow and extended over at least several hundred years.
On other levels, they were considerably shorter. If we
consider the issue of societal complexity, the EH II
situation was not paralleled again until some 500 years

later. In terms of specific settlements, however, these
time spans were shorter. At Lerna and Tiryns, for example, the first houses in EH III, the apsidal forms of
which stood in contrast to the rectangularity of their
predecessors, were erected more or less immediately
after and above the EH II versions, and more or less
immediately after the fires that had ravaged the areas
died out.166 At Lerna, the tumulus erected over the
ruins of the House of the Tiles emerges as a most expressive act of remembrance, which means that the
past, in some sense and for some time, continued to
influence the structure of the nearby EH III houses. In
the case of Tsoungiza, a longer time span is indicated:
the release of one cycle can be fixed to the abandonment of the settlement in mid EH II, and the reorganization phase can be equated with the away period of
its inhabitants, which led in the end to reoccupation
and a new exploration phase. In this case, the panarchy function of remembrance can be raised with the
suggestions that the new users drew on older traditions at the site.167 On a larger level, remembrance
may have been an active function in the reoccupation
of some inland locations in early EH III.
As argued for the Cyclades, the years surrounding
2200 B.C.E. in the Aegean witnessed a major ending
and a beginning of a new order.168 Contextualized,
this should perhaps be instead major endings and
the beginnings of new orders. What seem to be the
most significant signs of change ca. 2200 B.C.E. are (1)
the disappearance on a supraregional scale of certain
common features of material culture, and (2) the pronounced regionalism and small scale of life emerging
at the other end. Although there are signs of external
influences/contacts, in comparison with the preceding period, regionality, rather than internationality,
seems to have been the new key ingredient of life.169
That new styles of life were embraced in EH III need
not mean, however, that life in general was very much
altered or that any guiding identity was fully compromised. Both lifestyles and related identities must nevertheless have been reformulated with some of the base
values modified. Again, in the phases of release and
reorganization, it seems reasonable to assume that the
existence of a fertile environment for experiments
on many levels within the society and the release of
two high-level adaptive cycles could also have made
Redman 2005, 73.

Rutter 1995, 46.
167
For further discussions on the EH II/III transition at
Lerna, see Weiberg and Lindblom (forthcoming).
168
Broodbank 2000, 321 (from the point of view of the
Cycladic Islands).
169
Cf. Rutter (1995, 648), who emphasizes the pronounced
regionalism seen in the ceramic assemblages, both among
geographic regions and among settlements of the same
region.
er. Travel and trade via land routes were obviously

more significant on the mainland. The time when
the people of the northeastern Peloponnese took on
a more active role in the Cycladic or Aegean trading
networks may therefore be regarded as the time of
innovation and reformulation of trading patterns for
these mainland communities. Based on an increased
level of pottery resemblances, the appearance of new
architectural traits, and the use of seals, the reorganization after release from older trade systems may be
situated sometime in the early EH II period. Both the
northeastern Peloponnese and much of the Cyclades,
however, underwent a new phase of release ca. 2200
B.C.E. In the latter case, the change in trading patterns
at that time may be viewed as a revolt connection,
when the release in a lower cycle led to a higher cycle
being triggered into the same state, with ensuing reshuffling of agents and values in both cycles.
the back loop
165
166
2013]
25
possible the appearance and initial establishment

of entities that would otherwise be outcompeted.170
In terms of pottery, new or previously ignored traits
or influences were now included. Rutter distinguishes
four pottery groups from EH III Lerna: one group for
which prototypes existed in the ceramic repertoire of
the northeastern Peloponnese (Lerna in particular)
in the preceding period, and three groups for which
no such prototypes existed. For these latter groups, he
traces the antecedents to Boeotia and Attica and to two
different groups of northeastern Aegean prototypes.171
In summary, he sees the earliest EH III pottery as a mixture of indigenous and intrusive forms and elements,
the old forms dominant among the large and closed
shapes, the new among the small and open. He envisions a fusion of the different elements/groups within
Boeotia and Attica during late EH II, but the results of
this fusion were incorporated into the material culture
of the Corinthia and Argolid only after 2200 B.C.E.172
We believe that this delayrather than being the result of a slow diffusion, as argued by Ruttercould
be seen as the result of an active choice on the part
of the people concerned. Based on Marans ideas on
cultural codes, the acceptance of these new pottery
styles suggests that the acceptance level had been
altered. As new pottery forms were introduced, trade
and contact routes must have remained active. Imports
(short- and long-distance) did still exist, along with
many intraregional correspondences in terms of material culture within the northeastern Peloponnese.173
It may be, however, that the direction for the most
frequent interaction with other regions had changed
from east to souththat is, from the Cyclades toward
the southern Peloponnese and Creteor west along
the Corinthian Gulf and the Adriatic Sea.174
In the northeastern Peloponnese, the settlement
pattern remained much the same in EH III as it was in
the last phases before 2200 B.C.E. That is, if enhanced
nucleation before 2200 B.C.E. can be confirmed,
then no large alterations came about at the end of
EH II. If it cannot, then massive population decrease,
or forceful nucleation, must have come about at the

end of EH II. Based on present evidence, however,
it seems more probable that the previous settlement
patterns were simply continued. Life did continue at
most of the major settlements of the preceding EH
II period. After a while, some settlements, such as
Tsoungiza, were resettled. The type of architecture
chosen at this time at Tsoungiza and elsewhere indicates that the patterns of the past had at least partly
been broken. Apsidal houses were not unknown during the EH II period,175 but the system of grouping
many apsidal houses was a new feature of the EH III
period. Freestanding houses meant more possibilities
for movement between houses than would have been
conceivable in the agglomerated housing complexes
of the preceding period. This may indicate a more
loosely defined settlement plan in which the occupants of each house were less dependent on (e.g., not
sharing walls with) their neighbors. This in turn may
indicate a more family-oriented settlement structure
than in the EH II period, during which the settlement as a whole appears to have been an important
focal point. A parallel development that supports this
claim is found in mortuary practice and the tendency
toward a formalized practice of burying infants within
the confines of the house.176 The grouping of apsidal
houses is an especially characteristic settlement form
of the Peloponnese, with most examples coming from
the Argolid and Corinthia (Lerna, Tiryns, and Tsoungiza, but also Olympia);177 this may be an indication of
altered social patterns and possibly changed, or even
dissolved, social hierarchies. In all archaeological field
surveys from the northeastern Peloponnese, EH III is
a rather inconspicuous time period, and the site numbers are very low. Rutter hints that EH III communities may have been less sedentary than communities
in preceding periods; Rutter raises this possibility in
part because of the apparent influence of basketry
on the pattern-painted decoration of the EH III period, which suggests a greater dependence on the less
fragile and lightweight containers.178 Inhabitants of
Holling 2001, 395.

Rutter 1995, 47577.
172
Rutter 1995, 477.
173
E.g., Rutter 1988; 1995, 73649. Imports were most common in Lerna IV phase 1 and thereafter grew rarer (Rutter
1995, 749).
174
Maran 1998; Broodbank 2000, 35456, fig. 120.
175
176
Weiberg 2007, 209, 22125.
177
178
Rutter 1988. His proposal is interestingly supported
by a recent interpretation of the Lake Lerna pollen record.
Butzer (2005, esp. 1780) argues that there was an expansion
of maquis at the expense of once-cultivated land during the

period 26001600 B.C.E. and that [a]n expanded pastoralism is implied but does not seem to have been particularly
destructive to the original biota. Butzer seems to suggest
less cultivation but increased grazing, an interpretation that
is somewhat incompatible with the interpretation by Jahns
(1993, 197), as well as with our knowledge of the history of the
Argive Plain. Considering the length of this period, however,
his definition indeed fits quite well with our present view of
the EH III and Middle Helladic periods. Butzer (2005) does
define the period after 2500 B.C.E. as EH IIIMiddle Helladic, and it seems he follows the absolute chronology used,
e.g., by the Southern Argolid Survey ( Jameson et al. 1994, xv).
170
171
26
this region nevertheless took considerable measures

to stay in the same place. On the domestic level, that
meant rebuilding on the grounds of old houses and,
it seems, continuous maintenance of any structures in
use within the settlements houses.179
Caskey interprets the changes in architecture at Lerna as the enforced traditions of newcomers taking over
there.180 As we have seen, Maran also sees the Kulturwandel as resulting from the presence of new population elements. He points, in particular, to the apsidal
houses in the Altis at Olympia and in the northeastern
Peloponnese, the changes in the decorative elements
of pottery, and the occurrence of schematic terracotta
figurines, which by their form and decoration indicate
a west Balkan presence.181 Rutter cautiously suggests
the possibility of a large-scale migration of people
from Attica who carried with them ceramic traditions
that were incorporated into the repertoire at Lerna.182
There is no need here to reject the possibility that
newcomers were present in the northeastern Peloponnese. What seems to be needed, however, is a more
comprehensive evaluation of the cultural framework
that allowed innovations to be assimilated into the material culture of the region. Whether any newcomers
entered into this environment is not the main issue.
As Rutter has argued, part of the early EH III ceramic
repertoire rests on indigenous traditions.183 Therefore,
any new population elements probably did not supplant the indigenous population but were added to
it, while local traditions were continued by the local
peoples themselves. The main change, then, lay in
the new willingness to embrace change, or multivocality, which suggests a less controlled and less rigid
environment. Rather than picturing a cultural recession, one should perhaps instead see the time following 2200 B.C.E. as a period of cultural invigoration
during which a multitude of old and new agents were
(re)activated following the release from the circumscribed cultural codes of the EH II period.
conclusion
The concept of collapse carries a connotation
of involuntariness, one that suggests collapse cannot
have been an intentionally chosen way out for troubled
communities but that it resulted instead from a failure in problem solving.184 The idea of release places
179
See Banks contribution in Rutter 1995, 10. See Rutter
(1995, 641) for an estimation of the duration of the three
main EH III phases at Lerna. At this location, for the full time
span of the EH III period (estimated to be 100200 years),
one can calculate an average life span of each house of ca. 25
years, possibly much less (Weiberg 2007, 99100).
[AJA 117
less focus on the intentionality and more on the new

circumstances that a breakdown of some processes
(cycles) may have promoted. One key point is the decreased connectedness, which also indicates the disappearance of some controlling functions. In the Early
Helladic context and in many others, the latter seems
to be found at political and administrative levels. The
EH II period was an internationalized milieu within
which a regional cultural code, a regional identity, was
formulated. This regional identity had a formative influence on life in the northeastern Peloponnese. The
disappearance of a cultural overlay, a monumental
and administrative side of life characteristic of the late
EH II period in our focus area, may be viewed as one
indication that this identity was being reformulated.
The adherence to this or any identity would also have
varied on the individual level. Because of any number
of factors, such as societal position, skill set, age, gender, time of year, place, or a special occasion, different
individuals or different groups of people would have
been dependent to varying degrees on any identity,
regional or other. The people most affected were likely
those connected to a higher degree to the political,
economic, and administrative functions in the individual communities.
One can envision that after the release of higherlevel cycles, the most dynamic interactions in the EH
III period took place at the settlement and individual
levels. The physical expressions of the EH II period,
such as settlement planning, monumental buildings,
and drinking sets, may have framed for most people
the experience of communality, but did not define it.
To follow the formulation and reformulation of the
mind-sets of these groups of people, scholars need to
search for less monumental indications of group identities.185 One such ground for social cohesion resides
in the settlements themselves, in their adherence to
the same place over time. Signs of the reformulation
of life may be found in all the new material traits of
the EH III period mentioned above: in architecture,
ceramics (shapes and decoration), figurines, and mortuary customs. From our modern and distanced point
of view, this all seems a rather suddenly appearing
mixture. In place, at the time, the suddenness as we
see it was probably not an issue and the mixture not
reflected upon. The transition between rectangular
Caskey 1960.
Maran 1998, 2:454.
182
Rutter 1995, 650.
183
Rutter 1995, 47677.
184
Maran 1998, 2:453; Tainter 2000.
185
Weiberg et al. 2010, 187.
180
181
2013]
and apsidal buildings at Lerna and Tiryns, for example, would have come about gradually, but the actual
erection of the buildings at a specific spot would have
been an event, a choice made in the moment (or possibly planned for some time) and realized when the
circumstances allowed it. Sauceboats did not suddenly
vanish from the tables at Tiryns but were outmoded
in a slow process during which old and new items
were simultaneously usedhence Marans definition
of an bergangsphase at Tiryns.186 Similarly, the days
of the corridor-house type probably had been counted
for some time, so that when, for example, the House
of the Tiles at Lerna was destroyed, there was no interest in rebuilding. Evidence suggests that the last days
of this specific building, which was to a large degree
the defining building for the EH II period, were in the
hands of Lerna locals rather than any newcomers.187 In
that case, the tumulus erected over its ruins was probably also a local endeavor, perhaps meant to mark and
remember former accomplishments and a cultural trait
that under the new circumstances had outlived its use.
To sum up, our knowledge of the EH III period
finds many connections with the release and reorganization phases of Hollings adaptive cycle, and this
model nuances our understandings of the period by
leading us to ask new questions. The northeastern
Peloponnese of the final 100200 years of the EH III
period is emerging in many ways as a dynamic arena
for interaction, a place of continuity in changing times
as well as an environment with considerable room for
new initiatives. The changes noted for the EH IIIII
transitional period clearly came about through a more
gradual process than the one indicated by the term
collapse. One can perhaps also trace the outlines
of a scenario in which activities in shorter and faster
cycleslively environments of competing groups of
people related to trade, crafts, and the likegained
ground at a time when increased rigidity was undermining the sustainability of the formerly central and
defining parts of life. Such activities may have been
decisive for the ultimate release of any slower cycles.
Tainter argues for the need to acknowledge that the
views of the modern ecologist regarding environmental degradation may deviate significantly from those
of the ancient people concerned. In the latter case, he
emphasizes that degradation may constitute merely a
change in the opportunity spectrum.188 Clearly, this
could apply to modern archaeologists views on apparent disturbances within ancient societies. The state-
186
Maran 1998, 1:1013; see also Weiberg and Lindblom
(forthcoming).
187
Weiberg 2007, 17881.
27
ment could also apply to processes within any ancient

society in relation to different kinds of degradation.
Different settlements, or rather individuals within
them, must have reacted in a variety of ways to the
turbulences of their time. This would have been true
also within the northeastern Peloponnese, although
on a full Aegean scale the region as a whole appears to
have been experiencing socioeconomic failure. During this time, and some generations before and after,
cultural experimenting resulted in a newly formulated phase of relative stability, a point of departure
for a new and slow trajectory of exploitation according to the model of the adaptive cycle. This takeoff
platform can perhaps be positioned within the EH III
period. Rutter did, for example, see traces of an internally generated cultural reorganization at mid EH III
Lerna, in the ceramic assemblage in general and in
the drinking ceremonial in particular.189 In this, we
can perhaps see the outcome of those generations of
cultural maneuvering and the seed of social identities
that would help form life in many generations to come.
erika weiberg
department of archaeology and ancient
history
uppsala university
751 26 uppsala
sweden
erika.weiberg@antiken.uu.se
martin finn
department of physical geography and
quaternary geology
stockholm university
106 91 stockholm
sweden
martin.finne@natgeo.su.se
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ARTICLE
Cyprus from Basileis to Strategos:

A Sacred-Landscapes Approach
GIORGOS PAPANTONIOU
Abstract
While modern scholars have made significant

progress in recognizing the dynamics of the ancient
landscape in the production of local Mediterranean

histories, with the exception of a few regional survey
projects, Cypriot island-wide histories and archaeologies have not benefitted from these developments.
Very few studies consider Cypriot sacred landscapes
in relation to political power and ideology. More specifically, such a landscape perspective is absent from
the study of the crucial transition from the era of the
Cypriot city-kingdoms to the Hellenistic periodthat
is, from the rule of several basileis (kings), who were
the heads of independent polities, to the island-wide
rule of the strategos (general), who was accountable
to the Ptolemaic king of Egypt ruling from Alexandria.
Synthetic works on Cypriot religion tend to classify
sanctuaries by deity or cult type or to simply move from
the discussion of one individual site to another in isolation. Cypriot sanctuaries, like Greek sanctuaries (as
emphasized by Alcock), have therefore been decontextualizedthat is, removed from their topographic
setting and more or less separated from potentially
wider dynamics of sociopolitical change.1 Landscape
archaeology is an area of study that overcomes the
conventional boundaries between disciplines such
as anthropology, history, and geography, providing
a fresh perspective and a powerful investigative tool
to explore how spatial order (i.e., the hierarchical
arrangement of sites) is linked with shifting power
relations and cultural influence. Thus, landscape approaches offer useful means for assessing changing
* This article is a revised version of a chapter of my doctoral research and was produced under the tenure of a threeyear postdoctoral fellowship from the Irish Research Council,
cofunded by the European Commission (Marie Curie International Outgoing Fellowships). With permission from the
former director of the Cypriot Department of Antiquities, P.
Flourentzos, and the various surveyors (H. Catling, A. Christodoulou, P. Flourentzos, S. Hadjisavvas, and M. Louloupis),
the unpublished Hellenistic and Roman material identified
in the Cyprus Survey Branch inventory was examined with
the help of D. Michaelides (University of Cyprus). I thank M.
Iacovou (University of Cyprus), D.B. Counts (University of
WisconsinMilwaukee), C.E. Morris (Trinity College Dub-
lin), B.A. Knapp (Cyprus American Archaeological Research

Institute), B. McGing (Trinity College Dublin), and A.K. Vionis (University of Cyprus) for comments, advice, and criticism
on earlier drafts. Nonetheless, I bear full responsibility for
the information and arguments put forward here. I am also
deeply grateful to Editor-in-Chief Naomi J. Norman and the
anonymous reviewer for the AJA for their valuable comments
and suggestions for improvement. Finally, I am immensely
grateful to M. Michael and V. Trigkas for taking pains to produce the maps included in this article. Fig. 5 is my own. A free,
downloadable appendix can be found under this articles abstract on the AJA website (www.ajaonline.org).
1
Alcock 1993, 173.
Sanctuaries and religion were instrumental in forming

the worldview of the ancient Cypriots, and one would expect that social power relations, meanings, and identities
were expressed through the holistic concept of sacred
landscapes. This contribution primarily discusses the
change in the use and perception of sacred landscapes,
which were originally constructed in the era of the Cypriot basileis (kings) but continued to function in a new
political environment under the control of the Ptolemaic
strategos (general). Furthermore, it proposes a contextualized methodology for approaching the study of sacred
landscapes in Iron Age Cyprus, revealing new possibilities
and their effects on our understanding of Cypriot social,
cultural, and political histories and at the same time indicating the limits and the dangers of such a task. Drawing
on ideas from theoretical/methodological studies of landscape archaeology and their relevant applications in other
Mediterranean histories, this article explores how spatial
order (i.e., the hierarchical arrangement of sites), as observed in sacred landscapes, is expected to articulate social
order and to be linked with shifting relations of power and
cultural influence in an ancient Cypriot context. It also
suggests that a closer consideration of sacred landscapes
and their complexities from a long-term perspective not
only makes the transition from the Cypriot city-kingdoms
to the Hellenistic period more comprehensible but also
illuminates the political and sociocultural histories of
both periods when they are studied in their own terms.*
introduction
33
34
GIORGOS PAPANTONIOU
local conditions.2 Landscape archaeology is crucial to

this discussion of Cypriot sacred landscapes and their
role in the transition from the Cypriot basileis to the
Ptolemaic strategos.
In this article, I investigate the relationship between
Iron Age sanctuaries and territorial claims. I argue
that even when trying to examine the possible role
of some Cypriot sanctuaries as frontiers during the
era of the city-kingdoms, researchers are forced to
search for diachronic values and extend the inquiry
to other time periods.3 I attempt to prove that the
study of Cypriot sacred landscapes in the longue dure
their transformations and their possible change of
meaningsreinforces Fourriers interpretation that
extra-urban sanctuaries played an important role in
the political setting of the city-kingdoms.4 Moving
from the period of many independent basileis to the
island-wide rule of the strategos, I discuss Hellenistic
urbanization, settlement patterns, social memory, and
politico-religious ideology in order to consider how a
unified sociopolitical space also (eventually) resulted
in a more unified sacred space.
data and methodological issues

This discussion of the continuity or discontinuity
of sacred landscapes during the transition from the
Cypriot basileis to the Hellenistic strategos is based
partly on personal study of the data from published
excavated sanctuaries and survey projects and partly
on a catalogue of 206 sanctuary sites (or cult rooms/
cellae, in some instances) compiled by Ulbrich (figs.
15; online appx.).5 Ulbrich presents sites that date
from the Cypro-Archaic (ca. 750480 B.C.E.) to the
Cypro-Classical (ca. 480310 B.C.E.) period. Some of
these sites continued to function until the Hellenistic (ca. 31030 B.C.E.) or Roman (ca. 30 B.C.E.330
C.E.) period. I have identified the purely Hellenistic
and Roman sites by consulting relevant bibliographic
references and examining the inventory of the (now
abandoned) Survey Branch of the Cyprus Department
of Antiquities and its related surface survey material.
It should be emphasized that the sites shown in figures 14 are by no means representative of the whole
chronological range of the specified periods. Many
of these sanctuary sites, therefore, were abandoned
within the period under discussion, but based on the
Alcock et al. 2003, 35556.

Cf. Papantoniou 2012a.
4
For the most recent discussion, see Fourrier 2007, 11124.
5
Ulbrich 2008, 263478, 48195; cf. Papantoniou 2012b,
appx. 1.
6
Readers interested in more information about the indi2
3
[AJA 117
existing evidence it is only possible to offer a relative

chronology. This study suggests that it is entirely unrealistic to speak in other terms when dealing primarily with religious assemblages of unstratified objects.6
In addition, it should be kept in mind that, in some
instances, the usage of the phrase urban space can
be dubious in discussions of Iron Age Cyprus and that
a settlement can be more or less urbanized. This
could be the case for the Iron Age sites of Golgoi,
Kyrenia, or Karpasia.7 Nonetheless, in figures 14,
I have included only the principal urban centers that
are securely known to have functioned as the seats of
independent city-kingdoms either continuously or
at some point during the Cypro-Archaic and CyproClassical periods.8
I start with the Cypro-Classical sacred landscapes
namely, those landscapes that were directly affected
by the political change from basileis to strategos. That
cult activity continued is confirmed by the great number of sanctuary sites that survived into the Hellenistic period and particularly by the sites that survived
well into the Roman period. However, the substantial
number of Cypriot sanctuary sites that did not survive
into (or to the end of) the Hellenistic period makes
improbable the assumption of generic continuity of
religious activity. As shown below, Cypriot fieldwork
has raised the issue of the validity of the spatial interpretation of many sites (i.e., their very function as
sanctuaries) and their chronologies. Is there indeed a
noticeable discontinuity in Cypriot sacred landscapes
from the era of the basileis to the rule of the Ptolemaic
strategos, or is the apparent discontinuity in cult activity simply deceptive? If the former is the case, should
we connect the abandonment of these sacred places
with the political environment of the basileis of CyproClassical city-kingdoms or with that of the Ptolemies?
Furthermore, how can the continuation of other sites
into the Hellenistic period be explained, and what
is the relationship between ancient Cypriot politics
and religion?
To address these issues, it is necessary to turn to welldocumented excavated sanctuary sites. Although the
purpose of this article is not to trace the development
of Cypriot sanctuary architecture and material culture,
it must be said that probably until the Late Hellenistic
period, when Greek-style monumental edifices were
vidual sites can consult this article's online appendix (www.

ajaonline.org) along with Ulbrich 2008, 263478, 48195;
Papantoniou 2012b, appx. 1.
7
Cf. Collombier 2003, 144.
8
Cf. Iacovou 2002; Satraki 2012, 217, map 6.
2013]
CYPRUS: A SACRED-LANDSCAPES APPROACH
Fig. 1. Distribution of definite and possible Cypro-Archaic sanctuary sites. Numbers on the map correspond with
the site names published in the online appendix (drawing by M. Michael).
Fig. 2. Distribution of definite and possible Cypro-Classical sanctuary sites. Numbers on the map correspond with
the site names published in the online appendix (drawing by M. Michael).
35
36
GIORGOS PAPANTONIOU
[AJA 117
Fig. 3. Distribution of definite and possible Hellenistic sanctuary sites. Numbers on the map correspond with the
site names published in the online appendix (drawing by M. Michael).
Fig. 4. Distribution of definite and possible Roman sanctuary sites. Numbers on the map correspond with the site names
published in the online appendix (drawing by M. Michael).
2013]
37
Fig. 5. Density of sanctuary sites, from the Cypro-Geometric to the Roman period.
added to the archaeological sacred landscape of Cyprus, the variants of religious architecture, whether
urban or extra-urban, followed mainly the traditional
principle of the Late Bronze Age religious structures.
I refer to the traditional open-space Cypriot temenos
with a peribolos, an altar, and sometimes one or more
rectangular rooms.9 Consequently, in architectural
terms the Cypriot sanctuary is, with few exceptions, disappointingly uninformative, and most of the excavated
sites are poorly preserved. This lack of monumentality
should be taken into account in conjunction with the
antiquarian approaches of early explorations, which
were primarily interested in the creation of a corpus
of art historical pieces10 and therefore neglected not
only stratigraphy but also important elements of cult
(e.g., sacrifice, festivals) and religious transformations

in votive practices (e.g., changes in the dedication of
materials and votive types).11
Additionally, it is important to note that many of
these sanctuary sites have been located by field survey alone. If it is difficult to recognize sacred space
even in excavated siteswhich usually reveal some
archaeological indicators of ritual12then trying to
assign sacred character to sites that are known only
from surface material is even more problematic and
ambiguous. Archaeological field survey in Cyprus has
shown that a surface scatter can differ from excavation assemblages and that sub-surface features can
occur in locations where no artifacts appear on the
surface.13 Problems of contemporaneity should also
9
Cf. Papantoniou (2012a, 306), however, for a kind of
standardization of Cypriot temenos architecture in the Early Iron Age. For a schematic typology of the Cypriot religious
architecture, see Gjerstad 1948, 1723; Bennett 1980, 63234.
For further bibliography, see Al-Radi 1983, 64100; Wright
1992a; 1992b, 29573; Reyes 1994, 2832; Collombier 1999;
Webb 1999, 15765.
10
Hermary 2001, 12; Ulbrich 2001.
11
Scholars are far from understanding why we rarely find
votive terracotta figurines in extra-urban sanctuaries dating
later than the end of the Cypro-Classical period. Early explorations focused on the creation of a corpus of monumental
art, therefore neglecting terracotta figurines. Yet recent archaeological explorations of extra-urban sanctuary sites, such
as Athienou-Malloura, Maroni-Vournes, and Vavla-Kapsales,

reveal that by the Cypro-Classical period the dedication of terracotta figurines was very rare (Morden and Todd 1994, 59;
Ulbrich 2011, 745; Averett 2012, 143). However, it must be
mentioned that terracotta figurines are usually discovered in
secondary depositional or contaminated contexts, which include a wide range of chronological material. Thus, contemporary scholars are left with little stratigraphic evidence; when
attempting to classify objects chronologically, we usually have
to base our decisions merely on stylistic criteria, which are not
always accurate (Averett 2012, 134).
12
Renfrew 1985, 25960.
13
Iacovou 2004a, 14.
38
GIORGOS PAPANTONIOU
[AJA 117
Direct relationships between political elites, economic activity, and religion in the era of Cypriot citykingdoms have been archaeologically identified and
underlined by the Swedish Cyprus Expedition in the
palace at Vouni.15 Almost all the large-scale sculptures
at the site have been found in the Propylon Sanctuary
in front of the palace (Rooms 12029, 13037) (fig. 6),
including the famous Vouni kore and the head of the
goddess wearing a crown ornamented with dancers.16
More recently, these straightforward relationships
have been reassessed and proven beyond question by
the ongoing excavation of the French Expedition in
the administrative center of Amathus. The excavator
has identified at least two sanctuaries directly associated with the administrative building; many ritual and
cult objects were found in these palatial sanctuaries
(fig. 7).17 The complex was destroyed or abandoned at
the end of the Cypro-Classical period.18 This destruction/abandonment seems to have been connected
with the abolition of the city-kingdoms and consequently with the military and political acts of the Hellenistic Diadochi (successors).
The only other destructions of sanctuaries that, according to literary and archaeological evidence, have
been attributed to the Ptolemies by modern scholars
are those of some urban shrines located within the
core of a city-kingdom. Diodorus Siculus (19.79.4)
informs us that the basileus of Kition, Pumiyaton,

was killed by Ptolemy in the end of the fourth century
B.C.E. for negotiating with Antigonus. Historians and
archaeologists, therefore, have associated some of the
so-called destruction levels found at Kition-Bamboula
with this political event.19 However, as the cult area
there seems to have been in use at least until the end
of the third century B.C.E., the so-called destruction
levels of the temples need to be reevaluated.20 It will
be an important development for Iron Age Cypriot archaeology if future research can clarify how the Bamboula sanctuary (identified as a sanctuary of Astarte
and Herakles-Melqart, who were thought to protect
and legitimize royal power)21 relates to the citys topography and to the Kitian dynasty (and palace). It
may prove useful to compare the evidence from KitionBamboula with that of other city-kingdom environments, such as the well-known example of Amathus,
where the palatial sanctuaries were abandoned but
the (topographically) associated acropolis sanctuary
continued to prosper during the Hellenistic period.
However, it must be noted that the abandonment level
of the nearby sanctuaries at Kition-Kathari is dated
(based on pottery finds) to the very end of the fourth
century B.C.E.that is, to the time when the Ptolemies
dominated on the island (fig. 8).22
Additionally, archaeological evidence seems to
indicate some sort of Ptolemaic-period destruction
at the Tamassos precinct of Aphrodite.23 As shown
below, the status of Tamassos (the territory of which
was claimed by both Kition and Salamis) after the
period of Alexander remains to be identified.24 The
sacred character of the site was not abandoned, but
the continued cultic activity was characterized by great
alterations and architectural modifications. Finally, at
Marion (a city-kingdom allied with the Antigonids),
a building interpreted as a sanctuary provides possible evidence for destruction connected with the
Ptolemies, as has been suggested by the excavators.25
If we consider the attitude of the Cypriot basileis during the conflict of the Diadochi and the alliance of
Kition and Marion with the Antigonids against the
Ptolemies (Diod. Sic. 19.79.45), it becomes apparent
that these demolition episodes were associated with a
Alcock et al. 1994, 167.

Gjerstad et al. 1937, 111292.
16
Gjerstad et al. 1937, pls. 4853, nos. 16, 17.
17
Petit 2002.
18
Aupert 1996, 53; Petit 1996, 1067.
19
Gjerstad et al. 1937, 745; Karageorghis 1976, 116, 172;
1982, 168; Nicolaou 1976, 105, 108; Yon 1992, 335; 1994, 10,
12; 2007, 60; Collombier 1993, 13334; Mehl 2000, 73839;
Anastassiades 2007, 167.
Salles 1993, 106110, 349 n. 10; cf. Yon 2006, 111; Fourrier 2007, 435.
21
Calvet 1993, 122; Yon 2006, 111.
22
Karageorghis 1976, 118; Collombier 1993, 134; Yon 2006,
88.
23
Karageorghis 1981, 997; Tatton-Brown 1985, 70; Anastassiades 2007, 167.
24
Cf. Iacovou 2002, 7780.
25
Childs 1988, 12425; 2008, 68; Smith et al. 2012, 18182.
be considered,14 mainly where artifacts or pottery from

earlier periods were continually used in later periods.
Conclusions about the regional identification of Cypriot cult activity based on survey, therefore, remain
tentative, and consequently the chronological range
of such activities is equally problematic.
While keeping such reservations firmly in mind, I
attempt to interpret the existing evidence. I argue that
the only way to reach any conclusions is to view Cypriot sacred landscapes from a diachronic, intra-island
perspective. A historically sensitive and contextual approach, one that seeks to relate land with social power
and to consider elites and nonelites, locals and foreigners, indigenous population and settlers, is necessary.
the cypriot city-kingdoms: sanctuaries,

royal ideologies, and territorial claims
14
15
20
2013]
39
Fig. 6. Plan of the palace at Vouni, including its Propylon Sanctuary. Numbers mark individual rooms (Hermary 2001, 18, fig. 2;
courtesy A. Hermary).
political rather than a religious, cultural, or ethnic

war.26 Furthermore, it should be remembered that
the main sanctuaries located within the immediate
environs of Cyprus urban centers (e.g., the sanctuaries of Aphrodite in Palaipaphos and Amathus and
the sanctuary of Apollo Hylates at Kourion) continued
to flourish during the Hellenistic period.27 Moreover,
about 60 sanctuary sites located beyond the urban
horizon were not interrupted but survived well into
the Hellenistic period.
Excavation of extra-urban shrines, such as Achna or
Hagia Irini, has produced evidence that highlights the
role of the Cypriot Iron Age sanctuary as a place for
wealth disposal and a center of economic control in
the community.28 Excavators have found evidence for
segmentation of space, display and disposal of votives,
consumption of food and drink, industrial activity, and
large-scale storage. It is probably not accidental or only
because of proximity to limestone quarries that the
best corpus of monumental limestone sculptures of
Fig. 7. Limestone sphinx thymiaterion, early fifth century

B.C.E., from the Baetyl Sanctuary of the Amathus palace.
Limassol, Limassol District Museum, inv. no. AM 12 (courtesy the director of the Department of Antiquities, Cyprus).
Mehl 2000, 738; Anastassiades 2007, 16768.

For Palaipaphos, see Mitford 1961a; Maier and Wartburg
1985, 159. For Kourion, see Soren 1986, 399; 1987, 39. For
Amathus, see Queyrel 1988; Hermary and Schmid 1996, 120

22; 1998, 64; Fourrier and Hermary 2006.
28
Beer 1992; Fischer 2001; cf. Smith 1997.
26
27
40
GIORGOS PAPANTONIOU
[AJA 117
Cypriot dignitaries, or even of probable royal types,29

comes from extra-urban sanctuaries, especially those
located in the Mesaoria Plain (fig. 9).30 Those statues,
although they functioned as dedications to the gods,
were primarily used to convey a social message.31
Specific types, such as those wearing Egyptian royal
crowns, diadems, and the like, were almost never exported, probably because they were used exclusively
by a local aristocracy.32 Indeed, the distribution of the
royal image in the sanctuaries seems to have stressed
the claim of domination over the territory.
While previous research has established that urban
sanctuaries became religious communal centers where
social, cultural, and political identities were affirmed,
an indication of the probable use of extra-urban
sacred space in the political setting of the various citykingdoms has only recently been observed.33 The ab-
sence of treaties in textual or epigraphic evidence and

the absence of fortresses in the archaeological landscape
of the era of city-kingdoms make it difficult to define
the kingdoms territories. Natural landscape phenomena, such as lakes, springs, rivers, mountains, paths,
gardens, and mines, may correspond to both practical
utilities and cosmic meanings,34 and they could have
functioned as frontiers. Nevertheless, in the case of Cyprus they did not necessarily define political space; they
only created regional units, which may have helped the
organization of political space.35 This is definitely more
evident in the Mesaoria Plain, where natural features,
with the exception of the Yialia and Pedieos Rivers,
are limited, and where several city-kingdoms would
have periodically claimed territories.36 Additionally,
the works of Iacovou and Satraki have clearly demonstrated that copper mines and hydrological zones are
particularly important in the creation of self-contained
physical regions;37 from physical regions one can move
to political regions and consequently to the territorial
construction of the Cypriot city-kingdoms.
Fourriers contribution to the discussion of CyproArchaic territories is noteworthy. Her work on the
subject was influenced by de Polignacs model, according to which the act of founding Greek extra-urban
sanctuaries expressed notions and intentions of territorial domination and sovereignty.38 To use the word
boundary in this context is problematic: Fourrier
argues that the term frontier has the connotation
of dynamic control and undefined limits, while the
term boundary has the connotation of stability and
defined limits.39 In this discussion, therefore, I prefer
to use frontier or liminal zones when referring to
sanctuaries and their relation to territorial competition. By using a variety of literary and archaeological
evidence, Fourrier explores religious and cultural
spheres of influence.40 The Cypro-Archaic period was
decisive for the consolidation of the power of the citykingdoms and for the construction of their territories.
It was during this period that the proliferation of the
extra-urban sanctuaries, especially in the Mesaoria
Plain, took place (see fig. 5).41 Even though many
survey projects demonstrate that this phenomenon
could have been a result of demographic expansion,
29
Hermary 1989a, 262; 1989b; 2005, 113; Maier 1989; Mylonas 1998, 125, 128, 145. For a general discussion of the issue,
see Satraki 2004; 2008; 2012, 36073.
30
Fourrier 2002, 141.
31
Srensen 1994, 79.
32
Senff 2005, 103.
33
Collombier 1991, 39; 2003, 144; Masson and Hermary
1992, 26 (referring to a later period); Hermary 1996a, 42;
1998, 266; Fourrier 1999, 2000, 2002, 2006, 2007; Counts
2004, 175; Nys and Recke 2004, 213; Papantoniou 2008;
2011a; 2012, esp. 73162.

34
Crumley 1999, 271.
35
Collombier 1991, 25.
36
Counts 2004, 17475 n. 3.
37
Iacovou 2007a; 2007b, 18; 2008a; 2008b; 2012; Satraki
2012, 33540.
38
de Polignac 1984.
39
Fourrier 2002, 136.
40
Fourrier 2007, 113, fig. 9.
41
Cf. Papantoniou 2012a, 316, fig. 1.
Fig. 8. The sanctuaries at Kition-Kathari (courtesy the director

of the Department of Antiquities, Cyprus).
2013]
41
Fourrier states that this argument is not sufficient.42

At least some of these sanctuaries should be regarded
as part of a system characterized by political competition and the legitimation of power. The distribution
of these sanctuaries across the landscape could, therefore, serve as a map of a sociopolitical system that provided a mechanism for the centralized city-kingdom
authorities to organize and control their peripheries.
discontinuity of cult practice: two case

studies
According to Ulbrichs catalogue, 41 sites do not
supply any evidence beyond the Cypro-Classical period; in many cases, this discontinuity can be dated to
even before the end of the Cypro-Classical period.43
The abandonment of many of these sites should be
attributed primarily to the political acts of the citykingdom basileis and secondarily to consequent Hellenistic social developments and memory trends.
The Mesaoria Plain, marked by liminal zones between the city-kingdoms of Salamis, Kition, Idalion, and
Tamassos in the Early Cypro-Classical period,44 is the
most illustrative case study. Salamis and Kition, the two
most powerful harbor city-kingdoms of east Cyprus during the Cypro-Classical period, would have constantly
vied for control of the agricultural production of the
Mesaoria Plain and the metalliferous foothills and forests of the Troodos Mountains. The density of sanctuary
sites in this area (see figs. 1, 2) should be related to the
various city-kingdoms claims for control in this area.
Iacovous attempt to reconstruct the political map of
the island in the age of the city-kingdoms has made it
clear that their number (and consequently their territorial formation) would have fluctuated but was always
diminishing because polities were fighting over one
anothers territories.45 Epigraphic evidence confirms
that Idalion and Tamassos, by the fifth and fourth
centuries B.C.E., respectively, had already lost their
autonomy to Kition.46 According to Iacovou, Tamassos may have been the chorion lost to Salamis after the
defeat of Evagoras and the triumph of Milkyaton and,
thus, may have been the place that Pnytagoras of Salamis wanted back, because of his appeal to Alexander.47
Hence, the discontinuity of some extra-urban sanctuaries associated with territorial claims could have
been connected to the political acts of the basileis of Salamis and Kition and the alteration of political frontier
zones. Extra-urban sanctuary sites (known mainly from

survey but also from excavation) lying on the routes to
(or within) the Mesaoria Plain and on the foothills of
the Troodos Mountainssuch as Philani-Petaloudes,
Kalo ChorioZithkionas, Meniko-Litharkes, MelouseiaLimni, Idalion-Petrera, and Lympia-Mavrogia/Athiakonas,48 just to mention a fewcan hardly provide
evidence dating after the Cypro-Classical period (fig.
10). The same seems to apply to some cult places (of
Fourrier 2002, 137.

Papantoniou 2012b, appx. 1, table 5.
44
For the problematic evidence concerning the political
status of Kition and its relation to Idalion before the fifth century B.C.E., see Iacovou 2008a, 26263; (forthcoming).
45
Iacovou 2002, 2004b; (forthcoming).
46
Iacovou 2002, 778; Yon 2004, 1819.
Iacovou 2002, 79.

Philani-Petaloudes: Ulbrich 2008, 476, cat. no. TA 5. Kalo
ChorioZithkionas: Ulbrich 2008, 476, cat. no. TA 6. MenikoLitharkes: Ulbrich 2008, 477, cat. no. TA 7. Melouseia-Limni:
Ulbrich 2008, 302, cat. no. GO 5. Idalion-Petrera: Ulbrich
2008, 343, cat. no. ID 9. Lympia-Mavrogia/Athiakonas: Ulbrich 2008, 329, cat. no. ID 18.
42
43
Fig. 9. Cypro-Archaic limestone sculpture of a

priest with a dove, from a temple at Golgoi.
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cesnola
Collection, acc. no. 74.51.2466 ( Metropolitan
Museum of Art).
47
48
42
GIORGOS PAPANTONIOU
[AJA 117
Fig. 10. Regional map of the Mesaoria Plain and the eastern Troodos Mountains (drawing by V. Trigkas).
undefinable number)49 in the region of Achna,50 an

area clearly lying in a frontier zone between Salamis
and Kition.51 The interpretation put forward here is
further justified by the fact that 24 sanctuary sites were
abandoned even earlier,52 during the Cypro-Archaic
period, when inland polities such as Chytroi and Ledra
mentioned only once in Assyrian royal inscriptions
may have lost their status as city-kingdoms and consolidated into stronger territorial units.53
During the second half of the fifth century B.C.E.,
as well as throughout the fourth century B.C.E., important changes apparently took place on the political map of Cyprus. A case study of Kourion could shed
some light on the issue, reinforcing the interpretation
of the direct relationship between the setting of some
extra-urban sanctuaries and territorial claims. In spite
of problems dating Cypriot sculpture (and although
the surviving material is badly damaged), Hermary
proposes that dedications of male statues of dignitaries
and of probable royal types ceased in the fifth century
B.C.E. at what was probably the main sanctuary of the
city, the Sanctuary of Apollo Hylates.54 The absence of
Cf. Fourrier 2007, 30.

Ulbrich 2008, 44751 (cat. nos. SA-Achna 18).
51
Fourrier 2007, 30, 114.
52
53
Iacovou 2002, 81.
any royal epigraphic testimonies from Kourion dating

after the early fifth century B.C.E. and its absence from
the fourth-century B.C.E. literary sources could be related to the fact that it lost its independent status as a
city-kingdom at some point during that century; nonetheless, scholars do not know exactly when Kourion
was abolished or by whom its territory was absorbed.55
Coinage of fifth-century B.C.E. Kourion has only recently begun to be identified.56 As Iacovou argues, if
numismatic research identifies the latest coins issued
by Kourions royal mint, scholars will have valuable
evidence for its abolition.57
The geographic patterning of the sanctuaries surrounding Kourion further suggests that during the
Cypro-Classical period it was absorbed by another citykingdom. Even if one should be skeptical about the
sacred character and linear chronologies attributed to
many sites, most of the extra-urban sites that Ulbrich
assigns to the vicinity of Kourion (i.e., Alassa, Hagios
Therapon, Anogyra) based on their distance from the
core of the kingdom can hardly provide evidence of
religious activity within the Cypro-Classical period.58
Hermary 1996b, 14045.

Iacovou 2002, 78.
56
Kagan 1999.
57
Iacovou 2002, 78.
58
Ulbrich 2008, 36869 (cat. nos. KOU 5, 6, 9), 487, pl. 44.
49
54
50
55
2013]
The attribution of the Hagios Therapon and Anogyra

sanctuaries to the territory of Kourion finds support in
the regional map of Kourion that Fourrier produced
from her stylistic analysis of terracotta sculptures and
figurines.59 How exactly the abandonment of these
extra-urban sanctuaries might relate to the abolition
of the city-kingdom cannot yet be inferred but might
indicate their direct relationship with the politys territorial claims and economic patterns.
hellenistic urbanization and settlement

archaeology
The transformation of political topographies in
Hellenistic Cyprus, as elsewhere,60 brought a marked
urban and extra-urban change. There is evidence for
the creation of new cities during the Hellenistic period
on Cyprus, such as the foundation of three Arsinos.61
Marquaille has discussed the role of the Arsino city
foundations and the politico-religious use of the name
of Queen Arsino Philadelphus as vehicles for projecting the Ptolemaic imageand for shaping the identity
of Ptolemaic maritime power.62 Equally important is the
growth or regrowth of previous urban or urbanized
centers, such as Golgoi,63 Ledra (which was probably
renamed Leukoton in the Hellenistic period),64 and
Nea Paphos.65 It seems that through the years, however, other inland city-kingdom centers, such as Idalion,
changed status from cities to small towns or even villages.66 As discussed below, during the second and first
centuries B.C.E. the Ptolemaic administration must
have had an interest in more effectively asserting its
political and economic control over the island, as can
be deduced from the establishment of a more complex
road communication system connecting all the coastal
urban centers and covering almost the entire coast of
the island.67 It is not surprising that the shifting roles
of the Cypriot cities affected sacred landscapes.
In a unified state that offered unlimited access to inland resources, official emphasis was placed primarily
on urbanized and strongly Hellenized coastal cen-
59
Fourrier 2007, 72, fig. 6. According to Fourrier (2007,
117), the material from the region of Alassa falls within the
Amathus style.
60
Alcock 1993, 1994a, 1994b, 2002.
61
Hill 1940, 184; Watkin 1988, 2036; Marquaille 2001,
17677.
62
Marquaille 2001, 168234.
63
Hermary 2004.
64
Pilides 2007.
65
Nicolaou 1966; Mynarczyk 1982; 1990, 241.
66
Mehl 2000, 671.
67
Bekker-Nielsen 2004, 1018, figs. 12, 13; 230.
68
Marquaille 2001, 139.
69
Mitford 1953; Bagnall 1976, 578.
43
ters for political, military, and economic reasons. The

coastal cities, such as Nea Paphos, Arsino, Kourion,
Amathus, Soloi, and Salamis, undoubtedly mirrored
Ptolemaic strategic interests in coastal port bases and
settlements as well as maritime activity and power.68
Although Cyprus was Hellenized enough and ready
to adapt Hellenic forms of administration, it was indeed Ptolemaic rule (and particularly that of the second and first centuries B.C.E.) that established city life
and institutions, such as boule, gymnasia, and theaters,
in accordance with the rest of the Hellenic world.69
The domination of city over chora, however, cannot
securely be attested for Hellenistic Cyprus. Was urbanization a matter of spreading fashion in Hellenistic
Cyprus or of changing social preferences for urban
settlement? For this, we await demographic archaeology, in combination with survey and textual evidence
from Cyprus.70 Although one might expect that a war,
such as the Ptolemaic annexation of Cyprus, would
cause population displacements or extensive migration, only one event of this nature is clearly recorded
in the Cypriot data. Diodorus Siculus (19.79.4) refers
to the depopulation of Marion as the probable result
of gunboat diplomacy, or the symbolic display of
power. Nonetheless, no other textual evidence exists
to support great demographic changes in Cyprus during this period. As discussed below, further movement
could be connected with increased urbanization or the
arrival of newmainly militarysettlers, attested primarily by honorific dedications, honorific inscriptions
and epigrams, and epitaphs.71 Other factors, such as
heavy taxation, could affect settlement preferences;
nonetheless, the extant textual evidence does not show
a heavy level of taxation on the island.
A full analysis of these complex issues is beyond
the scope of this discussion, but it is possible to make
some observations. The Cyprus Survey Branch inventory and the various published surveys of areas such
as the Vasilikos Valley,72 the Yialia Valley,73 Paphos,74
Phlamoudhi,75 and Akamas76 reveal a full Hellenistic
Sbonias 1999, 12.

For a collection of such evidence, see Nicolaou 1986,
43133; Mynarczyk 1990, 15356; Hirschfeld 1996, 200, 346.
72
Todd 2004, 182.
73
Catling 1982, 233.
74
Rupp 1981, 258; Rupp et al. 1984, 14853; Srensen
1993, 189, 193; Lund and Srensen 1996, 145, fig. 4.
75
Symeonoglou 1972. An example of how problematic
the early survey system was on Cyprus is exemplified in the
debate between Catling and Symeonoglou on the character
and chronology of some sites from Phlamoudi (Catling 1973,
1976; Symeonoglou 1975).
76
Bekker-Nielsen et al. 1995, 22.
70
71
44
GIORGOS PAPANTONIOU
extra-urban settlement landscape. In most cases, a

continuation of settlement patterns outside the main
coastal urban sites can be observed. Additionally, in
some cases the survey projects have clearly shown that
the number of settlements was considerably higher in
the Hellenistic period than in the Cypro-Classical period. Such growth and prosperity, however, is not apparent everywhere. The Sydney Cyprus Survey Project,
an intensive archaeological survey in the metalliferous
north-central foothills of the Troodos Mountains, illustrates a different picture.77 Based on ceramic evidence, the surveyors suggest that many Cypro-Classical
sites were abandoned during the Hellenistic period.
It can therefore be concluded that the settlement
patterns of the transition are not entirely consistent.
Settlement preferences are linked to political considerations, to socioeconomic relations, and to agricultural
strategies and how those strategies are constrained by
such relations; they also express individual decision
making based on the costs and benefits of living in
different locations.78 Considering that various survey
projects can be heterogeneous in terms of duration,
manpower, regional scope, field methods, datacollection procedures, and research goals, secondgeneration analysis79which combines and compares
the evidence from all the surveys within the island or
in other areas in the Mediterraneanis difficult.80
From survey and epigraphic evidence, it seems that no
simple and direct correlation exists between the major
urban sites and their countryside, or between habitation in the countryside and levels of religious activity.
New regional survey projects need to address these issues and to explore pastoral, agricultural, and other
economic activities and how they are related to various political situations and to the siting of sanctuaries.
religion, power, and ideology: social

memories and the construction of
hellenistic identities
Apart from the proposed ruptures, cult activity at
about 74 sanctuary sites continued into the Hellenistic period.81 This continuity supports connecting the
abandonment of Cypro-Classical sites with the political environment of the pre-Hellenistic city-kingdoms.
With the exceptions of the palatial sanctuaries of Amathus, and probably the Kition, Marion, and Tamassos shrines, the continuity of cult activity in the main
Knapp and Given 1996, 334; 2004, 83; Moore 2003, 277.
Alcock et al. 1994, 168.
79
Diacopoulos 2004.
80
Barker and Mattingly 1999, iii; Alcock and Cherry 2004.
81
[AJA 117
sanctuaries located within the immediate environs of

the urban centers has already been discussed. Most of
these sites, however, are extra-urban sanctuaries. How
can this continuity be explained?
Memory is a crucial factor. It is important to see
sacred landscapes not simply as constructs but as
complex and dynamic reactions to Ptolemaic incorporation and to investigate what was remembered, when,
where, and how. The continuity or discontinuity of
extra-urban cult activity should be keyed to multipolar
power relations and memory trends. Local and nonlocal elites could have used sanctuaries to demonstrate
their status. They defined or redefined their relationships with the land to claim political and economic
power or to naturalize and legitimate authority. As
the epigraphic evidence reveals, new social divisions
and affiliations within Cypriot society as a whole, but
also within individual communities, were promoted
through the very agency of cult. However, during
the Hellenistic period, the need for political elites to
define the link between territory and city for reasons
other than administrative or economic ones should
have become less and less pronounced. If extra-urban
sanctuaries played a frontier or liminal role in the
perpetuation of city-kingdom identities, then under
the new unified political organization, they would have
eventually lost their territorial significance.
At this point, it is pertinent to consider evidence
from systematic excavations, despite their rarity. The
material from Maroni-Vournes, for example, suggests
that the site originally served as a frontier sanctuary between Kition and Amathus; however, based on stylistic
analysis, we are not in a position to assign the sanctuary
securely to one or the other territory.82 Ulbrichs detailed study of the material suggests that the sanctuary
was probably dedicated to a divine couple,83 a common
feature among many Iron Age extra-urban sanctuaries.
I have argued elsewhere that, at least in some cases,
this type of dedication may have been related not only
to popular cosmology but also to implemented royal
aspirations and territorial claims.84 The finds from
the Maroni sanctuary date from the Cypro-Archaic to
the Early Hellenistic period, many of them to ca. 200
B.C.E. In other words, the sanctuary continued to function for almost a century after the abolition of the citykingdoms. With the gradual elimination of peoples
allegiance to regional centers of political identity and
77
82
78
192.
83
84
Cf. Fourrier 2007, 60, 11617; Ulbrich 2011, 744; 2012,

Ulbrich 2011, 2012.
Papantoniou (forthcoming).
2013]
the exercise of a more supervised unifying political

agenda (examined below), the memory that allowed
the survival of this sanctuary eventually faded.
The dedication of monumental statues in many
extra-urban sanctuaries by the Cypriot elitestatues
that imitated Ptolemaic prototypes but at the same
time adhered to the long typological and ritual Cypriot traditionsalso reveals continuity in cult activity
and traditions (fig. 11). The insertion of Hellenized
and portrait-like features into statues whose general
format remained strongly Cypriot might suggest a
controversial ideological move: not only the incorporation of Ptolemaic ideas (and ideals) into the Cypriot
mentality but also the accommodation of Ptolemaic
rule to a Cypriot contextthat is, the incorporation
of Cypriot ideas (and ideals) into the Ptolemaic ideology.85 Within the material record, resistance could
be expressed in a covert manner involving the continuation of religious practices or the maintenance of
traditional material culture. Terms such as resistance
accommodation and resistance adaptation have
been widely used in contemporary archaeological literature to indicate that resistance was not an either/
or proposition but rather an ongoing, subtle, and usually muted process.86 In time, many of the elites of the
city-kingdoms would have disappeared or been suppressed. By the first century C.E., when a more unified and centralized politico-religious system seems to
have been well established, the tradition of dedicating
limestone portrait-like sculptures in sanctuaries eventually died out, along with most of the long-standing
extra-urban sanctuaries.
However, sanctuaries, everywhere and in all periods,
go in and out of use for reasons that are not always
related to short-term political or institutional changes.87 Put differently, the formation of Cypriot sacred
landscapes cannot be reduced to a passive reflection
of political and economic events. Beyond their sociopolitical value, extra-urban sanctuaries were appealing to rural communities. This is clearly supported by
dedications of images of deities such as the Master of
the Animals in the Mesaoria Plain, whoamong other
rolesacted as a protector of farmers and shepherds
(fig. 12).88 Minor extra-urban sanctuariesthose with
only a roughly made peribolos and altarwould have
depended on local people or individual proprietors, or
perhaps on smaller extra-urban pastoral and agricul-
Cf. Papantoniou 2012b, 295354.

Orser 2002, 477.
87
Alcock 1993, 200.
88
Counts 2004; 2008, 1823; 2010.
89
It must be noted that (as evident from the distribution of
85
86
45
Fig. 11. Hellenistic limestone sculpture from the Voni sanctuary. Nicosia, Cyprus Museum, inv. no. E 513 (courtesy the
director of the Department of Antiquities, Cyprus).
tural communities. Despite their modest architecture,

they can be identified by the presence of small offerings and terracotta figurines found through rescue
excavation or survey work. The continuity or abandonment of some of these minor sanctuaries in inland agricultural or mountain areas, therefore, could also be
related to the actions of these groups.89 It is possible
that in some places life went on for a few decades with
little or no thought for the new urban fashions or even
for structures of authority. Unfortunately, because of
the search for monumentality in the early years of
Cypriot archaeology, researchers today can rarely trace
the acts and memories of nonelite groups in excavated
and published extra-urban sanctuaries.
sanctuary sites in figs. 14) the presence of sanctuaries in the

upper Troodos Mountains was rather limited. Nonetheless,
the number of sanctuaries in the lower foothills (at least until
the Hellenistic period) was large.
46
GIORGOS PAPANTONIOU
Fig. 12. Limestone thymiaterion with the Master of the Ram,

ca. 500 B.C.E., from a temple at Golgoi(?). Nicosia, Cyprus
Museum, inv. no. 1943/III-32.1 (courtesy the director of the
Department of Antiquities, Cyprus).
Nonetheless, there are a few places (albeit in partial form)90 where we can recover those past memories: excavated sites, such as Hagia Irini91 and probably
Myrtou-Pigadhes92 and Phlamoudhi-Vounari,93 provide
supporting evidence for a remote and modest Hellenistic revival (or revisiting) of some Late Cypriot and earlier Iron Age (Cypro-Geometric, Cypro-Archaic, and
Cypro-Classical) abandoned sanctuary sites. At Hagia
Irini, reuse of the site after the Cypro-Archaic II (ca.
600480 B.C.E) period is attested by sporadic offerings,
including stone sculptures and a badly preserved rectangularprobably unroofedroom with a lime floor
built between the earlier temenos wall and a structure
interpreted as a tree enclosure. In this context, a small
nearby settlement of Hellenistic date is worth noting.94
The phenomenon could be directly associated with the
use of memory in the employment of cultural identity
or resistancethat is, with the actions of groups looking for ways to provide a link with the past in the face
of Ptolemaic sociopolitical change. By dedicating objects at monuments known to be from a past age, the
dedicants tied themselves into the powers of ancestors,
usually claiming continuity and belonging.95
Van Dyke and Alcock 2003a, esp. 3; 2003b.

Gjerstad et al. 1935, 674; Al-Radi 1983, 68; Winbladh
2003, 153.
92
Taylor 1957, 25; Al-Radi 1983, 82.
93
Al-Radi 1983, 212; Horowitz 2008, 835.
[AJA 117
Religion represents a close linkage between local

cult and local identity. Although we cannot speak of
many cultural identities in Iron Age Cyprus, the shift
from many political identities (i.e., city-kingdom identities) to one had consequences, such as the interruption of particular regional cult activities related to royal
ideology. In addition, just as people move in the landscape, creating, modifying, destroying, or abandoning
places or institutions, in the same way, their identities
are defined, redefined, or restricted; this embodiment
could enable us to define how people transformed
their identities through landscapes, adapting to new
socioeconomic relations as well as to new sociopolitical identities, and how landscapes themselves were
transformed. Changes that occurred on different levels
in Hellenistic society influenced the religious sphere,
cult practices, and consequently sacred landscapes.
Although religion is usually regarded as a traditional
element within a society, it is not a passive social infrastructure: religion can reshape itself according to
various political, social, and economic developments.96
The study of the Cypriot goddess illustrates the
transformations that occurred as the island moved
from basileis to strategos and the complexity of that
process. Artistic representations of the goddess show
that she was Hellenized during this time.97 While,
as shown in the Amathusian terracotta repertoire, the
iconography of the goddess in the Hellenistic period
fully conformed to that of the Greek Aphrodite (fig.
13) in many cases, some local variations in style were
preserved. Moving from stylistic to cultic analysis is
simply impossible without considering that some local
particularities in the goddess cult survived well beyond
the end of the Hellenistic period. The most illustrative
example comes from the ancient cult place of Aphrodite in Palaipaphos, which under Ptolemaic rule
was developed into a pan-Cyprian sanctuary. Strong
epigraphic evidence exists for the practice of the Ptolemaic ruler cult.98 The architecture of the sanctuary,
however, remained similar to that of the traditional
Cypriot temenos from the Late Bronze Age to the
end of the Roman period, and the cult statue of the
goddess kept the aniconic shape of a baetyl (fig. 14).
Such continuities should be viewed in relation to
both the local cultural identity and the character of
politico-religious agency and ideology, which through
various accommodations and transformations seem to
Gjerstad et al. 1935, 643; Beer 2009, 37.

Osborne 2004, 7.
96
Insoll 2004.
97
Papantoniou 2011b.
98
Mitford 1961a.
90
94
91
95
2013]
47
Fig. 13. Terracotta figurine of seminaked Aphrodite resting

on a pillar, from Amathus deposit MX 318. Limassol, Limassol District Museum, inv. no. AM 949 (courtesy the director
Fig. 14. The Palaipaphos baetyl. Kouklia, Kouklia District

Museum, inv. no. RRKM 507 (courtesy the director of the
Department of Antiquities, Cyprus).
reproduce established sociocultural norms.99 Nonetheless, as well-documented epigraphic evidence and the
diachronic study of cult activity in excavated sanctuaries (e.g., those of Palaipaphos and Amathus) reveal,
Cypriot cult practice was reorganized during the Hellenistic period, particularly after the end of the third/
beginning of the second century B.C.E. There is clear
epigraphic evidence for the practice of a more unifying
Ptolemaic administration on the island at that time.100
One should also consider the economic implications of changing urban conditions and city life. Like
the study of the road communication system, the detailed study of the economic patterns of the period further enhances the argument that most transformations
in Cypriot landscapes and material culture happened

after the end of the third century B.C.E.that is, after
the Ptolemaic government asserted its interest in total
control of the island.101 A more centralized political
system also naturally implied a more centralized economic system. Changing economic conditions in Cypriot cities during the Hellenistic period should have
also entailed some significant changes in financing
and, as a result, in the sociological structure of their
local cults. During the Cypro-Archaic and CyproClassical periods, for example, each city-kingdom
would have financed some sacrifices and festivals and
the building and upkeep of some sanctuaries. In the
Hellenistic period, financial management eventually
99
Papantoniou 2011b, 44.

Bagnall 1976.
100
101
Borowicz 2009.
48
GIORGOS PAPANTONIOU
shifted from city-state control to more unified and

centralized control.
Setting up new temples and cults and maintaining
sanctuaries can be a very costly undertaking. State revenues, financing for state festivals, and building and
upkeep efforts went toward more prestigious, highstatus sanctuaries or the establishment of new temples
and/or cults, such as the ruler cult and the cults of
Sarapis and Isis (all of which seem to have been merged
with that of the local Aphrodite); this helped create a
more unified national politico-religious identity.102
In the Hellenistic period, with the advent of a new,
unified political system, the balance of power in cult
affairs and the very expression of power was shifting
from the city-states to wealthy citizens who identified
with the ruling classes and wanted recognition for their
contributions. Statue dedications proclaiming the services of those individuals and their families appear either in secular locations, such as the agora, or in more
renowned, high-status, and much-visited sanctuaries,
such as that of Palaipaphos.103
In addition, new, more secularized perceptions and
worldviews, along with new practices and cults offering salvation, protection, and the benefits of healing
(e.g., the cult of Asklepios and Hygieia that is epigraphically attested in Cyprus104 and the cult of Isis),
definitely resulted in the creation of a new world order, where philosophy and religion, the rational and
the mystical were all incorporated in established local
traditions.105 The Hellenistic ruler cult,106 for example,
and its association with other divine cults periodically
transformed life perceptions and worldviews. In the
context of sacred landscapes, therefore, it should be
added that all these issues might indeed be connected
both with the decrease of building activity and with
the ex novo foundation of sanctuaries.
[AJA 117
Ex novo foundation of Hellenistic sanctuaries on

the island was rather limited. It should be associated
either with the creation of new communities and the

foundation of new settlements and cities where there
was a need for sacred space or with the creation of new
sociopolitical forces. Among the settlements in the
various published survey projects and in the Cyprus
Survey Branch inventory, I have located 23 sanctuary
sites that may have been founded ex novo in the Hellenistic period.107 Additionally, one should probably
connect the decrease in sacred building activity with
the lack of a need to define territories or with the
interruption of regional cult practice. As discussed
above, we should consider how the unification of the
political system may have resulted in a more unified
cultic system.
One of the aforementioned sociopolitical forces
was the politico-religious ideology of the Ptolemies.
Archaeological and epigraphic evidence can shed
light on the propagation of the Ptolemaic cult. Epigraphic evidence, for instance, informs us that Onesandros, who held a priesthood in Alexandria and
then moved to Cyprus, founded a Ptolemaeion (a
sanctuary or temple dedicated to the Ptolemies) in
the late second century B.C.E., probably at Nea Paphos.108 A similar situation can be attested for Asklepiades, who was the priest of a sanctuary he founded
himself and probably dedicated to a member of the
Ptolemaic dynasty.109 Finally, epigraphic evidence attests the foundation at Idalion of an Arsinoion, a
sanctuary or temple dedicated to Queen Arsino, in
the mid third century B.C.E.110 It is important to note,
however, that the Arsinoion was not an ex novo sanctuary but rather a new temple dedicated to the queen
within the traditional temenos of Apollo/Reshef or
Adonis.111 Moreover, inscriptions refer to Ptolemies
and other divinities as synnaoi theoi (temple-sharing
gods).112
Epigraphy often records the construction of temples, but their remains seldom survive. Exceptions are
the Temple of Zeus at Salamis, which was built on a
podium at the end of the second century B.C.E.,113
and a probable temple built on the Phanari Hill at
Papantoniou 2008, 42; 2009; 2011b.

Cf. Papantoniou 2011b, 445.
104
Anastassiades 2007, 166. Nicolaou (1977, 530) has interpreted a building lying in front of the Paphos odeum as an
Asklepieion or a bouleuterion. On the problematic nature of
this interpretation, see Mynarczyk 1990, 210. For the cult of
Asklepios and Hygieia in Cyprus, see Bennett (1980, 36567)
and Michaelides (2006, 403), where the possible syncretism
between the pre-Hellenistic cult of Eshmun in Cyprus and
that of Asklepios is also discussed.
105
Martin 1987; Miller-Ammermann 1990, 379; Potter
2003.
106
Chaniotis 2003.

Mitford 1961a, 401; Bagnall 1976, 701; Stieglitz 1997,
304; Anastassiades 20002001, 44; 2003, 118.
109
Mitford 1961a, 40, no. 109; Bagnall 1976, 71; Mynarczyk
1990, 15051; Anastassiades 2003, 118.
110
Nicolaou 1993, 228; Anastassiades 20002001, 47.
111
Senff 1993, 12; Mehl 2000, 743.
112
Anastassiades 20002001, 51.
113
Argout et al. 1975, 13839; Callot 1985. Because of limited archaeological visibility and the pause in legal archaeological field research in Salamis owing to the 1974 Turkish
invasion, we are not in a position to clarify the exact relationship between the Temple of Zeus and the preexisting sanctu-
EX NOVO foundation of sanctuaries and the

exercise of a unifying political agenda
102
103
107
108
2013]
49
Nea Paphos at about the same time.114 Similar temples

may have been constructed during the Hellenistic period on the top of Phabrika Hill, Nea Paphos, next to
the theater,115 at the acropolis of Soloi,116 and in the
Sanctuary of Apollo Hylates at Kourion.117 Flourentzos
tentatively dates a recently found temple in the lower
city of Amathus to the Graeco-Roman period.118
Finally, Maier and Karageorghis suggest that the podium of a small building at Nea Paphos may belong
to a temple of the Hellenistic period.119 Nevertheless,
even if we accept that the podium originally belonged
to a temple, there is no evidence for a Hellenistic date.
A marble frieze found in Soloi that depicts an Amazonomachy (fig. 15) might point to the presence of
a Greek-style temple there. The dating of the frieze
to the late fourth century B.C.E. (based on stylistic
criteria)120 contradicts the existing archaeological
evidence for construction of podium temples on Cyprus. Although problems of archaeological visibility
should be considered, one can hardly deny that, even
amid the strong Hellenizing policy of various CyproClassical basileis and the introduction of Greek theonyms (e.g., Aphrodite, Apollo, Athena, Hera), nothing
like a traditional Greek temple appeared on Cyprus
before the Hellenistic period, and it would seem that
even then, its incidence was low,121 quite late, and restricted to the coastal urban centers.
The exercise of ideological authority in the landscape can usually be conceptualized by considering
the elites interest in constructing monuments, particularly monumental architecture.122 Next to the official Ptolemaic attention toward the maintenance
of old, traditional urban sanctuaries,123 Greek-style

temple architecture was added to the Cypriot sacred
landscapes quite late in the Hellenistic periodnot
in the extra-urban environment of Cyprus but in the
direct environs of the major urban centers where Ptolemaic power and cult would have been practiced more
markedly. In contrast, during the Early Hellenistic period, sanctuaries built ex novo with strong allusions to
Ptolemaic cult (e.g., the sanctuary at Soloi-Cholades)
followed the traditional Cypriot architecture of the
Iron Age Cypriot temenos and probably drew on the
existing religious sentiment and cult.124 The only ex
novo sanctuaries that have been properly excavated
namely, the sanctuary sites at Soloi-Cholades, Kafizin,
and Yeronisosreveal direct or indirect evidence
about Ptolemaic cult or ideology.125
The case of Kafizin suggests not only the role various associations played in the management of cult
and their connection with Ptolemaic ideology but also
the possible incorporation of local elites in Ptolemaic
administration during the early phases of Ptolemaic
rule.126 Epigraphic evidence dating after the end of the
third century B.C.E. seems to shed more light on the
character of Ptolemaic state ideology in Cyprus. State
ideology appears to be closely connected with ritual
events supported by state institutions and groups, such
as the gymnasia and theaters, the Basilistae, and the
various thiasoi and koina.127 The most important bearer of a unifying ideology, however, would have been
the Koinon Kyprion (Union of Cypriots).128 A similar
religious function would have been exercised by the
Koinon ton peri ton Dionyson Techniton (Guild of the
ary in the nearby Campanopetra area. It is possible that, as in

the case of the Sanctuary of Apollo Hylates at Kourion, the
Salaminian Hellenistic temple was built in an existing Iron
Age sanctuary.
114
Mynarczyk 1990, 2023; 1996, 196; Vrs 2006.
115
Mynarczyk 1985; 1990, 21822; Wright 1992b, 263, fig.
123. It is possible that a sacred area existed in Phabrika in the
Cypro-Classical period (Mynarczyk 1990, 219).
116
Gjerstad et al. 1937, 41213, figs. 217, 218; cf. Mynarczyk
1996, 196.
117
For the debate regarding the dating of the monument,
see Sinos 1990, 13541. Christou (2008, 78) dates the earliest
phase of the temple to the Early Roman period. This temple
was definitely built within an existing Iron Age sanctuary.
118
Flourentzos 2007.
119
Maier and Karageorghis 1984, 231.
120
For the (admittedly speculative) late fourth-century
B.C.E. date, see Vermeule 1976, 47.
121
Wright 1992b, 267. The fourth-century B.C.E. Cyprosyllabic inscription found at Hagia Moni in the region of Paphos (Masson 1983, 14647, no. 90) remains an enigma. It
refers to the erection of new columns in honor of Hera by
the last basileus of Paphos, Nikoles, but unfortunately researchers are not in a position to associate this inscription
with any building in the area. However, it is most likely that

these columns were part of a local tradition (e.g., one related
to so-called proto-Aeolic capitals, which were common in preHellenistic Cyprus).
122
Trigger 1990.
123
E.g., see the epigraphic evidence from Palaipaphos
and Amathus (Mitford 1961a; Hellmann and Hermary 1980,
26872; Hermary and Schmid 1987, 73639; Fourrier and
Hermary 2006, 16364).
124
Papantoniou 2009. However, it is not suggested that evidence for the Ptolemaic cult is absent from other, not clearly
urban sanctuaries, such as the sanctuary at Kafizin or the
sanctuary at Mersinaki, from which comes the only direct reference to the Ptolemies as gods from the area of Soloi (Anastassiades 20002001, 47).
125
For Soloi-Cholades, see Westholm 1936; Papantoniou 2009. For Kafizin, see Mitford 1980; Pilides 2004. For
Yeronisos, see Connelly and Plantzos 2006; Connelly 2007,
2009a, 2009b.
126
Papantoniou 2012b, 1617, 14147.
127
Mitford 1961b, 11920, no. 19; 13436, no. 35; 14142,
no. 39; Mehl 2000, 7067 n. 90; Anastassiades 20002001;
2003, 11618; 2009; Hermary 2004.
128
Mitford 1961a, 37, 39; Mehl 2000, 74243.
50
GIORGOS PAPANTONIOU
[AJA 117
Fig. 15. Amazonomachy on a Hellenistic marble frieze from Soloi. Nicosia, Cyprus Museum, inv. no. E 548 (courtesy the director
Dionysiac Artists), the traveling artists who organized

theatrical performances and enjoyed the protection
of rich patrons and kings.129 The manipulation of the
ceremonial system was clearly an important source of
power. Specialized roles created a politico-religious
space shaped by various power relations. These roles
included that of archiereus (high priest), conferred on
the strategos in the late third/early second century
B.C.E.; specialized priesthoods coming from circles
of the kings friends; and symbolic associations of the
kings with some deities. Such politico-religious roles, as
well as military and religious organizations and other
civic institutions, should be seen as key to the creation
and perpetuation of state ideology.
To understand fully the transition from basileis to
strategos, it is useful to examine the Roman sacred
landscapes (see fig. 4).130 By the Roman period, many
inland Iron Age extra-urban sanctuaries were deserted.
Only a few coastal sanctuaries were remodeled and
enlarged; some, such as the sanctuaries of Apollo at
Kourion (if we accept a late chronology for the building of the temple) and Aphrodite at Amathus, also received monumental podium temples (fig. 16). While
excavation and survey activities confirm that ex novo
foundation of sanctuaries was rare in the Roman period,131 the use of preexisting extra-urban sanctuary sites
was visibly reduced. Only 40 possible sanctuary sites
(including urban and extra-urban sites) preserve evidence of cult activity in the Roman period, and these
sites include important time-honored sanctuaries in
the environs of urban coastal centers, such as the sanctuaries of Apollo Hylates at Kourion, of Aphrodite at
Palaipaphos and Amathus, and of Zeus at Salamis.132
129
Mynarczyk 1990, 140, 217; Anastassiades 20002001,
50; 2009.
130
Cf. Gordon 2012, 47381.
It seems that the Romans invested in rebuilding and

temple constructions, usually at the same primarily
urban sites as their Ptolemaic predecessors.
concluding remarks
In this study, I argue that sanctuaries were instrumental within the power systems on Cyprus. Examination
and analysis of Cypriot sacred landscapes provide information about how various agendas and ideas were
Fig. 16. Reconstruction of the Roman temple at the Sanctuary of Apollo Hylates at Kourion (courtesy the director
131
132
Given and Knapp (2003, 313) also confirm this.

Papantoniou 2012b, appx 1, table 4.
2013]
communicated and transmitted. The understanding

of this parameter of sacred landscapes implies the understanding of their complexity and allows multiplicity
and diversity in their interpretation. A multidisciplinary
and interdisciplinary research agenda, therefore, is our
only investigative way forward when we want to read
social power and change in landscapes.
Based on the existing research, it is difficult to discuss further any patterns in the associations between
Iron Age sanctuaries and cities, settlements, and
routes. Diachronic changes in the number and extent of the city-kingdoms make the process of identifying Cypriot Iron Age political territories even more
problematic. As clearly shown in the distribution of
sanctuaries in figures 1 and 2, however, the Cypriot extraurban shrines effectively, and perhaps metaphorically,
created a ring (or a zone) of sites demarcating the various polities.133 Some of these extra-urban sanctuaries
could be directly linked with the political power, sovereignty, and domination of the basileis. Whether they
intentionally marked boundaries remains hypothetical and problematic. Nonetheless, lying within extraurban settlements, along long-distance communication routes, or along frontier zones, they were linked
to evolving sociopolitical and socioeconomic dynamics, creating liminal zones among the various citykingdoms. As with projects undertaken elsewhere in
the Mediterranean,134 a GIS analysis of the distribution
of city-kingdom sanctuaries, both across the island and
on a regional level, might reveal their relationship with
diachronic roads, with sociopolitical boundaries and
networks, and with communication and trade routes
between different city-kingdoms or between cities,
second-rank towns, and rural settlements.135
The eventual neglect of the extra-urban sacred
space by the official Hellenistic administration on the
island may signal a fundamental (though slow and usually nonviolent) transformation in the social perception of the land. Were these sanctuaries losing their
territorial significance after the abolition of the citykingdoms? Apparently, most Hellenistic extra-urban
sanctuaries were dead by the Roman period (see
figs. 3, 4). When the social memory, elite or nonelite,
that kept them alive died, they died with it.136 As
Alcock observes in the Hellenistic and Roman sacred
landscapes of Greece,137 and as the Cypriot evidence
confirms, what usually distinguishes the surviving sites
Cf. Malkin 1996, 801.

E.g., Farinetti 2009, 25657.
135
I plan to undertake such an analysis in the future.
136
Alcock 1994b, 255.
137
Alcock 1994b, 259.
51
is what the defunct sites lack: political scale and significance. The location of Roman sanctuary sites reveals
that this is not to say that extra-urban sanctuaries did
not exist anymore.
The transition from basileis to strategos is marked by
the transition from full to half full and later half
empty sacred landscapes (see fig. 5).138 I have argued
that the only way to interpret the transition of these
landscapes is not by remaining narrowly fixed on the
froth on the crest of the waves139 of the end of the
fourth/beginning of the third century B.C.E. but by
placing them within their own individual macrohistory. This article suggests that during the first decades
of Ptolemaic rule on the island, Cypriot sacred landscapes functioned under the sign of continuity. While
this continuity may have related to various settlement
and memory trends, at the same time it may have related to Ptolemaic ideological, political, economic,
and administrative agendas. This is in conjunction
with other geographic contexts, where the main socioeconomic and administrative structures functioned
with few interruptions in the first years of the transition from the Classical to the Hellenistic period.
Mehl makes a clear case that the political changes
during the period of Ptolemaic rule in Cyprus were
more extensive than we previously knew or supposed.140
Only new documentary evidence is likely to allow us
to speak with confidence about the strategia as it existed before the end of the third century B.C.E. and,
more specifically, before 217 B.C.E. After this period,
the Ptolemaic government was interested in asserting
its control over the island more effectively, as can be
deduced from the epigraphic record related to various administrative functions, economic patterns, and
ideological mechanisms (e.g., the role of the strategosarchiereus, the presence of various associations and Ptolemaic attendants on the island, the building of public
amenities and roads, and the transfer of the capital to
Nea Paphos). The contrast between the epigraphic
uniformity in the second century B.C.E. and the lack
of uniformity in the third century B.C.E., according to
Bagnall,141 suggests the systemization of Ptolemaic administration on the island and fits well with historical
events that restrained the power of the Ptolemies in
the Aegean and the broader Mediterranean.
The study of the sacred landscapes of the transition
from the Cypriot basileis to the Ptolemaic strategos
This language is used by Alcock (e.g., 1994b, 26061).

Cf. Braudel 19721973.
140
Mehl 2000, 659; cf. K een 2012, 186234, esp. 20413.
141
Bagnall 1976, 244.
133
138
134
139
52
GIORGOS PAPANTONIOU
complements the study of the political history of the

island and reveals the development and interaction of
insular and imperial identities in a local context. The
number of sanctuaries surviving into or built during
the Roman period suggests that extra-urban sanctuaries, within the new unified political organization,
eventually lost one of their most important connotations: their territorial implication. Over time, they
became insignificant within the wider community,
given that they were primarily the concern of rural
(not necessarily nonelite) audiences. The annexation
and provincialization of Cyprus, with all the consequent developments, were accompanied by transformations not only in settlement patterns but also in
patterns of memory. The new administration placed
less focus on regional or local structures and more
intense emphasis on stressing an ideology that created a more widely recognizable pan-Cypriot myth
history, which was eventually related to the Ptolemaic
cult and ideology.
department of classics
school of histories and humanities
trinity college dublin
dublin 2
ireland
papantog@tcd.ie
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Smith, J.S. 1997. Preliminary Comments on a Rural
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Smith, J.S., M.G. Weir, and N. Serwint. 2012. The Sanctuaries of Marion. In City of Gold: The Archaeology of Polis
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Nicosia: Department of Antiquities, Cyprus.
ARTICLE
Cultural Regionalism and Divergent Social

Trajectories in Early Bronze Age Cyprus
JENNIFER M. WEBB AND DAVID FRANKEL
Regionalism has long been seen as a defining characteristic of Bronze Age Cyprus, and there have been
numerous attempts to explore and explain this phenomenon.1 In Cyprus, the term has been broadly understood to refer primarily to geographically distinct
differences in material culture. Major topographic
divisions often provide a natural explanatory framework for such culture areas. This focus on internally
homogenous units of material culture has frequently
been viewed as an end in itself, leaving associated differences in behavior and longer-term historical and
social trajectories unexplored. Additionally, studies
of regionalism in Cyprus have been criticized for fail-
ing to distinguish between differences arising from

localized factors and those resulting from higher-level
social-political or geographic separation. 2 In this
article, we combine these two scales of analysis and
widen the debate by shifting the focus to historically
contingent as well as geographic, environmental, and
other factors. Our principal objective is to identify the
behavioral correlates of differences in material culture
to explain the significant distinctions in sociopolitical
trajectories that developed across the island during the
Early Bronze Age (ca. 2450/24002000/1950 B.C.E.).
Regional archaeology requires the researcher to
identify how and why analytical boundaries are determined.3 Here, we take as a starting point geographic
patterning in material culture rather than topographic
boundaries, explicitly equating the spatially contiguous distribution of distinctive artifacts (primarily ceramics) and other features with sociocultural groups.
In doing so, we do not assume that the Early Bronze
Age Cypriots had similar criteria for defining their
social landscapes or allegiances. We do, however, contend that archaeological regions, defined through the
clustering of material culture, are meaningful units of
analysis and offer a valid starting point for investigating varied attitudes and behavior. Equally important is
the recognition that human interactions are shaped as
much by how physical landscapes are perceived as by
objective assessments of exploitable resources and
that past experience and decisions, values, and attitudes all play an important role in determining social
responses to both stable and changing environments.4
Our focus is on the second half of the third millennium B.C.E., during which time there was significant
chronological variation in ceramics. Stewart developed
* Our research in Cyprus was made possible by an Australian Research Council Discovery Project Grant and facilitated
by staff and students from La Trobe University. Our work at
Psematismenos, which provides an important basis for this
paper, was undertaken in collaboration with Giorgos Georgiou of the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus. Figures are
our own unless otherwise noted.
1
E.g., Merrillees 1971, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1991; MacLaurin
1980, 1985; Bolger 1989; Herscher 1991; Georgiou 2007, 37
44; Hein 2009.
2
Manning 2001, 80.
3
Kantner 2008, 42.
4
Knapp and Ashmore 1999; Ashmore 2002; Bender 2002;
Philip 2003, 110; Kantner 2008, 569.
Abstract
The homogeneous material culture that is characteristic of the earliest phase of the Cypriot Bronze Age
(the Philia phase) broke down ca. 23002250 B.C.E.
This change was prompted by the collapse of the eastern
Mediterranean systems of interaction that provided the
framework for the distribution of copper from Cyprus and
in turn underpinned internal social and economic networks. Different responses to this event can be discerned
across the island in the following Early Cypriot III period.
On the north coast, elaborate pottery production and
complex funerary practices suggest a more or less direct
evolution from an earlier system founded on economic
centrality to one in which status and authority were structured in different, ritually more complex ways. In contrast,
the south coast and central lowlands took a different path.
Here, ceramics and mortuary facilities characterized by
informality and conformity suggest that social equivalence
and inclusion were more important than the assertion of
individual or subgroup status, perhaps signaling a return
to earlier ideological structures.*
introduction
59
60
a fine-scale ceramic chronology for this period more

than 50 years ago, largely based on whole vessels from
tombs on the north coast.5 More recent stratigraphic
evidence from elsewhere on the island has confirmed
the general sequence, which is most often referred
to by the well-established schema of Philia Early Cypriot (the term used for the initial phase of the Early
Bronze Age in Cyprus), Early Cypriot (EC) I, EC II,
and EC III. As Stewarts finer distinctions cannot be
recognized in all areas, these are best grouped into
three broader periods, Philia Early Cypriot, EC III,
and EC III, each lasting approximately 100150 years
(table 1). This article is concerned with the first two
of these chronological entities. The nature of the evidence currently available for both dictates an almost
total dependence on mortuary contexts. While this
is not ideal, it does allow cross-regional comparison
of large assemblages of whole vessels from deliberate
depositional contexts, avoiding some of the issues that
result from artifact fragmentation and the varied discard practices associated with settlements.
from uniformity to regionalism (philia

early cypriot to ec iii)
The initial phase of the Early Bronze Age in Cyprus
is known as the Philia phase, or facies. Once considered to be a regional variation of the normative Early Bronze Age rather than a chronologically distinct
phenomenon,6 the Philia phase is now known to stand
at the beginning of the Bronze Age sequence on the
island.7 It is widely agreed that this system developed
following significant population movement from Anatolia ca. 2450 B.C.E., although the processes involved
and the nature of interaction with indigenous Chalcolithic communities are matters of ongoing debate.8
Copper is likely to have provided the main incentive
for this movement and, in particular, a desire to find
new sources of raw materials to feed into the prestige
goods networks that linked southeastern Anatolia to
the northeast Aegean, the Cyclades, and mainland
Greece in the early to mid third millennium.9 Together with advances in maritime technology, possibly involving the use of sailboats,10 this metals-based
interaction system may have offered sufficient motive
Stewart 1962.
Stewart 1962; Hennessy et al. 1988, 401.
7
The relative chronology of the Philia, EC III, and EC III
periods is confirmed by the stratigraphic sequence at Marki
as presented in Webb and Frankel (1999, 378) and in more
detail in Frankel and Webb 2006.
8
Peltenburg 1991, 2733; 1998, 25658; 2007a; Webb and
Frankel 1999, 2007, 2011; Frankel 2000, 2005; Bolger 2007;
5
6
[AJA 117
Table 1. Early Bronze Age/Early Cypriot Chronological

Terminology.
Period
Approximate Dates (B.C.E.)
Philia Early Cypriot
2450/24002300/2250
EC III
2300/22502150/2100
EC III
2150/21002000/1950
for an expansion into Cyprus and appears to have resulted in the relatively rapid spread of metallurgical
technologies on the island.11
The point of entry and ongoing authority was almost certainly located on the north coast, probably
near the modern village of Vasilia. A settlement established there in the Philia Early Cypriot commanded
an excellent harbor at the western end of the Pendedaktylos range, immediately northeast of the Panagra
pass, which is likely to have served at that time as the
main route between the north and center of the island
(fig. 1). Unfortunately, Vasilia and other sites in the
north coastal plain and the Ovgos Valley to the south
of the Pendedaktylos range have been inaccessible to
archaeologists since the political division of the island
in 1974, and much-needed research in these areas
has not been possible. While the settlement at Vasilia
remains unexplored, the unusual size and structure
of several tombs excavated in 1955, together with the
quantity and nature of associated metal goods and
surface indications of the extent of Philia occupation,
proclaim its exceptional character.12 Lead isotope
analyses of metalwork and the identification of one
or possibly two merchant hoards suggest, further, that
people at Vasilia were involved in the accumulation,
distribution, and recycling of metal, and that Vasilia
was home to traders or merchants whose stock-in-trade
included copper and tin from Anatolia, the Cyclades,
and Cyprus.13 There can be little doubt that prominent individuals here played a key role in promoting
intra-island networks, which facilitated the extraction
and processing of copper from ore-bearing deposits in the Troodos Mountains and ensured a flow of
Knapp 2008, 10330, 35256; Kouka 2009.

9
aholu 2005; Efe 2007; Kouka 2009.
10
11
For a recent survey of the evidence for copper working
on Cyprus prior to the Early Bronze Age, see Peltenburg 2011.
12
Hennessy et al. 1988.
13
Webb et al. 2006.
2013]
CULTURAL REGIONALISM AND SOCIAL TRAJECTORIES IN EARLY BRONZE AGE CYPRUS
61
Fig. 1. Map of Cyprus, showing sites mentioned in the text.
ingots and artifacts to the north coast and onward to

external consumers. These same individuals appear to
have been engaged in wealth accumulation and status
enhancement, producing a funerary record currently
unique to this site.
Understanding of Philia settlement across the rest
of the island has improved greatly as a result of recent
work on the south coast and in the central lowlands,
although there can be no doubt that many deeply buried sites of this period remain unknown.14 Morphou,
Kyra, Philia, and Deneia, all located within several
kilometers of one another along the Ovgos Valley, are
likely to have been key points along a communication
and transportation route linking Vasilia, via the Panagra pass, with the central lowlands (see fig. 1).15 Villages were also established in good agricultural terrain
and near ore bodies in the northern mineral-bearing
foothills of the Troodos range. These included Marki,
which was possibly founded as an offshoot from a larger regional center at Nicosia Ayia Paraskevi. We have
suggested elsewhere that targeted exploitation of the
Limassol Forest ore bodies may be of key importance
in explaining the spread of Philia settlement south
of the Troodos range.16 High-arsenic (up to 7.6%)
copper ores exist in this area and are concentrated
at Pevkos and Laksia tou Mavrou.17 Exploitation of
these formations during the Philia Early Cypriot and
EC III is indicated by both lead isotope analysis and
artifacts with high levels of arsenic (up to 9%).18 Arsenical ores were used by Anatolian metalsmiths as
early as the fifth millennium, and deliberate copperarsenic alloys beginning in the third millennium.19 An
understanding of the technical advantages provided
by even quite low concentrations of arsenic may well
have led prospectors in Cyprus to seek out appropriate naturally occurring ore bodies or arsenic minerals
14
Webb and Frankel 2004, 13536. Most settlements founded in this period continued in use for hundreds of years,
burying the earliest deposits beneath subsequent cultural
accumulation.
15
Georgiou 2007, 21112.
16
Georgiou et al. 2011, 35960.
17
Panayiotou 1980, table 5; Swiny 1982, 71; Zwicker 1986;
Gale et al. 1996, 392, fig. 90; Giardino et al. 2003, 388.
18
Balthazar 1990, 46, 55, tables 24, 39, 71, 101; Giardino et
al. 2003, 38788, table 8.1.1; Webb et al. 2006, 271, tables 2, 5;
Georgiou et al. 2011, table 6.2.
19
Yener 2000; Kassianidou and Knapp 2005, 216.
62
[AJA 117
such as realgar or orpiment.20 The absence of local tin

to use in alloys may have increased the value of higharsenic copper ores.
By ca. 2400 B.C.E., a remarkable uniformity in the
form, decoration, and technology of pottery and a
common set of lower-order valuables, such as annular
pendants and spiral earrings, are visible across much
of the island.21 This implies the widespread establishment of a group identity with strong cultural associations and suggests that mechanisms were in place that
ensured noncompetitive links between dispersed Philia communities. All known sites appear, materially at
least, to have been part of a tightly integrated system
maintained by regular interaction and the distribution of manufactured goods. Recent analyses of pottery clays, for example, show that most Philia pottery
was dispersed from villages in the north part of the
island,22 perhaps in a reciprocal exchange with copperproducing areas. Commensality and particularly communal drinkingpossibly involving newly introduced
alcoholic drinks23are indicated by the predominance
of cutaway-spouted jugs, decorated amphoras, and
small bowls in mortuary contexts.24 Common sets of
vessel types similarly suggest common forms of food
presentation and common etiquette, cuisine, and
traditions. Such integrative strategies appear to have
served as key mechanisms of alliance and solidarity
within these communities, facilitating the procurement and flow of metal and providing access to marriage partners, raw materials, manufactured goods,
and technical and esoteric knowledge.
Between ca. 2300 and 2250 B.C.E., this cohesive
system devolved into culturally discontinuous regional
provinces. This is most readily visible, as described below, in the emergence in EC III of at least two major
ceramic style zonesone characterized by typological and stylistic elaboration, the other by informality,
conformity, and simplicity. Several factors are likely
to have been at play here. Internally, an increase in
population within individual settlements may have reduced the need for constant interactions, allowing the
earlier pattern of multiple small-scale alliances to be
replaced by a reliance on regional centers. Localized
processes of interaction with indigenous (Chalcolithic) neighbors may also have been at work. Externally,
and more importantly, the collapse of the eastern
Mediterranean maritime trading system, which had
facilitated the long-distance distribution of copper,
may have removed much of the economic imperative
for copper production in Cyprus and its associated
lines of communication. Vasilia appears to have lost its
significance as a gateway community and its control of
internal networks. Settlement there ceased or at least
retracted ca. 2300 B.C.E. amidto judge by the presence of metal hoardsconsiderable socioeconomic
insecurity.25 The cessation of this exchange network
would have had an immediate effect on the material
correlates of the earlier system, most obviously in the
development of different pottery styles and techniques
in the areas into which finer Philia pottery previously
had been imported.
This disruption to Cyprus external connections
is likely to have been related to the realignment or
collapse of urban institutions across much of Mesopotamia, the Levant, and Egypt at this time.26 Reorientation, collapse, and decline are also visible in
Anatolia and the Aegean (though not on Crete) at
the end of Early Bronze (EB) II.27 The final date of
the Philia Early Cypriot, most commonly assigned to
ca. 2350 B.C.E.,28 is in urgent need of refinement to
establish more precise links with these wider regional
events, which are generally dated to ca. 2200 B.C.E.
(although Courty has credibly proposed a higher date
of ca. 2350 B.C.E.).29 Calibrated AMS radiometric determinations from the Philia phase at Marki fall in
the range of 24002200 B.C.E., and a date within the
23rd century B.C.E. for the Philia/EC I transition is
certainly feasible.30 In any case, as surrounding economies declined or collapsed, Philia dependence on
contact and trade with larger-scale civilizations on the
adjacent mainland must have been undermined. In addition, the severe drought associated with this episode
of societal collapse caused environmental degradation
across the eastern Mediterranean and beyond,31 and
it also may have had an impact on Cyprus. Elsewhere,
these climatic stresses led to civil disorder, regional
20
On the technical advantages of arsenical bronzes, see
McKerrell and Tylecote 1973; Hosler 1994, 36, 276; Gale et
al. 1996, 374.
21
Bolger 1991, 334; Manning 1993, 94; Manning and
Swiny 1994, 166; Webb and Frankel 1999, 2008; Frankel and
Webb 2004.
22
Dikomitou 2010, 2011.
23
Manning 1993, 45; Peltenburg 1996, 23.
24
Webb and Frankel 2008, 28990, pl. 56b.
25
Webb et al. 2006, 27781; Georgiou 2007, 20610, 443.
26
Weiss et al. 1993; Nzhet Dalfes et al. 1997; Weiss 2000;
Algaze and Pournelle 2003; Staubwasser and Weiss 2006; Marro and Kuzucuolu 2007.
27
Forsn 1992; Manning 1997.
28
See, e.g., Keswani 2004, table 1.1; Steel 2004, table 1.1;
Knapp 2008, table 1.
29
Courty 2001.
30
Frankel and Webb 2006, 35, text table 3.3.
31
Weiss 2000; Arz et al. 2006; Staubwasser and Weiss 2006;
Finn et al. 2011.
2013]
63
Early excavations frequently shape impressions of

places and periods. In Cyprus, this has been the case, in
particular, with the site of Vounous (see fig. 1), which
for 70 years conditioned perceptions of the EC III
period. Located near the modern village of Bellapais
on the central north coast, it became the type-site for
the Early Bronze Age following extensive excavations
at two cemeteries (sites A and B) in the 1930s.33 Ceramic assemblages include utilitarian vessels and an
array of more complex, highly decorated items. Pottery from Vounous and contemporary cemeteries at
nearby Lapithos and Karmi formed the basis for the
complex ceramic typology constructed by Stewart in
the 1950s (noted above).34 The small amount of contemporary pottery from elsewhere on the island known
at the time was seen as a divergence from a mainstream
Early Cypriot culture exemplified by the north coast.
In recent years, more EC III material has become
available from other regions of the island. The settlement at Marki in the central lowlands has provided
a stratified sequence through the whole of the Early
Cypriot period and into the Middle Cypriot period.35
On the south coast, an EC III settlement at Sotira was
excavated in the 1980s, and a small number of EC III
tombs at Pyrgos, Sotira, Episkopi, Avdimou, Kalavasos, Pyla, Arpera, and other locations have been partially or fully published.36 Most recently, a cemetery at
Psematismenos Trelloukkas on the central south coast
produced 659 pottery vessels from 47 tombs dating
to EC III.37 When combined with assemblages from
two earlier rescue-excavated tombs of the same date
at Psematismenos,38 this is by far the largest sample
of complete or near-complete vessels of the EC III

period from anywhere on the island with the exception of Vounous site A, which produced a total of 834
vessels. These two assemblages form large-scale data
sets with which we may characterize and compare
ceramic production on the north and south coasts.
While both belong almost in their entirety to the Red
Polished Ware tradition, they differ in form, surface
treatment, and production technology; each displays
a different aesthetic and apparently fulfills different
requirements with regard to internal diversity and social function. Elsewhere, the early phases of the Early
Bronze Age are still poorly documented. Current excavations in the southwest suggest strong regional differences, particularly in ceramics, in that part of the
island, but material culture sequences there are not
yet well established.39 Other regions, most notably the
Karpas peninsula in the northeast, remain extremely
poorly known.
The new evidence from Marki, Sotira, Psematismenos, and elsewhere has confirmed a major dichotomy
between the material culture of the central north coast
and that of sites on the south coast and in the central
lowlands of the island in EC III. Long recognized in
broad outline, this difference was identified almost two
decades ago by Peltenburg as reflecting antipathetic
socioeconomic and political systems, with hierarchically organized groups mainly confined to the north
while an older system with an egalitarian ideology
maintained a more traditional lifestyle elsewhere.40
Others have viewed this dichotomy as resulting in some
way from the proximity of the north coast to Cilicia and
southwest Anatolia, with geographic distance implying socioeconomic isolation and conservatism rather
than ideological opposition.41 Here, regional variation is largely seen as a matter of opportunity within
an overall scenario of more and less advanced communities.42 The increased quantity and quality of data
now available offer an opportunity to reassess these
varying explanations and explore in greater depth
the emergence and significance of varied levels of social complexity on the island following the demise of
the Philia system. The data also provide an important
new perspective, one that no longer views the material
For a recent review, see Peltenburg 2007b.

Dikaios 1940; Stewart and Stewart 1950; Dunn-Vaturi
2003.
34
Supra n. 5. For the cemeteries at Lapithos and Karmi, see
Gjerstad et al. 1934; Myres 19401945; Herscher 1978; Webb
et al. 2009.
35
Frankel and Webb 1996, 2006.
36
Dikaios 1940, 160; Karageorghis 1958; Duryea 1965;
Vavouranakis and Manginis 1995; Georgiou 2001; Belgior-
no 2002; Swiny et al. 2003; Manginis and Vavouranakis 2004;

Todd 2007. For a recent discussion of these sites and their
chronology, see Georgiou et al. 2011, 29399.
37
Georgiou et al. 2011.
38
Todd 1985; Georgiou 2000.
39
Graham 2006; Crewe et al. 2008; McCarthy et al. 2010.
40
Peltenburg 1996, 27.
41
Herscher and Swiny 2003, 498.
42
Frankel 2009, 19.
conflict, and population disaggregation, although it is

now clear that responses were far from homogeneous
and that their timing and intensity varied considerably across the Near East.32 Such processes cannot at
present be identified in the Cypriot record beyond
the general demise of the Philia Early Cypriot system;
here, the question, however, is not so much why the
Philia system collapsed as why its devolution led to different material and social outcomes in the north and
south/central regions of the island.
evidence for regional diversity in ec iii
32
33
64
culture of the north coast as representative of the

Cypriot Early Bronze Age.
Comparing Material Culture and Behavior: North and
South
Ceramics. Most pottery vessels in use during the
Philia Early Cypriot belong to a soft-fired, handmade,
red monochrome tradition and are made of calcareous clays (fig. 2).43 Those classed as Red Polished
Philia have well-defined shapes and are made of finetextured, well-levigated fabrics with relatively thin
walls, well-smoothed surfaces, and red-brown slips
burnished to a medium or high luster. Decoration
occurs in the form of incision, pattern burnishing,
or differential (black and red) firing. Incised motifs
are relatively simple, restricted in number, and often
limited to specific parts of the vessel.44 The decorated
assemblage is composed mainly of amphoras, cutawaymouthed jugs, small jars, and flasks. Small bowls are
rarely incised but are sometimes pattern burnished.
The transition to EC I is marked by significant
changes in the ceramic record and the emergence
of clear regional differences (see fig. 2). While the
handmade Red Polished Ware tradition continued,
at Marki decorated tableware virtually disappeared
and was replaced by hard-fired plain mottled vessels.45
Similarly, assemblages from EC III tombs across the
south/central region are almost entirely undecorated.46 On the north coast, the situation is radically
different. Here, settlements newly established in EC I
developed a ceramic tradition that was much richer in
its array of forms and in the extent and complexity of
its decoration than either the earlier Philia or the contemporaneous south/central repertoire. Where Philia
ceramic form and decoration signaled affiliation to a
common social norm, these vessels focused attention
on individuals and were distinctive at a regional level.
Red Polished Ware in use on the north coast in
EC III, classified as Red-Polished III, is relatively
soft-fired and made from well-levigated, calcium-rich
sedimentary clays with good-quality lustrous slips.
Small bowls are almost invariably fired black on the
interior and in a band below the rim on the exterior,
while flasks and ear-lug pots are fired black on the
43
For an extended discussion of these and other, minor
Philia fabrics, see Webb and Frankel 1999, 1432; Frankel and
Webb 2006, 90104.
44
Frankel and Webb 2006, 95, table 4.12.
45
Frankel and Webb 2006, 1045, 148.
46
The discussion here refers to the dominant Red Polished
Ware assemblage, identified as Red Polished Mottled III. Incised flasks in Brown Polished and Red Polished III incised
wares, made of quite different clays, were, however, also trad-
[AJA 117
upper body and neck (fig. 3). Incised decoration is

relatively common, and relief decoration appears in
the forms of snakes, knobs, and horizontal lines on
jugs. Vessel forms are diverse and often richly decorated, particularly in the case of conical vessels known
as tulip bowls (fig. 4). These first occurred in EC I
and appear to have served as individualized (possibly
single-draught) drinking cups. In addition, tomb assemblages show high artifact diversity, including some
objects, such as model knives and spindles,47 probably
produced exclusively for burial.
Most remarkable, however, are a series of complex
ritual vessels from Vounous with modeled animals and
other devices (fig. 5).48 Horned quadrupeds, mostly
cattle, appear as whole animals on the rims of large
pedestal bowls (up to 53 cm high) and as isolated
heads, sometimes along with miniature tulip bowls
or disks with incised concentric or rayed circles, on
the rims of deep bowls. Similar rayed circles appear
on pedestal bowls, tulip bowls, and jugs, along with
reversed swastikas, crosses, concentric rectangles,
scrolls, and zigzag, chevron, herringbone, dotted, and
other motifs. Of particular note is the depiction on
two vessels of upright, cloven-hoofed figures, several
of them antlered, others bull-horned, and one either
ram- or mouflon-horned. Whether of supernatural
beings or humans dressed in animal skins, these depictions suggest that funerals at Vounous were ritually
complex events. In both instances, the figures appear
with rayed disks and vertical zigzags, suggesting an
association with sun and rain and, by extension, with
agricultural fertility.
At Marki, Psematismenos, Pyrgos, and other locations in the central lowlands and on the central south
coast, the dominant ceramic signature is very different. Here, most locally produced Red Polished vessels
belong to a medium-textured, hard-fired to very hardfired, gritty fabric with igneous inclusions, identified
as Red Polished Mottled III Ware.49 Slips are only
lightly burnished, and vessel surfaces typically have distinctive patches of dark mottling (fig. 6). Vessel forms
are broadly similar to those on the north coast but
have wide, flat bases and a distinctive array of handle
and lug types (see fig. 2). The morphological range
ed across this region, perhaps specifically for funerary use.

For an extended treatment, see Georgiou et al. 2011, 24554.
47
Karageorghis 1991, 10616; Merrillees 2009.
48
Stewart and Stewart 1950, pls. 7985, 8992, 99. These
vessels are also discussed in Webb and Frankel 2010.
49
For a detailed discussion of this fabric, with particular
reference to the Psematismenos assemblage, see Georgiou et
al. 2011, 28088.
2013]
65
Fig. 2. Red Polished Ware from the Philia Early Cypriot, north coast EC III, and south/central EC III assemblages.
is restricted, with little internal variety. There are few

complex vessels, and no object or vessel types appear
to have been made specifically for burial. Incised decoration is not present on any of the 624 Red Polished
Mottled III vessels found at Psematismenos. Relief
ornament occurs on only 3.2% of the assemblage and
takes the form of unobtrusive knobs and narrow loops;
these features appear almost exclusively on the necks
of jugs (see fig. 6, top right).50
The technical and aesthetic differences between
north coast and south/central assemblages are considerable. Red Polished Ware from the north coast was
routinely burnished to a high luster. The vessels were
symmetrical with even walls and were fired in wellcontrolled conditions with specific techniques used to
produce black interiors and rim bands on certain vessel types. Incised decoration was consistently filled with
a white chalk paste mixed with calcined bone, applied
post-firing,51 and modeled elements were attached by
means of tenons. Although the individual details vary,
the vessels conform to well-defined design structures

and motif systems. The more complex, elaborate forms
are clearly the work of highly competent potters.
Red Polished Mottled III Ware clays are less well
prepared, and vessels of all sizes show rim deviation
on the horizontal plane (i.e., they are lopsided) as
well as body and/or rim irregularity. While the latter
is not necessarily a measurement of aesthetics or even
of technical competence, it implies a different conceptualization of acceptable outcomes and suggests,
along with the rarity of formal decoration and limited
morphology, that the objectives of Red Polished Mottled III Ware potters did not include a high degree
of symmetry, embellishment, or innovation. On the
north coast, on the contrary, status and aesthetic value
appear to have been strongly embedded in material
culture. Here, potters and their products played an important role in the articulation of social categories and,
at the nondiscursive level, of individual actions and
situated social practice.52 At Vounous, in particular,
50
Georgiou et al. 2011, 22122, 234, figs. 3.43, 3.457, 3.53.
The tulip bowl from Psematismenos discussed later in this
article is the only other vessel in the assemblage with relief
decoration.
Barlow 1994.
For a broader discussion of the role of nondiscursive
knowledge in the construction of social identity, see Knappett
2005; Budden and Sofaer 2009.
51
52
66
[AJA 117
Fig. 3. EC III Red Polished Ware from the north coast of Cyprus (courtesy Palgrave Macmillan; by permission of the Ian Potter
Museum of Art, University of Melbourne).
Fig. 4. EC III Red Polished Ware tulip bowls from Vounous and Karmi (after Stewart 1999, figs. 21.5, 22.3, 22.4, 24.4, 25.2,
25.6, 26.3; Webb et al. 2009, fig. 4.15).
skilled potters were essential to the production of a

highly prized form of material culture that played a
prominent role in mortuary ritual and probably also
in other contexts of social interaction.
These distinctions between north and south/central
Red Polished Ware reflect underlying differences in
consumption practices, motor habits, and associations
53
between people and objectsin this case, pots. Given

that most vessels show evidence of prior use and appear to have been removed from household inventories for burial, these behavioral patterns in turn reflect
significantly different daily encounters with the material world.53 Specifically, the exclusive use of small,
flat-based bowls on the south coast and in the central
For a similar argument in relation to changes in domestic material culture at Szzhalombatta, Hungary, see Sofaer 2011.
2013]
Fig. 5. EC III Red Polished Ware ritual vessels from Vounous (courtesy Department of Antiquities, Cyprus).
Fig. 6. EC III Red Polished Mottled Ware from Psematismenos (R. Frank and P. Saad).
67
68
lowlands and round-based or tulip-shaped bowls on

the north coast implies differences in the nature and
use of surfaces within houses, in vessel storage, in
presentation and handling, and possibly also in the
types of food and drink consumed. Similarly, the incidence and complexity of decoration on north coast
vessels, particularly tulip bowls, offer clear potential
for individualized performance, in sharp contrast to
the homogeneity and simplicity of the south/central
assemblage.
Differences in vessel morphology also imply differences in interpersonal behavior in mortuary contexts
at these two sites. The more varied set of vessel forms
and associated performances at Vounous would have
required a more complex understanding of how food
and drink were served and a wider array of social niceties and potential relationships between people and
groups. In addition, the complexity of decorative elements and their likely ritual or cosmological content
allow a greater number of distinctions between functions, actions, and categories of individuals and offer
greater potential to express and distinguish social identities through choice of vessels, foods, and methods
of presentation. Assemblages across Vounous site A
imply widespread structured interactions in the mortuary domain. On the south coast and in the central
lowlands, there is little to suggest that pottery fulfilled
a similar differentiating role in mortuary ceremonial.
Funerary Architecture and Practice. Regional differences
in tomb form and size suggest a similar trajectory toward complexity and elaboration on the north coast
and relative simplicity and uniformity on the south
coast and in the central lowlands. On the north coast,
burial took place exclusively in chamber tombs (fig.
7, bottom). Entrance shafts (dromoi) were square or
oblong, with vertical sides and flattened or concave
floors, often sloped or stepped at the rear. Chambers
were oval, somewhat smaller than the dromoi, and
sealed with large stone slabs and blocking walls.54 The
carved pillars, doorjambs, and other featuresincluding a bas-relief human figurein some dromoi suggest
that these areas were scenes of ongoing activities, with
some perhaps serving as mortuary shrines (fig. 8).55
The north coast mortuary record also shows a marked
preference for multigenerational use over the construction of new tombs or burial grounds.56 This is likely to
E.g., Stewart and Stewart 1950, 47, 51, 62, 82, figs. 7, 12,
24, 40; Herscher 1978, 712; Webb et al. 2009, 205.
55
Webb et al. 2009, 24245, figs. 3.3644, 4.379; Webb and
Frankel 2010.
56
The issue of the use, reuse, and maintenance of tombs on
the north coast is discussed in Webb et al. 2009, 23940; Webb
54
[AJA 117
Fig. 7. Plans of EC III cemeteries, showing differences in

tomb size and form: top, Psematismenos; bottom, Vounous
site A (after Stewart and Stewart 1950, fig. 6).
have promoted the establishment of ancestral identities

and conferred prestige with each new mortuary event.
In contrast, EC III tombs at Sotira, Pyrgos, Psematismenos, Episkopi, Kalavasos, Marki, and elsewhere on the south coast and in the central lowlands
are either relatively simple chamber tombs or pit
graves (see fig. 7, top).57 Dromoi are rarely evident
and Frankel 2010.

57
Duryea 1965; Todd 1985, 2007; Herscher and Swiny
1992; Vavouranakis and Manginis 1995; Frankel and Webb
1996; Georgiou 2000; Belgiorno 2002; Swiny and Herscher
2003; Manginis and Vavouranakis 2004; Georgiou et al. 2011.
2013]
69
Fig. 8. Carved dromos features at Karmi (Webb et al. 2009, figs. 3.20, 3.40).
and appear to have been intended simply to provide

access to burial chambers. Both the chambers and the
dromoi in these areas of the island are smaller than
those at sites on the north coast, and chambers rarely
contain internal features (fig. 9).58
Differences in burial practice also distinguish cemeteries in the north from those in the south. At Vounous,
Karmi, and Lapithos, human remains were routinely
removed from tomb chambers before the chambers
were reused.59 At Psematismenos, most tombs were
single-use facilities dug at the time of death rather
than with a long-term view to accommodating the remains of successive generations. Here, too, and probably elsewhere in the south, miniature chambers were
usually prepared for subadults, although children were
occasionally buried with adults in larger chambers. At
Vounous, subadults represent only 6% of the mortuary population, and tombs were not built specifically
to accommodate them.60 While the funerary treatment
of children is a matter of debate in Cypriot archaeol-
ogy,61 these regional differences are likely to be related

to broader issues of individual status, perhaps contrasting an emphasis on acquired adult rank on the north
coast with social equivalence and inclusion in the south.
The relative incidence of major vessel types also
suggests differences in funerary consumption practices (fig. 10). Small bowls are the most common vessels at both Psematismenos and in north coast tombs,
accounting for 37.4% of the EC III assemblage at
Vounous site A, 49.8% at Karmi, and 47.2% at Psematismenos.62 Flasks, jars, spouted bowls, and cooking pots also occur in similar numbers at all three
sites. Jugs, however, are twice as common at Vounous
site A as they are at Psematismenos and account for a
similarly high proportion (29.8%) of the smaller EC
III assemblage at Karmi. Large- and medium-sized
bowls, conversely, are more than twice as common at
Psematismenos than at Vounous site A. Large bowl
sherds also account for 44% of surface diagnostics at
the looted cemetery at Marki Davari.63
Keswani 2004, 193, table 4.3; Georgiou et al. 2011, fig. 9.6.
See the evidence presented in Webb et al. 2009, 23940;
Webb and Frankel 2010, 194.
60
Keswani 2004, 30, 52. The issue of child burial is a vexed
one. It may be that few subadult remains were recovered because the deposits at Vounous were not sieved or because
infants and children were at least occasionally buried in the
unexcavated settlement.
61
For the most recent discussion, see Moyer 2007, 31920.
62
The data are presented, variously, in Webb and Frankel
2008, pl. 57; Webb et al. 2009, 210, fig. 4.8; Georgiou et al.
2011, figs. 9.11, 9.13.
63
Sneddon 2002, 66, figs. 1.96, 1.98, 1.99.
58
59
70
[AJA 117
Fig. 9. Box-and-whisker plot of tomb chamber areas at Psematismenos, two cemeteries at Karmi, and Vounous site A.
In the north, the emphasis on jugs suggests that

drinking played a prominent role in funerary events,
while at Psematismenos the higher number and greater capacity of large bowls may reflect a greater focus
on the presentation and shared consumption of food.
On the north coast, the social significance of drinking is also indicated by the presence of tulip bowls,
which occur in considerable numbers at Vounous. As
already noted, these show deliberate additive variability in form and decoration, suggesting that explicit attempts were made to mark individual vessels and focus
attention on particular consumers. The evidence for
funerary meals is also strong at Vounous, where tombs
contained quantities of cattle, sheep, and goat bones,
most of them adult.64 In contrast, animal remains from
south coast tombs represent smaller portions from
smaller animals, almost all immature caprines.65
In sum, the mortuary evidence from Vounous suggests the routine investment of surpluses in funerary
feasting and the production of specialized vessels related to the ritual sharing of food and alcohol during
funerary events. Particular architectural concepts and
notions of dedicated ritual space also appear to have
been allied more generally on the north coast with
cemetery locales. On the south coast and in the central
64
Stubbings 1950.
lowlands, EC III communities had far less predilection

for mortuary display, and neither the tombs themselves
nor funerary ceremonial obviously served as major vehicles for differentiating participants, claiming prestige, or negotiating status. These distinctions in levels
of stylistic investment imply significant differences in
the intensity with which burial and the material culture
associated with it were used to contest and transform
social structures in north and south/central Cyprus.
understanding diverging trajectories

Why did such different material and social outcomes
in the north and south/central regions of Cyprus follow the more uniform Philia system? Can we go beyond
mere observation and the deduction of rank and ritual
to examine how and when these social patterns were
expressed? In what follows, a developmental sequence
is proposed for northern and south/central communities. While one among a number of possibilities, it
may stand as a model to be tested by additions to the
archaeological record.
The North Coast
Understanding of Early Cypriot development on the
north coast has been hampered by access problems
65
Croft 2003, 2011.
2013]
71
Fig. 10. Relative incidence of vessel types in tombs at Psematismenos and Vounous site A.
since 1974 and by the difficulties of dating worn Red

Polished Ware surface assemblages. There is no doubt,
however, that the area was densely occupied in EC III.
At some point following the abandonment or retraction of Philia occupation at Vasilia, a new settlement
was established at Vounous. Some 20 km to the east of
Vasilia, Vounous was located away from the coast and
was well placed to control the narrow Agirda pass,
which now replaced the Panagra pass to become the
main route southward to the central lowlands (see fig.
1). The precise nature of this shift in the focus of settlement is unclear and likely to remain so until survey and
excavation are again possible in this part of the island.
A number of sites in the Karmi area on the northern
slopes of the Pendedaktylos range were also founded
in EC I, forming a string of small villages along the
northwestern flank of the Agirda pass.66 The earliest
settlement at Lapithos also began in EC I.67 South of
the Pendedaktylos range, the Philia Early Cypriot villages at Kyra, Philia, and Morphou in the Ovgos Valley
were abandoned. Deneia, however, which lies south

of the Agirda pass on a direct route from Vounous to
Nicosia Ayia Paraskevi and copper production sites in
the Troodos foothills, continued in use.68
The north coastal strip is nowhere wider than 5 km.
Although the associated settlement has not been excavated, there can be little doubt that Vounous was
the paramount center in this region during most of
the later third millennium. The Karmi and Lapithos
villages remained substantially smaller until the ascendancy of Lapithos in EC III.69 While the embellishment of particular tombs at all three localities
may be seen as evidence of the rise of a new category
of politically or socially dominant individuals, Karmi
and Lapithos appear to have been operating at some
social distance from Vounous. Burial chambers at
both sites contained relatively few valuables compared
with Vounous, and the complex ritual vessels found
in more than a third of the tombs at Vounous are
absent.70 The nature and quality of grave goods at
66
On the chronology and relationship of these and other
sites in the vicinity of Karmi to Vounous, see Webb et al. 2009,
2023, 248.
67
Georgiou 2007, 21617, table 10.1.
68
On the role of Deneia through the Early Cypriot period,
see Frankel and Webb 2007, 15759.

69
See Webb et al. (2009, 2023) for an extended discussion.
70
On the occurrence of ceremonial or ritual vessels in the
tombs at Vounous site A, see Keswani 2004, table 4.7a.
72
[AJA 117
Lapithos and Karmi leave no doubt, however, that

these settlements belonged to the same sphere of material culture as Vounous, and all three locales were
probably in regular contact.71
The stylistic boundaries visible between the north
coast and other parts of the island suggest the emergence in EC III of relatively circumscribed networks
of communication, with the sharply defined Pendedaktylos range perhaps dictating routes for the movement of people and goods and limiting north coast
communities to a pattern of eastwest expansion.
Looking beyond these physical and ecological factors, the uniqueness of the north coast may also have
been a deliberate expression of exclusivity related
to the emergence of newor the survival of older
corporate identities, the latter evident in the embellishment and long-term use of tombs and cemeteries
and the elaboration of ceramics. While population
expansion could have been accommodated within the
coastal plain and on adjacent hillslopes, north coast
communities probably could have afforded to operate
within this region. Control of the narrow Agirda pass
is likely to have provided a means of maintaining and
manipulating that exclusivity.
North coast communities were clearly acquiring
metal for their own needs during EC I and II, and
some pottery (and perhaps other goods) was moving
south through the Agirda pass to the central lowlands.
Ceramic imports from the north coast are evident in
deposits of this period at both Marki and Kalopsida.72
Red Polished Mottled III vessels also occasionally
found their way north from the central lowlands to
Vounous and Karmi.73 These cross-regional imports
suggest a degree of interaction between communities on the north coast and those in the center of the
islandperhaps involving a northward trade in ingots and finished artifactsbut little direct contact
between the more distant north and south coasts. Primary connections were now relatively localized, with
boundaries of different kinds emerging or reemerging and promoting new concepts of regional identity
and exclusivity.
Stewart suggested long ago that the authority of
Vounous may have been founded on control of a
highly venerated shrine, possibly that depicted by
the well-known Vounous Model.74 The exclusive role
played by Vounous in the development of a complex

iconography based on horned animals and solar,
lunar, and other symbols in EC I and II is certainly
remarkable. Such an intensification of ritual is often
viewed as a response to stress, with environmental
change reflected in a focus on natural phenomena.75
The likely presence of solar and rain symbols among
the dominant visual references on ceramics at Vounous certainly suggests a concern with rainmaking and
fertility. While this would not have been out of place
in an agricultural community, the escalated appeal to
such cosmological powers may have been a response
to a period of increased aridity visible elsewhere in
the Levant at this time. The last phases of the Early
Bronze Age in the southern Levant, which witnessed
major social collapse and population desegregation,
show a similar amplification in the occurrence of cult
structures and ritual paraphernalia.76 The widespread
evidence for feasting at Vounous, however, implies a
significant accumulation of agricultural surpluses. If
climatic stress was experienced in Cyprus at this time,
it does not appear to have been either sustained or
extreme on the north coast.
At Vounous, the demands of ritual performance appear to have underwritten the production of elaborate
Red Polished III vessels with diverse and esoteric visual symbolism. Such items are likely to have had considerable spiritual power and were clearly produced
by highly skilled potters.77 They may be viewed as the
direct descendants of the fine-quality Philia vessels
that appear to have been largely if not exclusively
produced in the northern part of the island, possibly
by specialist potters, in the preceding period. While
Red Polished III Ware shows innovations in shape
and an expansion in the range of incised and relief
motifs, there are significant continuities in clay type,
manufacturing techniques, and surface treatment, including differential firing. This ongoing or increasing
specialization of craft production coincided with the
growth of ritual activity more generally; the latter is
visible in mortuary ceremonial and the elaboration of
particular tombs. What we may be witnessing, then, in
the transition from Philia to EC I on the north coast is
an evolution in the basis of the social hierarchy from
one founded on economic centrality and the management of integrative cross-island networks (at Vasilia)
Webb et al. 2009, 248.

strm 1966, 11, fig. 5 (bottom row, second from left);
Frankel and Webb 2006, 11012, 119.
73
Webb et al. 2009, 21519, fig. 4.18; Eccleston et al. 2011,
26768; Frankel and Webb 2012, 138586, fig. 7.
74
Stewart 1962, 293. The Vounous Model was initially pub-
lished in Dikaios (1940, 11825, pls. 7, 8) and has been the

subject of a wide variety of interpretations and discussions.
75
Rosen 1995, 1997.
76
Rosen 1997, 345.
77
Spielmann 2002.
71
72
2013]
73
to one that appealed instead to ritual legitimacy and

the elaboration of material culture within a physically
and culturally circumscribed region (at Vounous). As
a result, social relationships continued to be highly
contested in the north, giving rise to sustained individualizing behavior and a distinctive material culture.
The South/Central Region
On the south coast and in the central lowlands,
Philia settlements at Marki, Pyrgos, Episkopi, and
Sotira survived and expanded in EC III, and new sites
were founded at Psematismenos, Avdimou, Kalavasos,
Alaminos, Pyla, Arpera, and elsewhere.78 Some specialization in relation to local resources may be proposed
for these communities, although they were probably
largely self-sufficient. Pyrgos and Kalavasos, like Marki,
probably exploited nearby copper sources. At Sotira,
worked picrolite from the Kouris riverbed was recovered throughout the excavated area, indicating widespread household production of pendants and other
body ornaments in EC III and perhaps earlier.79 Swiny
and Mavromatis have argued for a special-purpose industrial site at Paramali.80 Multiple mortar-like depressions and other cuts in the rock at Erimi and Avdimou
are also noted by Swiny81 and are visible on the hilltop
above the cemetery at Psematismenos and in a workshop complex at ErimiLaonin tou Porakou.82 While
precise evidence for dating these features is lacking,
they suggest a generally high level of industrial activity in the south during the Early Cypriot period.
Metal items are relatively scarce in EC III tombs
across the island, and it seems likely that a reduction
in the intensity of mining and metalworking followed
the loss of an external demand for Cypriot copper at
the end of the Philia phase. This also appears to be indicated in the settlement at Marki, where, of 61 items
recovered, 20 were associated with Philia strata and
only four with EC III deposits.83 Notably, in contrast
to the strongly regional character of the ceramic record, EC I and II metal items from different parts of
the island show few if any typological distinctions (fig.
11).84 This suggests that a limited number of metalartifact production sites existed at this time. These
have not been identified but are likely to have been
located close to the ore sources within settlements that
were also engaged in preliminary processing and the
casting of ingots. The presence of north coast Red
Georgiou 2007, 44546, table 12.1.

Swiny et al. 2003, 237.
80
Swiny and Mavromatis 2000, 43538.
81
Swiny 1981, 64, 69, 72.
82
Bombardieri et al. 2009.
78
79
Fig. 11. Copper spearheads: a, Psematismenos Tomb 81.7;

b, Psematismenos Tomb 118.5; c, Vounous Tomb 112.6;
d, Vounous Tomb 161.46 (after Stewart 1962, figs. 97.5, 97.6).
Polished vessels in EC III deposits at Marki suggests

contact with north coast settlements, perhaps involving a northward trade in ingots or finished artifacts.
The recovery of a blowpipe tip in Tomb 119 at Vounous may indicate that metal was also processed on
the north coast,85 but it shows no sign of exposure to
heat and seems not to have been used. While north
coast communities were consumers of metal items in
EC I and II, their role in manufacture and distribution remains unclear.
EC III communities on the south coast and in the
central lowlands appear to have been subject to significantly lower levels of social pressure than those in
the north. This is not to suggest that status distinctions
did not exist. Indeed, discontinuities are visible across
the cemetery at Psematismenos and take a variety of
forms.86 While tomb size was for the most part related
to the size of the deceasedthe smallest chambers
accommodated subadultsfive of the six largest
tombs (those with floor areas greater than 3 m2) contained larger numbers of vessels (fig. 12). Three also
produced substantial copper objects, including two
spearheads (see fig. 11a, b), and one tomb produced
an exceptional Red Polished Mottled III bowl with
relief decoration (fig. 13). The rarity of metal at Psematismenos and the size and weight of the spearheads
leave little doubt that the presence of these items was
significant, perhaps signaling an engagement in intercommunity networks or in metalworking or hunting

Philip 1991, 902.
85
Stewart and Stewart 1950, 171, no. 1, pl. 22a.
86
For a full discussion, see Georgiou et al. 2011, 34551,
35658, figs. 9.79.
83
84
74
[AJA 117
Fig. 12. Analysis of the tombs at Psematismenos, showing the relationships between chamber area, number
of vessels, and total vessel capacity (in liters). Tomb numbers are indicated in italics.
Fig. 13. Tulip bowl with relief decoration from Psematismenos (photograph by P. Saad; drawing by C. Carigiet).
2013]
activities. In both cases, however, accompanying grave

goods are unremarkable. The bowl was also found
with a standard ceramic assemblage. Apparently inspired by the tulip bowls from Vounous, it suggests
that south coast communities occasionally sought to
emulate aspects of north coast ritual practice. Another of the larger tombs (Tomb 91) had a total assemblage capacity more than twice that of most other
tombs (see fig. 12). A cluster of very large vessels in
this chamber may correspond conceptually with the
choice of small pots for subadult burials in the same
cemetery, perhaps signifying longevity or seniority in
the Psematismenos community.
Individual roles and statuses do, then, appear to
be being signaled at Psematismenos, but no tomb or
tomb cluster shows an accumulation of markers either
within individual grave complements or over time.
While a degree of preferential access to resources and
perhaps to social and ritual knowledge is indicated,
rank distinctions appear to have been defined by a
limited number of material goods and linked to the
lifespan of individuals. This suggests a social system
with relatively narrowly defined status categories and
social identities determined by role, age, gender, and
accomplishments. At Psematismenos and elsewhere in
the center and south, social approval may have been
won through conformity and personal achievement
rather than competition, suggesting the existence of
egalitarian community structures. Alternativelyand
at the very leastavenues to social and ritual authority did not involve the degree of investment in burial
display and material cultural innovation evident on
the north coast.
This relatively steady state scenario on the south
coast and in the central lowlands may be attributed at
least in part to the survival or reemergence, following
the demise of the Philia system, of the communal ethos
that Peltenburg has long advocated for southwestern
communities during the preceding Chalcolithic.87 It
is also likely to be related to physical and social circumstances, resource opportunities, and differences
in long-term responses to both the development and
decline of the Philia phase. Villages established near
copper-ore bodies in the Philia Early Cypriot period
continued to mine and process copper and grew in size.
Casting molds of EC III date from Marki, for example,
leave no doubt that one or more nearby mines were
Peltenburg 1993; 1996, 27.

89
Schwartz and Falconer 1994.
90
Lorentz 2011.
91
Mays 1998, 158.
87
88
75
being worked at this time and that ingots were being

produced for off-site distribution.88 Earlier communication networks probably also continued in use, allowing relatively easy movement of people, goods, and
ideas along the south coastal corridor and northward
to the central plain. This helps explain, in particular,
the extent of the Red Polished Mottled III ceramic
style zone, from Anoyira in the west to Kalopsida in the
east and northward to Marki.
The impressive extent of this south/central ceramic
style zone does not suggest a poorly integrated system or
a patchwork of intraregional differentiation based on
ecological zones similar to that which has been termed
rural complexity in Early Bronze Age Jordan.89 On
the contrary, both the continuity of settlement and the
foundation of a chain of new communities along the
south coast indicate the ongoing importance of the
south coast corridor and suggest a period of relative
stability and population growth. There is some, albeit
limited, evidence, however, to suggest that at least some
communities on the south coast and in the central
lowlands were subject to periods of physical stress. At
Psematismenos, dental enamel hypoplasia is present on
the dentitions of at least 10 of 52 individuals from the
Trelloukkas cemetery; the number of episodes present
on a single tooth ranges from one to three.90 Specific
causes include fever, gut parasites, diarrhea, rickets,
scurvy and other vitamin deficiencies, and general
malnutrition.91 The incidence of enamel hypoplasia
at Psematismenos is significantly higher than that in a
largely Middle Cypriot sample from Kalavasos, where
only two of 78 individuals showed the transverse lesions
associated with this disorder.92 Enamel hypoplasia was
also uncommon in a Middle Cypriot sample of 46 individuals from Deneia93 but present in the dentition of a
subadult burial of EC II date at Marki.94 This suggests
that EC III may have been a period of difficult conditions on the south coast and in the central lowlands,
although the data are at present too limited to make a
strong case. While comparable analyses are not available for north coast populations, communities living
in the relatively well-watered coastal plain are likely to
have been significantly better off.95
conclusion
In sum, it is possible to see the emergence of divergent social trajectories in Early Bronze Age Cyprus
Moyer 2007, 318.

Tucker and Cleggett 2007, 134.
94
Lorentz 2006, 29596.
95
On the environment and natural resources of the central
north coast of Cyprus, see Noller 2008.
92
93
76
[AJA 117
as a complex process of continuity, evolution, and,

perhaps, reversion. Specifically, the devolution of the
Philia system is likely to have been felt most dramatically in the north, where the investment in external
relationships and managerial control was greatest. The
demise of an external demand for Cypriot copper and
possibly the onset of adverse climatic conditions led
to the reconfiguring of cross-island networks and the
development of geographically restricted territories.
Copper mining and processing, always the monopoly
of communities in the area around the Troodos Mountains, significantly decreased in intensity in EC I. We
may envisage changes at the same time in the function and value of metal, with demand now generated
entirely by local ideological and sociopolitical factors.
Interregional connections remained limited until
late EC III or early Middle Cypriot (MC) I, when renewed foreign demand for Cypriot copper led to the
reestablishment of long-distance supply networks and
the founding of new mining villages at Ambelikou, Katydata, and elsewhere, this time probably under the
aegis of Lapithos.96 Located close to a protected bay,
Lapithos, like Vasilia in earlier times, was better placed
than Vounous to take advantage of this resurgence
of seaborne trade. Large-scale local consumption of
metal is indicated in particular at Lapithos, where 74%
of transitional EC III/MC I chambers and 96% of MC
IIII chambers contained metal.97 A sharp increase in
the deposition of metal in burials of similar date is also
visible at Vounous and Karmi.98 When viewed with the
fact that evidence for foreign contact during the early
years of the Middle Bronze Age has so far been found
only on the north coast,99 this leaves little doubt that
both foreign relations and the metal trade were once
again in the hands of north coast entrepreneurs.
The demise of the Philia system involved the structural devolution of long-distance networks rather
than wholesale sociopolitical collapse, decline, and
despecialization.100 As these networks were probably
initiated and maintained largely if not entirely from
the north coast, some reduction or reconfiguring of
social complexity in this region is to be expected, while
a less dramatic return to or continuation of smallerscale segmentary society may be proposed for communities on the south coast and in the central lowlands.
In this way, the discrediting or demise of the social
contract that bound dispersed Philia communities
to the preeminent center at Vasilia may have led to

institutional simplification and a reorientation toward
economic integration at the local and regional levels
and perhaps also involved the reemergence of an older
egalitarian ethos.
Beyond this, the ideological underpinnings of these
divergent trajectories in EC III remain conjectural.
The role of ritual and material culture elaboration in
establishing and legitimizing the new social order at
Vounous is, however, clear. Whether a period of lower
precipitation also contributed to the emergence of
regionalism in late third-millennium Cyprus requires
considerably more attention. While there is, as we
have seen, some evidence for stress in EC III mortuary populations, there is no obvious break in the
settlement record or in subsistence strategies and no
evidence for violent disruption. However, we know
nothing of the specific events that led to the abandonment of the key Philia settlement at Vasilia. Otherwise, population growth is indicated for both the
north coast and south/central zones, and the absence
of enclosure walls suggests that intercommunity relations in both regions were peaceful. It is important to
remember that the impacts of climatic and economic
stress would have been differentially affected by local environmental factors as well as by sociocultural
conditions, resource opportunities, and the political
agendas of leaders.
The scenario proposed here for much of the center and central south coast in EC III should not be
construed as one of stagnation. Stability, conformity
and an absence of innovation may be viewed in an
active sense, as a deliberate maintenance of continuity and reinforcement of group cohesion through
shared production and reproduction.101 This suggests
both the strength of communally held values and the
existence of social controls that effectively restricted
innovation and promoted stability. In the north, the
burial record reflects more self-consciously acquisitive
attitudes toward the accumulation of material culture.
Here, social competition between households or lineages focused on conspicuous consumption and commensality involving both agricultural surpluses and
local craft goods. The material record thus suggests
the reproduction of different values, strategies, and
relationships in different parts of the islandwith
horizontal and intersecting identities negotiated and
96
Merrillees 1984; Knapp 1990, 15960; Knapp and Cherry
1994, 16162; Boutin et al. 2003.
97
Keswani 2004, 689, 20814, tables 4.11b4.12.
98
Keswani 2004, 65, 199204, 20614, tables 4.7b, c, 4.8,
4.9, 4.11ac, 4.12; Webb et al. 2009, table 4.9.
99
Grace 1940, 247, pl. 1A; Catling and MacGillivray 1983;
Webb et al. 2009, 252, fig. 4.45.

100
For a useful discussion of sociopolitical devolution in the
context of EB IV Palestine, see Butzer 1997.
101
See Tomkins (2004, 47) for a similar argument in regard
to Neolithic Greece.
2013]
recognized in communities like that at Psematismenos,

while new and different avenues toward individual and
subgroup status and legitimation were being explored
in the north.
The argument presented here relies heavily on ceramics and funerary data. While daily consumption of
food and drink and heightened mortuary events provide only one avenue for exploring the relationship
between people and objects, they offer repeated focal
points for interaction and play a key role in the transmission, negotiation, and reproduction of behavioral
norms. Viewed as active networks of relevance,102
which both reflect and are defined by the nature and
intensity of small-scale interactions, regional material
cultural entities may be seen as arising from peoples
engagement in common social practices. Thus, boundaries between regions mark those points where particular networks and their material expression cease
to be relevant or meaningful. In Cyprus, the regional
differences that emerge in EC III reflect significantly
different, even oppositional, networks of relevance
and a clear disparity in cross-island pathways toward
social complexity. This is best understood against a
background of changes in external relations, resource
demand, and perhaps environmental conditions.
These provide a framework for understanding the
breakdown of the Philia system and divergent regional
evolutions. Much remains speculative, however, and
the scenario suggested here provides at best a useful
model for future research. There is, too, a great deal
to be learned about other parts of the island, particularly the west and southwest, where evidence is accumulating for yet another spatially discrete ceramic
traditionand thus an even more disparate set of
developments during the Early Bronze Age in Cyprus.
jennifer m. webb
archaeology program
la trobe university
victoria 3086
australia
jenny.webb@latrobe.edu.au
david frankel
archaeology program
la trobe university
victoria 3086
australia
d.frankel@latrobe.edu.au
102
77
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ARTICLE
The Public Life of Monuments:

The Summi Viri of the Forum of Augustus
JOSEPHINE SHAYA
Abstract
tle theoretical work to it.2 But the boom in memory

studies beginning in the late 1970s and the success of
Maya Lins Vietnam Veterans Memorial (dedicated
in 1982) sparked new interest in how monuments
and other practices of commemoration work in society.3 In the years since, scholars have produced wideranging literature on monuments.4 Collective memory
is now widely recognized as being highly selective;
societies construct their pasts with present-day needs
in mind.5 Monuments, like museums, tourist sites,
and community rituals and traditions, play a key role
in these constructions.6
Recognizing that monuments do not simply embody
memory but also mediate it, artists and scholars have
cast an increasingly critical eye on these works of art.
In an age that denies universal narratives of the past
and looks with suspicion on shared national narratives,
critics argue that monuments preserve the past by making particular historical interpretations concrete at the
expense of other stories. These interpretations (along
with their moral values and lessons) are cast into material forms, which, by virtue of their durability, prolong
and preserve them.7 As monuments, they seem fixed
and unchangeable, thereby suggesting that the past
has a set meaning that is complete and closed. Yet,
while monuments propagate the illusion of a single,
eternal, and unchanging past, their meanings evolve
as viewers bring new concerns and understandings to
them. Young observes that public monuments give the
The academic literature on monuments has boomed

in the last 30 years. Together with museums, tourist sites,
and community rituals, monuments play a key role in
the construction of the past. This article examines how
monuments worked in the Roman world. It considers one
monument as a case in pointthe collection of summi
viri that lined the porticoes in the Forum of Augustus
examining it in light of recent scholarship on monuments
and historical commemoration. The story of the summi
viri collection cannot be separated from its public life.
Many have presented the summi viri and indeed the entire
forum as an ideological production. That fits a reading of
the monument itself, but the collection was not a static
record of Romes past. Rather, if we look at its public life,
especially the ways in which it was viewed and reproduced,
we see that its meanings were much more dynamic.*
monuments and memory

A monument may simply be defined as a structure
created to commemorate a person or event, but recent scholarship shows that monuments are anything
but simple. Societies use monuments to reconstruct
the past rather than faithfully record it. Monuments
assign simplified meanings to complicated events,
displacing the very past they would have their viewers
contemplate.1
The academic literature on monuments and commemoration has ballooned in the last 30 years. For
much of the 20th century, scholars considered the
public monument a tired art form and devoted lit-
* I would like to thank Elaine Gazda, Editor-in-Chief

Naomi J. Norman, and the anonymous reviewers for the AJA
for their generous comments and advice. I would also like
to thank Rebecca Benefiel, Scott de Brestian, Jeremy Hartnett, David Potter, and Greg Shaya for their good ideas and
help. A Sunoikisis seminar on Late Republican literature led
by Miriam Carlisle and Denis Feeney at the Center for Hellenic Studies was very useful at the beginning of this project.
I would like to thank the College of Wooster for the research
leave during which I completed this article. Translations are
my own unless otherwise noted.
1
Young 2003, 23738.
2
Mumford 1937, 26465; Janson 1976; Young 1993, 4; 2003,
23537; Sturken and Young 1998; Savage 2006, 4; 2009, 18.
3
Lin 2000; Savage 2006, 4.
4
Countless specialized studies on individual monuments
have appeared in the last two decades. Some synthetic studies of changing patterns of commemoration include Bogart
1989; Bodnar 1991; Young 1993, 1994; Savage 1997; Michalski
1998; Dabakis 1999; Shanken 2002; Savage 2009.
5
Halbwachs 1980; Kammen 1991; Savage 2006, 2.
6
Nora 1989; Kammen 1991.
7
Forty and Kchler 1999, 2.
83
84
JOSEPHINE SHAYA
impression of a shared common identity. By serving

as common spaces for memory, monuments create
the illusion of unified communal beliefs.8 Their power lies, in part, in the combination of their apparent
permanence with their ongoing ability to shape and
direct cultural memory.
The power of monuments also lies in their ability
to displace memories. While monuments seem to preserve the past, they also erase unwanted aspects of it.
Monuments make us forget; taking away the burden
of memory, they reduce and simplify historical understanding.9 Critics further observe that they do so with
the cooperation of their publics.10 Monuments derive
their authority not from their beauty or the goodness
of their memories but from their publics willingness
to make their monuments and the essential illusions
that they express their own.11
Informed by such thinking, recent studies of monuments focus on their public life. Scholars ask, Who
guides the process of monumental remembering? Toward what ends? What specific forms do monuments
take? What stories do they obscure? How do monuments shape social relations and cultural beliefs? What
interpretations and reactions do they spark in their
viewers? How are they appropriated? And why do patterns of commemoration shift over time?12
Such an approach may help us understand the
role of memory in different eras of the Roman empire. It may reveal how and why different forms of
commemoration changed over time. It may illuminate the sorts of exchanges that took place between
the Romans and their monuments.13 The sources for
the history of the public life of monuments in antiquity are much more limited than those for modern
monuments. The application of insights taken from
studies of monuments outside of antiquity runs the
risk of flattening the particularities and complexities
of the Roman cultural use of monuments. However,
Young 2003, 237.

Nora 1989, 13; Young 1993, 5; Forty and Kchler 1999,
45.
10
Young 1993, 6; 2003, 23738.
11
Nelson and Olin 2003; Young 2003, 23738. Fearing
that the desire to memorialize traumatic events springs from
a wish to forget them, contemporary artists such as Jochen
Gerz, Esther Shalev-Gerz, Alfred Hrdlicka, and Norbert
Radermacher have created countermonuments, memorial
spaces designed to undermine the traditional premises of
the monument. Their works critically confront questions
about the relationships between people and their monuments and the larger social effects of these relationships.
They emphasize the changing nature of memory and shift
the responsibility for remembering from the monument to
the individual (Young 1992; 1993, 2748; 2003, 144).
8
9
[AJA 117
there is also much to be gained from this literature,

for it pushes us to see the dynamism of Roman monumentsto see their changing nature and shifting
public perception.
Turning to the Forum of Augustus and in particular to the collection of summi viri as a case study for
the public life of monuments, this article asks a series
of questions: How did the collection of images and
inscriptions shape public memory (and forgetting)?
How did visitors perceive it? How did they appropriate it, and to what historical conclusions, what understanding of the Roman empire, might its viewers
have been moved? To understand the complexity of
the messages conveyed by the summi viri, we need to
understand the way in which the collection was lived
and experienced. To examine its public life is to see
it as a commemoration, a destination, and a set of
images and texts that moved through space and time.
the SUMMI VIRI as a monument

The Forum of Augustus is one of the most familiar
and well-studied sites from the Roman world.14 Scholars have treated it as a work of Augustan ideology, a
reflection of a wider culture of historical memory, an
effort to restore the past, and much more. Drawing on
these rich studies, this article focuses on the collection
of summi virithe statues of Republican heroes that
lined the porticoes of the forumas a monument that
was part of a larger creation. What does it mean to see
the collection as a monument, as a structure created
to commemorate a person or event? First, it helps us
see the degree to which it was a highly constructed
representation of the past and also a public destination. Assigning a unified story to complicated events,
the collection gave a sense of historical continuity, of
an overarching plan, of purpose to the past. It shows
that the Roman art of remembering was also an art
of forgetting.15 Furthermore, seeing the forum as a
Savage 1997.
These are big questions that this article only begins to
address and that others are also examining. Focusing on the
deliberate destruction of monuments, Flower (2006), for instance, has emphasized the importance of a culture of forgetting in Rome. Such destruction was typically carried out at the
hand of the state and its supporters and is best known through
the practice of damnatio memoriae.
14
The bibliography on the Forum of Augustus is vast.
Prominent synthetic discussions include LTUR 2:28995,
s.v. Forum Augustum (Kockel); Zanker 1968, 1988; Anderson 1984, 65100; Nnnerich-Asmus 1994, 5564; Galinsky
1996, 197213; Spannagel 1999; La Rocca 2001, esp. 18495;
Meneghini and Santangeli Valenzani 2007, 4360.
15
I borrow the phrase from Flower 2006.
12
13
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THE SUMMI VIRI OF THE FORUM OF AUGUSTUS
85
monument encourages us to take into account its viewers. Monuments do not stand alone. Rather, they work
in relation to an audience. Whats more, they are often
reproduced and reinterpreted in different settings.
It is worth our time to take a moment to survey the
forum and especially its collection of summi viri. We
know this once-spectacular monument from its scanty
physical remains, the writings of ancient authors, inscriptions, wax tablets, and ancient replicas.
Adjacent to the Forum of Julius Caesar and full of
the hustle and bustle of the courts, the Forum of Augustus stretched out before the Temple of Mars Ultor.
Inaugurated in 2 B.C.E., the forum today is seen as the
great culmination of Augustan art (fig. 1). As many
have shown, its images and inscriptions coalesced into
a powerful visual program. The galleries that held
statues of Romes founders were decorated with images that evoked Athens and Alexander. They framed
the temple on the northeast end and the Quadriga of
Augustus in the center.
Today, much of the monument is lost. The images
of founders, kings, and heroes have for the most part
disappeared, and their honorary inscriptions survive as
fragments. It seems that this once-impressive collection
originally had more than 100 over-life-sized statues
ranging from Aeneas to Drusus, stepson of Augustus.
Each statue base was clearly labeled with a grand title
declaring the name of the man represented and his
brief cursus honorum. Below the base, on a separate
stone, a longer inscription set forth his most notable
accomplishments (fig. 2).16
This once highly organized set of texts and images
includes works from two generations before the founding of Rome to 9 B.C.E. Some sort of chronological
arrangement seems certain (Romans had a penchant
for putting things in chronological order), but the
specific layout is now unclear. The most widely ac-
cepted hypothesis based on literary sources and on

the findspots of the inscriptions is that the ancestors
of the Julian house stood in the western portico, and
the rest of the summi viri stood in the east.17 Recent
excavations point to four (as opposed to two) semicircular exedrae that probably held the collections
highlights in their large, central niches, including an
image of Aeneas fleeing Troy with Anchises and Ascanius and one of Romulus bearing the spolia opima.18
The elogium of Appius Claudius Caecus (dictator in 285 B.C.E.), preserved in fragments from the
Forum of Augustus and in an inscribed copy from
Arretium (see below), offers an example of one of the
inscriptions. It begins with a name and a list of offices:
Appius Claudius Caecus, son of Gaius, censor, twice
consul, dictator, three times interrex, twice praetor,
twice curule aedile, quaestor, three times military
tribune.19 It continues with accomplishments: He
captured many towns from the Samnites [and] he conquered the armies of the Sabines and the Etruscans.
He kept peace from being made with King Pyrrhus.
During his censorship, he paved the Appian Way and
he brought water into the city. He built the temple of
Bellona (fig. 3).20
All the 100-plus inscriptions were grand, their lettering large and meant to be visible. Degrassi published
what remains of them together with handsome photographs and drawings in a volume of Inscriptiones Italiae
(1937).21 He edited the fragments, offered extensive
historical commentary on the traditions surrounding
the summi viri, and collected subsequent ancient copies
of the texts and literary attestations to them.22 Modern
casts of some of the elogia are displayed today in the
vast Museo della Civilt Romana. The casts were previously exhibited in the 1937 Mostra Augustea della
Romanit, an exhibition that made a direct connection between Romes imperial past and its present.23
16
For the fragments of the statues, see Rinaldi Tufi 1981;
Hofter 1988, 194200; La Rocca 1995, 823. A great deal of effort has gone into trying to establish the condition of the collection, the subjects depicted, and the original arrangement
of the statues (e.g., Geiger 2008, 12962).
17
Ov., Fast. 5.56366; SHA, Alex. Sev. 28.6; Suet., Aug. 31.5.
For ingenious attempts at reconstructing the arrangement of
the collection, see Zanker 1968, 16; Spannagel 1999, 26799;
Geiger 2008, 11729.
18
A row of small rectangular niches appeared above the
entablature over the exedrae, which may have held trophies.
For the trophies, see Zanker 1968, 15; Anderson 1984, 75. For
recent excavations under the Via dei Fori Imperiali and the
discovery of the two new, somewhat smaller sets of exedrae,
see La Rocca 2001, 18495.
19
For the fragments from Rome, see CIL 6 40943; II 13(3)
12. For the inscribed copy from Arretium, see II 13(3) 79.
20
Appius Claudius | C. f. Caecus censor | co(n)s(ul) bis,
dict(ator) interrex III | pr(aetor) II aed(ilis) cur(ulis) II
q(uaestor) tr(ibunus) mil(itum) III com|plura oppida de
Samnitibus cepit || Sabinorum et Tuscorum exerci|tum fudit
pacem fieri cum [P]yrrho | rege prohibuit in censura viam |
Appiam stravit et aquam in | urbem adduxit aedem Bellonae
fecit (CIL 11 1827; II 13[3] 79). While the original from the
Forum of Augustus was divided into two inscriptions, the copy
from Arretium brought them together.
21
II 13(3).
22
Alfldy and Chioffi recently reedited the inscriptions in
CIL 6(8), fasc. 3; see also Spannagel 1999, 25699 (with discussion); Geiger 2008.
23
For Degrassis role in that exhibition, see Bandelli 2001,
142. For the exhibitions wider context, see Painter 2005, 75
7, 131.
86
JOSEPHINE SHAYA
[AJA 117
Fig. 1. Plan of the Forum of Augustus: A, Arco dei Pantani; B, Arch of Drusus; C, Arch of Germanicus; D, pronaos of the Temple
of Mars Ultor; E, cella of the Temple of Mars Ultor; F, porticoes; G, large hemicycles, seat of the tribunal; H, small hemicycles;
I, Hall of the Colossus (after Meneghini and Santangeli Valenzani 2007, fig. 32).
Degrassi reconstructed the inscribed bases on which

the statues stood as being roughly 1 ft. high x 3 ft.
wide x 2 ft. thick.24 He estimated that the tabulae inscribed with the elogia were roughly 3 ft. high and 78 ft.
wide. While the elogium of Appius Claudius Caecus is
rather short, others, like that of Marius, were much
larger.25 If we estimate more than 100 statues, then
we are clearly dealing with a lengthy textwritten in
monumental lettersencircling most of the forum,
where it must have been conspicuous. The point here
is simple: the collection and its text were substantial.
Building on Degrassis work, later scholars who
have studied this collection in both detail and broad
perspective have set it squarely in the context of Augustan ideology. In brief, scholars have viewed it as a
three-dimensional embodiment of a teleological view
of history. The summi viri were forerunners to Augustus,
whose self-aggrandizing equestrian statuea depiction
of the emperor as pater patriaestood in the center of
the forum and tied the whole collection together.26
Much emphasis has also been placed on the collection
as a reflection of a wider culture of historical memory.
Many studies have observed that Late Republican and
Early Imperial writers expressed similar views of the
past, ones that focused on a series of exemplary great
men that, in the works of the later writers, at least,
II 13(3), p. 4; CIL 6(8), p. 4852.

Marius inscription was once more than 570 characters
long (including interpuncts).
The classic discussion is by Zanker 1968, 1988; see also

Gowing 2005, 13845. For an incisive analysis of the idea of a
univocal message of Augustan art, see Elsner 2010.
24
25
26
2013]
87
Fig. 2. Reconstruction of the display of summi viri in the Forum of Augustus, 2 B.C.E., showing statues of model Romans with
plaques detailing their achievements (Galinsky 2005, fig. 42).
culminated in Augustus.27 Others show that the collection belongs to a wide group of invented traditions. As
many have shown, there was a massive effort to restore
the past under Augustus, and the elogia were part of
this broader dynamic.
The monument, then, has most often been seen as
an ideological production of the emperor, and to be
sure, that is one key to its story. But there is more to say
about it as a monument. My central point is that this
interpretation takes us only partway. To understand
the meanings of the summi viri, we need to understand
the way the collection was experienced in antiquity.
To begin, though, we should read the collection itself.
the monument as commemoration

The power of a monument lies in its creation of the
idea of a common past, a common identity. What did
the collection of summi viri commemorate? It offered
a seductively straightforward story of the growth of
the empire and the legitimacy of Augustus. But this
collective story, like all monumental stories, also involved forgetting and loss. A close reading of the surviving elogia suggests that the series of inscribed lives
and images of Roman heroes, founders, kings, and
generals told a story of the making of an empire that
culminated in Augustus.
Fig. 3. Elogium of Appius Claudius Caecus (II 13[3] 79).
Frank 1938; Rowell 1941; Degrassi 1945; Sage 1979; Luce 1990, 12526; Spannagel 1999, 25962; Chaplin 2000, 16896; Geiger
2008, 3651.
27
88
JOSEPHINE SHAYA
[AJA 117
First, a word of caution. The evidence is fragmentary; indeed, much of it is in a deplorable state, and
any reconstruction requires a great deal of gap filling.
Nevertheless, the epigraphic remnants, taken together
with their copies, are enough to suggest a general idea
of the collections overall logic. An examination of its
principles of inclusion and organization reveals much
about its aims.28
One meaning of a collection lies in its seriality. Overall, the collection in the Forum of Augustus offered
a timeline of Rome, charted around the exemplary
careers and accomplishments of Romes leaders. It
recalls other Augustan timelines, including the one
on Aeneas shield and the display of the Fasti Triumphales and Consulares.29
The inscriptions represented the careers of the leading men through the lens of established tradition. For
500 years following the period of kings, the principes
of the republic held the same offices and priesthoods.
The great men were marked for their service to the
Roman people and for their virtues of discipline, fortitude, and piety.
What changed were the size of Rome and the names
of its enemies. Romes past was a story of conquest.
Almost all the men were military leaders. The inscriptions resounded with the names of armies defeated,
places conquered, and peoples and kings paraded in
triumph. Theirs was a story of military victories and
triumphs stretching from the founding of the city to
the present. Theirs was a story of the building of an
empire: Aulus Postumius Albus Regillensis defeated
the Latins at Lake Regillus. Appius Claudius Caecus
captured Samnite towns and conquered the Sabine
and Etruscan armies. Quintus Fabius Maximus took
Tarentum and triumphed over the Ligurians. Lucius
Aemilius Paullus celebrated a triumph over the Ligurians, conducted a war against King Perseus, destroyed the kings troops, and captured Perseus and
his children. Marius destroyed the army of the Teu-
tones, routed the Cimbri, captured King Jugurtha,

and commanded that the king be led in front of his
chariot during his triumph over the Numidians. Lucius Licinius Lucullus freed Chalcedon from a siege
and led in triumph the conquered Mithridates, king
of Pontus, and Tigranes, king of Armenia.30 Theirs was
a story of the founding of colonies. Gaius Iulius Caesar, father of the Divine Julius, for one, established
a colony at Cercina off the coast of Africa.31
As the empire grew, so did the city. The past was a
story of fighting and governing. Leaders were remembered for their civic-minded virtues. They negotiated
peace with the plebs, ended sedition and uprisings,
and bestowed benefits on the people. Appius Claudius
Caecus paved the Via Appia and built an aqueduct to
bring water into the city, and Marius freed the Republic when it was wracked by sedition.32 Within the
city, leaders celebrated triumphs, paraded captured
enemies, and dedicated spoils to the gods. Aulus Postumius Albus Regillensis vowed the spoils of the enemy
at Lake Regillus to the gods; Appius Claudius Caecus
built a temple to Bellona; and Marius built one to
Honor and Virtue.33
In a nutshell, the summi viri built Rome.34 The inscriptions recorded the establishment of temples as
well as other civic projects paid for with the spoils of
empire: the paving of streets, the building of aqueducts. Romes success was due to the abilities of its
leaders.35 The inscriptions listed extraordinary honors
bestowed on these men. Quintus Fabius Maximus was
hailed as father by the army and was chosen as princeps
in the senate for two lustral periods.36 Gaius Duilius
was granted the right to return from feasts with a flute
player and torch.37
As the collection cast into stone a story of the making of Rome, it joined together the great families of
the republic and erased partisanships and feuds. Old
enemies like Marius and Sulla fit comfortably together. Uncomfortable aspects of leaders careers were
Stewart 1993, 154. The last 30 years have witnessed a dramatic increase in works on collecting (e.g., Pomian 1990; Elsner and Cardinal 1994; Pearce 1994; Preziosi and Farago
2004). For Roman collecting specifically, see Kuttner 1999;
Pearce and Bounia 2000; Carey 2003; Bounia 2004; Miles
2008; Rutledge 2012.
29
Verg., Aen. 8.626728; II 13(1).
30
For Aulus Postumius Albus Regillensis, see CIL 6 40959;
II 13(3) 10. For Appius Claudius Caecus, see CIL 6 40943, 11
1827; II 13(3) 12, 79. For Quintus Fabius Maximus, see CIL
6 40953, 11 1828; II 13(3) 14, 80. For Lucius Aemilius Paullus, see CIL 11 1829; II 13(3) 81. For Marius, see CIL 6 40957,
41024; II 13(3) 17, 83. For Lucius Licinius Lucullus, see CIL
11 1832; II 13(3) 84.
31
CIL 6 40954; II 13(3) 7.
For Appius Claudius Caecus, see CIL 6 40943, 11 1827;

II 13(3) 12, 79. For Marius, see CIL 6 40957, 41024; II 13(3)
17b, 83.
33
For Aulus Postumius Albus Regillensis, see CIL 6 40959;
II 13(3) 10. For Appius Claudius Caecus, see CIL 6 40943, 11
1827; II 13(3) 12, 79. For Marius, see CIL 6 40957, 41024; II
13(3) 17b, 83.
34
Cf. Suet., Aug. 31.5: Next to the immortal gods, he paid
honors to the memory of those leaders who had raised the
Roman state from obscurity to greatness (Proximum a dis
immortalibus honorem memoriae ducum praestitit, qui imperium p. R. ex minimo maximum reddidissent).
35
Suet., Aug. 31.5.
36
CIL 6 40953, 11 1828; II 13(3) 14, 80.
37
CIL 6 40952; II 13(3) 13.
28
32
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89
omitted; men like Marius were remembered simply

as heroes.38 As others have pointed out, the collection emphasized an Augustan narrative of the past at
the expense of others. The sources are in a sad state,
and it is hard to argue from absence, but it is at least
noteworthy that we find no trace of some key Late
Republican players: Cicero, Cato, Brutus, Cassius,
Lepidus, and Mark Antony. This silence resonates
with the later Res Gestae in which Augustus reportedly
freed the republic from the tyranny of a faction with
nameless leaders.39
In sum, the summi viri traced a simple unity of purpose from the citys foundation, through the Alban
kings, and up to its present. The collection placed
the continuity of this purpose in the trust of Augustus,
whose image stood at its center as the heir and consummation of Romes earlier renowned leaders. It was
a representation of the advancement of the Roman
empire. Its story was one of expansion.40 Here, with
the consolidation of power in the hands of Augustus,
the past was reimagined as a time in which Romes
leaders undertook a long, unified, and great imperial
projectthe very building of Rome.
Such stories of imperial expansion were very much
in the air during the Late Republic. As a representation of the growth of the empire, the collection was
part of a group of Late Republican manubial monuments that attested an increased engagement at Rome
with the idea of the Roman imperium, its geographic
scale, and its historical development.
In 55 B.C.E., Pompey filled his theater complex with
wondrous spoils of the East that brought home to Romans a conquered world.41 Heady thoughts about the
extent of the empire filled the Late Republican city.42
The size of the Roman world was rapidly changing. It
is probably not a coincidence that in 59 B.C.E., following hard on the heels of Pompeys conquests, Cicero
tried to write a major geographic work.43 In 58, Caesar left for Gaul, where he would soon rival Pompeys
accomplishments in the East. His Commentaries and

his triumphs brought another conquered world into
Rome. Caesar furthermore seems to have planned to
create a monumental world map to represent his own
conquests in relation to the total extent of the empire, a project that was a likely precursor of Agrippas
monumental map.44
Augustus, it seems, performed a similar act, only
with history.45 He filled his forum with images and
inscriptions that commemorated the expansion of
the empire through time. Famous for claiming that
he found Rome a city of brick and turned it into one
of marble, Augustus performed a transformation of
the public history of Rome that was equally impressive: he made it a grand imperial affair of marble and
monuments. In the summi viri, 753 years of Roman
history were in stones that seemed to guarantee the
very permanence of the ideas cast into them. And all
the stones and their stories belonged to the even more
magnificent Forum of Augustus.
38
CIL 6 40957, 41024; II 13(3) 17b, 83; see also Gowing
2005, 14243.
39
Mon. Anc. 1.
40
According to Velleius Paterculus, other inscriptions in
the forum conveyed a similar message. He seems to describe
a series of statues of the provinces and conquered peoples:
In addition to the Spains and other nations [gentes], whose
inscriptions [tituli] adorn his forum, Augustus made Egypt a
tributary (Vell. Pat. 2.39.2; see also Nicolet 1991, 42).
41
As Kuttner (1999, 34550) so evocatively shows.
42
E.g., Catullus (11) was clearly fascinated by how much
land was under Romes control; see also Feeney 2007, 61.
43
Cic., Att. 2.47.
44
Fourth- and fifth-century texts attest to his survey of the
world, reporting that Caesar had charged four learned men
to traverse and measure the earth. Wiseman (1992) offers

the attractive hypothesis that, based on this survey, Caesar
planned to erect a monumental world map, perhaps on the
wall of the portico that he aimed to build around the voting
enclosure for the popular assembly in the Campus Martius.
Such a project would fit neatly with his other grand initiatives
to unify the body of Roman law, collect the texts of Greek and
Latin literature in a huge public library, and revise the calendar (Prop. 4.3.37; Vitr., De arch. 8.2.6; Wiseman 1992, 22
42). For Agrippas map, see Dilke 1985, 4153; Nicolet 1991,
95122; Brodersen 1995, 26887. For Augustus Golden Milestone, see Cass. Dio 54.8.4; Plin., HN 3.5.66.
45
Nicolet 1991, 2947. For another series of elogia set up
under Augustus in the Roman forum, see CIL 6(8), 483946;
Chioffi 1996.
a destination
What we have traced so far is only part of the story.
To understand the collection of summi viri, we need
to see it as it was experienced in its own time and beyond. Its narrative depended not only on the ones who
created it but also on its viewers.
Monuments propagate the illusion of common history, and through their very monumentality, seriousness, and apparent permanence, they cast their myths
as being manifestly true. While they seem to be fixed
backgrounds of rituals and events, their meanings
evolve as viewers bring their own concerns and understandings to them. They are stages on which life
unfolds and are all the more powerful for the way they
merge with everyday affairs.
The collection of summi viri was such a stage where
personal lives intersected with imperial ideas. Home
to the courts of the urban praetor and the praetor
90
JOSEPHINE SHAYA
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peregrinus from at least 40 to 75 C.E., the forum was

crowded with jurors, advocates, and litigants; their family, friends, and supporters; and travelers from Rome,
Italy, and beyond. The images in the forum were part
of the setting and the routines of the justice system,
and people came from far and wide to conduct business and pass time at this landmark.46 It was a common
space where viewers interacted with the Augustan representation of the past.
We can place some individuals and activities in
the forum with surprising specificity. For instance,
the case of Petronia Iusta and others like it help us
imagine the collection within the legal fabric of the
forum years after it was created. These cases point to
exchanges that took place between visitors to the city
and the summi viri.
Between 74 and 75 C.E., Petronia Iusta, the illegitimate daughter of a freedwoman from Herculaneum,
was in dispute with her deceased mothers past owner,
Calatoria Themis. The controversy hinged on the question of whether Iusta was freebornthat is, whether
she was born after or before her mothers manumission. Calatoria Themis claimed that she had manumitted Iusta and that Iusta was her freedwoman, but Iusta
contended that this was not so.47
Lacking the power to hear the case, the magistrate
in Herculaneum transferred it to Rome (fig. 4).48 We
know of the case from an archive of wax tablets discovered in the 1930s in the House of the Bicentenary in
Herculaneum. The archive includes vadimonia, or legal
promises, made on the plaintiffs initiative, to appear
at a particular place and time for the continuation or
hearing of a dispute.49 In one such document, Calatoria Themis and her tutor agree to appear before the
tribunal of the urban praetor in the Forum of Augustus or pay 1,000 sesterces.50 While we do not know
the outcome of the case, it is clear from the vadimonia
that the parties involved were prepared to undertake
more than one journey from Herculaneum to the
Forum of Augustus.51
Similar legal documents preserved on other wax

tablets require litigants to appear at particular architectural features and statues in the Forum of Augustus, such as before the altar of the Temple of Mars
Ultor, before the statue of Gracchus at the fourth
column near the step, at the triumphal statue of
Gaius Sentius Saturninus, or at the statue of Diana
Lucifera at the tenth column.52 Others record edicts
that residents of Herculaneum copied from documents exhibited on the columns in the porticoes of
the forum and carried home.53 From them, we see that
the architecture and images in the forum had become
part of the workings of the justice system.
A painted mural from the entryway of the Praedia
Iuliae Felicis, an establishment in Pompeii that housed
shops, taverns, apartments, and a bath, shows how statues were used to convey public information (fig. 5).54
The fresco depicts scenes of daily life in the forum, including an image of viewers reading announcements
(perhaps lists of candidates) displayed on a horizontal
board along the front of the bases of three equestrian
statues. Like the statues in the Forum of Augustus, the
images were part of the workings of the forum. As places that attracted the eye, they served as platforms for
public information. As a frame for the announcements,
the images of powerful figures added potency to them.
How did the litigants who lived in Herculaneum
and Pompeii decide on their rendezvous points in
Rome? It seems that they chose well-known landmarks.
The statues served as literal meeting points as well as
expressions of communal beliefs. In antiquity, monuments, such as specific statues in the forum, were a
means of navigating cities that had few street names
and no addresses. As a result, inhabitants and visitors
conceptualized locations in terms of monuments and
statuary.55 Such landmarks become part of viewers
cognitive maps. Writers, for instance, relied on their
readers knowledge of statues and the locations of
those statues in Rome. Pliny the Elder, in a discussion
of sudden death, offers the example of an eques who
46
Cf. the monument of the Eponymous Heroes in the Athenian Agora, where public notices and new laws were posted
on whitened boards before the statues (Wycherley 1957, 85
90, nos. 22940; Shear 1970, 169, 171; Hlscher 1998, 162).
47
At stake may have been Themis rights over Iustas property or Iustas desire to marry a Roman citizen. For the case,
see Costabile 1987; Weaver 1991; Carnabuci 1996, 557; Franciosi 2000; Metzger 2000; Neudecker 2010, 16165.
48
Local courts could not adjudicate in cases in which the
sums at stake were more than a certain amount or in which
the defendant could be found liable for infamia (Bablitz 2007,
17). In the provinces, such cases would be sent to the governor.
49
Camodeca 1992, 1999; Rodger 1997.
50
Pugliese Carratelli 1948, 168 (Tabulae Herculanenses 13).
51
For other journeys, see Pugliese Carratelli 1948, 16971
(Tabulae Herculanenses 14, 15).
52
For Mars Ultor, see Camodeca 1999, 689, 8890 (Tabulae
Pompeianae Sulpiciorum 15, 27). For Gracchus, see Camodeca 1999, 72 (Tabulae Pompeianae Sulpiciorum 19). For the triumphal statue of Gnaeus Sentius Saturninus, see Camodeca
1999, 667, 8890 (Tabulae Pompeianae Sulpiciorum 13, 14, 27).
For Diana Lucifera, see Pugliese Carratelli 1946, 383 (Tabulae
Herculanenses 6).
53
Arangio-Ruiz and Pugliese Carratelli 1961, 678 (Tabulae
Herculanenses 89).
54
Nappo 1989; 2007, 35861, fig. 23.12.
55
Favro 1996, 5. E.g., a neighborhood in Rome, the Vicus
Statuae Valerianae, was known by the name of a statue (CIL 6
975, 41329). Likewise, an epitaph of a pigmentarius, a dealer in
paints, locates his business by referring to a statue of Plancus
(ad statuam Planci) (CIL 6 9673; Stewart 2003, 132).
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91
Fig. 4. Map showing locations mentioned in text (adapted from Boatwright et al. 2004, map 10.1; Ancient
World Mapping Center, 2012; www.unc.edu/awmc).
died without warning while whispering in the ear of

an ex-consul just in front of the ivory Apollo in the
Forum of Augustus. The statue located the event.56
In a recent study of the Roman courtroom, Bablitz
suggests that the nature of the dispute or the status of
those involved may also have played a role in determining such meeting points. She observes that vadimonia
from separate cases specify the same locations, which
suggests that specific statues and architectural features
were associated with particular legal acts.57 Such established meeting points in the forum probably helped
officials organize the courts activities.58 Prior to their
cases being heard, disputants appeared at agreedupon times and places, where they stood among a
stone story of the making of Rome and waited for their
opportunity to approach the courts.
The cases known from the wax tablets from Pompeii
and Herculaneum represent only a fraction of the cases
from throughout Italy that were transferred to Rome.
We can imagine individuals like Petronia Iusta from
all over Italy who, through the process of using vadimonia, knew the name of the forum and at least one
of its landmarks long before their actual journeys to
Rome. After traveling to the city and making their way
Fig. 5. Painted mural from the entryway of the

Praedia Iuliae Felicis. Naples, Museo Archeologico
Nazionale di Napoli, inv. no. 9068 (E. Lessing/Art
Resource, NY).
Plin., HN 7.53.183: dum consulari viro in aurem dicit,

eques Romanus ante Apollinem eboreum qui est in foro
Augusti.
57
E.g., the parties from two entirely separate cases in the
Sulpicii archive were to meet before the triumphal statue of
Gaius Sentius Saturninus. Likewise, Marital mentions sealing a document before the statue of Diana Lucifera, the same
place where, according to a document from the Petronia archive, Quintus Herennius Capito and Publius Marius Crescens promised to appear (Mart. 10.70.7; Pugliese Carratelli
1946 , 383 [Tabulae Herculanenses 6]; Bablitz 2007, 25).
58
As they did elsewhere. See, e.g., Camodeca (1999, 589)
for Tabulae Pompeianae Sulpiciorum 4, a vadimonium to meet before the Hordionian Altar of Augustus in the Forum of Puteoli.
56
92
JOSEPHINE SHAYA
[AJA 117
through its convoluted passages, they would have entered the open and protected space of the forum with
its brilliantly colored imported marbles, eye-catching
statuary, and soaring Temple of Mars.59 Regarding the
crowds, the courts, the temple, the images, and the
inscriptions, they would have sought the landmarks
where they were to meet their opponents (fig. 6).60
Such visitors must have been poised first and foremost for legal battles, some of which had simmered
for more than a year.61 For them, the summi viri and
other landmarks in the forum were keys to negotiating
a path through the justice system. Naturalized as part
of the judicial system, the story of the summi viri did
not demand attention or reflection. It could easily be
ignored and for that reason was all the more powerful. The collection was literally in the background. As
such, it bore the burden of the past for the city and its
visitors and silently reflected that history back to them.
But what if Petronia Iusta paid close attention to
the statues and read the inscriptions or asked someone about them? The forum offered what was perhaps
the closest thing to a formal Roman history lesson that
this freedwomans daughter would have encountered.
In ancient Rome, history texts were rare and difficult,
or rather, impossible, for most to read. The Forum
of Augustus offered another kind of historypublic
history, aimed at a broad audience within public
spaces. Its materials included inscriptions, images,
and buildings; it was seen, heard, and read; its audience was everyone; and, as we shall see, it circulated
through various appropriations.
As the very creation of the summi viri shows, the person in the street was interested in history and knew
stories of the past in part because of what he or she
heard and saw in public spaces.62 Cicero, writing about
the universal allure of history, asks What of the delight that men of the lowest station, with no hope of
a public career, and even artisans, take in history?63

Elsewhere, he points to the wide audience for monuments when he offhandedly remarks that painters,
sculptors, and poets wish to have their work carefully
regarded by the vulgus.64
How would a freedwomans daughter from the Bay
of Naples identify the images and inscriptions that
spoke of long-gone republican forefathers and an
ancient emperor? She could have depended on the
names inscribed on statue bases, iconography, and,
probably most of all, word of mouth. That vadimonia
were executed by the parties involved suggests that
litigants had at least some acquaintance with documents. Here, we ought to think in terms of a very broad
continuum of familiarity with the written word that
was heavily conditioned by context, content, and use,
and we also ought to think of other possible types of
reading.65 While some viewers were able to read or
at least piece together parts of the inscriptions, such
as the names, those unable to do so could read the
size of the texts, the iconography of the images, the
number of texts and images, and the visual narrative
of the vast collection written into the architecture
of the forum.66 Indeed, Ovid plays with the idea of the
visual and textual reading of a collection when he describes a group of Julian ancestral portraits. He tells
his reader to [r]ead through the wax images displayed
throughout noble halls (perlege dispositas generosa
per atria ceras). One literally reads through the collection of great men and their titles in the description
of the images that follows.67
Attributes may have helped in the recognition of
the summi viri, especially familiar figures, such as
Aeneas and Romulus.68 Fragments of a copy of a statue
of Romulus from Crdoba (see below), together with
other adaptations, show that the hero wore a lorica
and a short garment typical of mythical figures and
59
Cf. Neudecker 2010, 163. For the marble, see Ungaro
2007, 14546.
60
To not find them could be costly. In one dispute, for instance, the penalty for failing to appear at the rendezvous
point was set at 50,000 sesterces (Camodeca 1999, 8890 [Tabulae Pompeianae Sulpiciorum 27]; Neudecker 2010, 167).
61
In one vadimonium from the case of Petronia Iusta, M.
Calatorius Speudon (a representative of Calatoria Themis)
promised to appear a year in advance in front of the temple
of Mars Ultor (Pugliese Carratelli 1948, 17071 [Tabulae Herculanenses 15]).
62
For performances at public festivals, see Wiseman 1994,
122.
63
Cic., Fin. 5.52: Quid quod homines infima fortuna,
nulla spe rerum gerendarum, opifices denique delectantur
historia?
64
Cic., Off. 1.147: enim pictores et ii, qui signa fabricantur,
et vero etiam poetae suum quisque opus a vulgo considerari
vult.
65
For different types of literacies, see Thomas 2009; Woolf
2009. For concise reviews of the question of literacy in the ancient world, see Bodel 2001, 1519; Werner 2009.
66
The number of surviving inscriptions and the range of social strata from which dedicators and honorands came show
that many were familiar with them. On literacy and reading
inscriptions, see Corbier 2006, 89. For the freedman Hermeros knowledge of so-called lapidary writing, see Petron., Sat.
58.7. On monumental literacy, see Gven 1998, 40.
67
Ov., Fast. 1.59192.
68
Cicero offers some insight into the attention that Roman
viewers paid to attributes. When identifying a statue of Publius
Cornelius Scipio Africanus the Younger, he notes the inscription (inscriptum est CENS), stance (status), drapery (amictus),
ring (annulus), and the likeness itself (imago ipsa) (Cic., Att.
6.1; see also Fejfer 2008, 181).
2013]
93
Fig. 6. Watercolor of the northern exedra of the Forum of Augustus ( Roma CapitaleSovraintendenza ai Beni
CulturaliMuseo dei Fori Imperiali).
carried the spolia opima on his right shoulder (fig. 7).

Other statues also offered rich visual clues. One group
of sculptures depicted Aeneas fleeing with Ascanius in
hand and Anchises on his back (fig. 8). Aulus Gellius
relates that an image of a raven stood on the head of
the statue of Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus as
a reminder of the birds help in a battle against the
leader of the Gauls.69 While only a few fragments of
the original images of the summi viri survive, they are
enough to show that the statues were not all dressed
alike; one wears a cuirass, another a priestly veil, and

a third a toga.70 Visitors like Petronia Iusta could also
have heard about the summi viri from others.71 Livy
points to such discussions when he observes that later
generations, expanding on the inscription on an image of Quintus Fabius Maximus, shaped the way that
his career was remembered.72
The architectural placement of the summi viri
around the lavishly decorated forum (one of the most
beautiful the world had ever seen, according to Pliny
Gell., NA 9.11.10: To that Corvinus, the divine Augustus caused a statue to be set up in his forum. On the head of
this statue is the image of a raven, a memorial of the event
and the combat which I related (Statuam Corvino isti divus
Augustus in foro suo statuendam curavit. In eius statuae
capite corvi simulacrum est, rei pugnaeque quam diximus
monimentum). For the reconstruction of the fragments
of the Aeneas Group from Augusta Emerita using threedimensional scanners, see Merchn et al. 2001.
70
II 13(3) 18; La Rocca et al. 1995, 5280, cat. nos. 1628.
The fragments do not support Suetonius (Aug. 31.5) claim
that the statues were all in triumphal guise (triumphali
effigie).
71
Roman epitaphs that invite passing strangers to read
aloud their lines show that inscriptions were at times meant
to be spoken and heard. See, e.g., an epitaph from Sulmo,
in central Italy, that addresses whoever read or listened to
one reading the inscription ([hunc] titulumque quicumque
legerit aut lege[ntem] ausculta(ve)rit) (Apigr 1989, 247; Buonocore 1988, 58).
72
Livy 22.31.811: Nearly all the histories report that Fabius was dictator in the campaign against Hannibal; Coelius
even writes that he was the first dictator appointed by the people. But Coelius and the others forget that only the consul
Gnaeus Servilius . . . had the right of naming a dictator . . .
therefore his subsequent achievements, his glory and renown
as commander, and posterity expanding the inscription on
his image, easily brought it about that the man who had been
appointed as acting dictator was thought to have been dictator (Omnium prope annales Fabium dictatorem adversum
Hannibalem rem gessisse tradunt; Coelius etiam eum primum a populo creatum dictatorem scribit. Sed et Coelium
et ceteros fugit uni consuli Cn. Servilio . . . ius fuisse dicendi
dictatoris . . . res inde gestas gloriamque insignem ducis et
augentes titulum imaginis posteros, ut qui pro dictatore
creatus erat fuisse dictator crederetur, facile obtinuisse).
69
94
JOSEPHINE SHAYA
[AJA 117
Fig. 8. Reconstruction of the Aeneas Group (Merchn et

al. 2011, fig. 1).
the Elder)73 as well as the artistry of the statues, which

surely must have matched that of the architectural
decor, said much about how the collection should be
read: it was grand, significant, perhaps even a wonder like the rest of the forum.74
Its placement also made it memorable. Ancient writers and modern scholars agree on the primacy of sight
in antiquity in the act of remembering; the process of
remembering ideas, words, and objects was a visual
and spatial one.75 Latin authors relate how training the
memory depended on creating mnemonic images of
architecture and imagining within them what was to be
remembered.76 Texts such as the vadimonia attest to the
importance of visual landmarks in the Roman world.
In the Forum of Augustus, through the mingling of
commemorative texts with concrete architecture and
images, history was mapped onto the architectural

space and visualized. Regardless of the viewers textual literacy, this history and its moral values and lessons touched the senses through its material design.
But what did the collection of the summi viri add up
to at the time of Petronia Iustas case in 7475 C.E.?
To some, the collective authority of Romes ancestors
must have seemed a guarantor of justice. In the 76
years since its creation, the Forum of Augustus had
become a historical site itself. The summi viri, the inscriptions, the great statue of Augustus in a chariot in
the center of the forum, and other original wonders of
the forum had acquired their own patina of pastness.
A generation after Petronia Iustas case, Suetonius
explained the forums origins to his readers: the reason of his [Augustus] building a new forum was the
vast increase in the population and the number of
cases to be tried in the courts.77 The forum had become part of the story of the life of Romes emperors.
Tacitus and others show that, like other celebrated
spaces in Rome, the forum displayed many images
Plin., HN 36.24.102.
Plin., HN 36.1.101.
75
Yates 1966, 126. See, e.g., Ciceros (De Or. 2.86.35154)
story of Simonides at the banquet of Scopas; see also Quint.,
Inst. 11.2.1722.
76
Gven 1998, 378. For further examples, see Yates 1966,
126.
77
Suet., Aug. 29.1.
Fig. 7. Resin cast of a statue of Romulus from the Museo

Arqueolgico de Crdoba (after Ungaro 2007, fig. 223).
73
74
2013]
and honorary statues. For instance, a statue of Lucilius

Longus, Tiberius companion on the island of Rhodes,
stood in the forum.78 Likewise, the Temple of Mars
Ultor was a showplace of imperial memorabilia. Augustus himself started this practice with his celebrated
dedication of the Parthian standards and that of an
ancient statue of Athena Alea from Tegea by Endoios,
whom Pausanias connects with Daedalus.79 Later emperors followed suit. Suetonius, using an account of
such a dedication to condemn Caligula, reports that
the emperor offered to Mars three swords, with which
his sisters and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus had planned
to stab him, together with an inscription explaining
the occasion of their consecration.80
As time passed, dedications, commemorative monuments, and honorary statues in the forum grew. At the
time of Petronia Iustas case, the summi viri framed a
busy collection of statues of notable Romans, members
of the imperial family, and imperial relics.81 Further,
Augustus, long dead, was widely honored as a god. Arguments about his place in history no longer needed
to be made. Rather, the collection was the oldest part
of a much greater accumulation of objects that spoke
to the achievements of Rome and its leaders. It became
the basis for new stories of empire and emperors.
The summi viri might seem a fixed background for
the events that unfolded in the forum, but the meaning of that background evolved as the forum changed
and its viewers brought new historical understandings
to it. The case of Petronia Iusta helps us imagine the
changing nature of the summi viri. It also speaks to
the forum as a destination to which people traveled
many miles. The images were meeting points. They
represented communal ancestors and served as landmarks that helped the inhabitants of Rome and visitors
negotiate the city and the courts. The visual impact
and resonance of the forum and the summi viri in the
urban landscape of Rome and in the experience of
individual visitors may help explain their many replications outside the city.
Tac., Ann. 4.15. Other images included Gnaeus Sentius

Saturninus (Camodeca 1999, 667, 8890 [Tabulae Pompeianae Sulpiciorum 13, 14, 27]), Lucius Volusius Saturninus (Eck
1972, 463), and Titus Flavius Sabinus (CIL 6 31293).
79
Ov., Fast. 5.54598; Paus. 8.46.1.
80
Suet., Calig. 3.24.
81
Two decades later, when the construction of the Forum of
Nerva destroyed one of the four hemicycles, the arrangement
of the collection itself must have changed.
82
Nelson and Olin 2003, 11.
83
Young 2003, 242.
84
For the Eumachia building, see Maiuri 1950, 109 n. 15;
Dobbins 2007, 16567. For the inscriptions, see CIL 10 808,
891; II 13(3) 6, 85; Zanker 1968, 17; La Rocca and de Vos 1976,
11418; Geiger 2008, 19495. For a cautionary reading of the
78
95
the monument as a source

One of the hallmarks of monuments is that people
record their visits to them. People come from far and
wide to visit ordinary buildings and to conduct their
business in them, but seldom do they recreate those
buildings at home; they do, however, recreate monuments.82 People not only traveled to the Forum of
Augustus but also created copies of its architecture,
images, and inscriptions. Ironically, the summi viri
are best known through the numerous adaptations
of them that traveled the empire. Surviving examples
show the forums monumental character interpreted
by faraway audiences. Monuments live by the consent
of their public; it is only with the explicit cooperation
of the people that they serve as points around which
official history is told and remembered.83 As the copies
of the images and inscriptions from the forum attest,
communities and individuals made this monument
and its stories their own.
The summi viri traveled widely. Well-known examples from Pompeii take us back to Petronia Iustas
world. The appropriations include the elogia of Aeneas and Romulus from the entrance of the Eumachia
building in the forum; the painted copies of the statues of Aeneas and Romulus flanking the entrance of
the fullery of Fabius Ululutremulus a few blocks from
the forum; and the small fresco parodies of Aeneas
and Romulus, with their apparently garbled elogia,
painted inside a house again barely 200 m from the
forum.84 The meaning of these images hinged, in part,
on the dialogue between them. Displayed facing the
statues of distinguished Pompeians in the forum, the
images and elogia of Aeneas and Romulus in niches
in the Eumachia building expressed local social and
political aspirations (figs. 9, 10).85 The paintings of
the heroes on the fullery advertised its owners links
to the prestigious Eumachia, patroness of the fullers
(figs. 1113).86 They were also part of a larger streetside presentation of the politics, social life, jokes,
and affiliations of a group of Pompeian wool workers
evidence for the association of the elogia with the Eumachia

building, see Clarke 2007, 269 nn. 489. For the fullery of Fabius Ululutremulus, see della Corte 1913; Spinazzola 1953,
14755; Moeller 1976, 51; Sampaolo 19902003. For the
fresco parodies, see Zanker 1988, 209; de Vos 1991, 11617;
Kellum 1996, 17677; Clarke 2007, 15556. On clipei and caryatids recently discovered in the Forum of Puteoli, see Valeri
2005, 10211, 20315; Zevi and Forte 2008, 297302; Zevi and
Valeri 2008, 44364.
85
For the aspirations of Eumachia and her son, see Bernstein 2007, 53031.
86
For Eumachia as the patroness of the fullers, see the statue erected to her by the fullers (CIL 10 813; Richardson 1978,
26769).
96
JOSEPHINE SHAYA
[AJA 117
Fig. 9. Elogium of Aeneas from the Eumachia building (II

13[3] 85).
Fig. 10. Elogium of Romulus from the Eumachia building

(II 13[3] 86).
who seem to have felt a keen connection to Rome.87

Meanwhile, the caricatures and their garbled pseudoinscriptions, painted in a small frieze on the wall of
a house, may have poked fun at Augustus, but more
likely their target was much closer to home (fig. 14).
Other adaptations are found elsewhere in Italy. In
Arretium, copies of seven elogia cut into marble herms
repeat the same words as the archetypes from the Forum of Augustus (see fig. 3).88 Known since the 17th
century, this apparently small selection of Romes
founders was cast in a sculptural form most often used
in the first century C.E. for images of poets and philosophers.89 The elogia include Appius Claudius Caecus, who captured many towns from the Samnites and
conquered the armies of Sabines and Etruscans.90 The
celebration of such a figure in Arretium, an originally

Etruscan city that was later colonized under Sulla and
Caesar, suggests that the donors distinguished themselves from the citys original inhabitants, who had
been conquered by the Romans and shared in the
narrative of Romes expansion.91
Some adaptations traveled much farther.92 On the
Iberian peninsula, in the far western cities of the Roman world, we find entire monumental complexes
inspired by the capital. The upper terrace of the provincial center at Tarraco, for instance, was modeled
on the Forum of Augustus. Clipei with heads of Jupiter
Ammon and Medusa were attached to the attic of a
portico that was associated with a temple of the divine Augustus.93 Likewise, the Forum Adiectum (also
CIL 4 9131; Milnor 2009, 299303.

II 13(3) 7884. For another copy of the elogium of Marius excavated in the Via Flaminia in Rome, see CIL 6 41024;
II 13(3) 83. An adaptation of the Aeneas Group appears on
a side panel of the altar of the freedwoman Petronia Grata
from Aquae Statiellae in the archaeological collection of the
Museum of Antiquities, Turin (Zanker 1968, fig. 42; Jimnez
2010, fig. 3.5).
89
For the Roman herm in the first century C.E., see Fejfer
2008, 22833.
90
CIL 6 40943, 11 1827; II 13(3) 12, 79.
91
Dench 2005, 215.
E.g., the adaptation of the Aeneas Group on an altar from

Carthage (Evans 1992, 11617, fig. 42; Merchn et al. 2011).
Another example is in the Bonn Landesmuseum (Zanker
1968, fig. 43), and a copy of the Aeneas Group from Intercisa
(Dunajvros, Hungary) is housed in the Roman Lapidarium
of the Hungarian National Museum in Budapest. For clipei
from Arelate (Arles), see Gros 1987, 35761; Fishwick 2003,
15; Jurado 2007, 33738.
93
For copies in Spain, see Trillmich 1997. For copies in Tarraco, see Mierse 1999, 174, 226, 228; Fishwick 2003, 1230;
Dupr i Ravents 2004, 4951, 115; Jurado 2007, 337.
87
88
92
2013]
Fig. 11. Facade of the fullery of Fabius Ululutremulus, Via dellAbbondanza, Pompeii: top, photograph (Spinazzola
1953, fig. 182); bottom, reconstruction (Spinazzola 1953, pl. 10).
97
98
JOSEPHINE SHAYA
[AJA 117
Fig. 12. Painting of Romulus, facade of the House of Fabius

Ululutremulus (Spinazzola 1953, pl. 17).
Fig. 13. Painting of Aeneas fleeing Troy, facade of the House

of Fabius Ululutremulus (Spinazzola 1953, pl. 17).
known as the Forum Novum) at Crdoba was centered on an adaptation of the Temple of Mars Ultor
and enclosed by porticoes with niches like those that
held the summi viri.94 Like the terrace at Tarraco, the
plaza at Crdoba was linked to the cult of the emperor;
it seems that both were begun in the Julio-Claudian
period. Other adaptations include fragments of clipei
and summi viri from Italica and Clunia.95 The so-called
Marble Forum at Augusta Emerita, modeled on the
Forum of Augustus, is the best preserved of these adaptations and is worth looking at in detail, for it attests
to the allure of Roman heritage.96
Founded in 25 B.C.E. on the banks of the Anas (Ro
Guadiana) by veterans from legio V Alaudae and legio X
Gemina, Colonia Iulia Augusta Emerita was conceived
as the provincial capital of Lusitania.97 A UNESCO
heritage site, the city, like other provincial capitals in
western provinces, had two forums, one a center of municipal administration, the other a center of provincial
administration.98 An architectural complex adjacent to
Fig. 14. Parody of Aeneas fleeing Troy. Naples, Museo

Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, inv. no. 9089 (Clarke
2007, pl. 16).
94
Fishwick 2003, 7983; Dupr i Ravents 2004, 5560,
12122, 12627; Jurado 2007, 323; Jimnez 2010, 47, fig. 3.6.
95
For adaptations from Italica, see Jurado 2005; 2007, 325
37. For those from Clunia, see Fishwick 2003, 16. Possibly,
such adaptations were spread when members of communities such as Italica and Clunia visited the provincial capitals
of Tarraco, Augusta Emerita, and Crdoba to conduct their
business (as when litigants in Italy went to Rome).

96
The Marble Forum is also known as the Forum Adiectum
and the Augusteum.
97
For synopses of Emeritas development, see Panzram
2002, 227312; Dupr i Ravents 2004.
98
Cf. Tarraco and Narbo (Fishwick 2003, 185201).
2013]
the municipal forum evoked the Forum of Augustus

in the hinterland of the Roman empire.
In 1934, fragments of architectural reliefs with shield
roundels and caryatids were first discovered in a drain
in the northern outskirts of Mrida. Since then, other
fragments have come to light whose iconography suggests that they form a coherent group.99 Concentrated
in an area along the northeast side of the municipal forum, the fragments belong to a large square surrounded by a portico dressed with marble.100 Niches in the
portico walls held statues. The finds include remains
of a sculpture group, probably Aeneas, Anchises, and
Ascanius (see fig. 8); a statue tentatively identified as
Agrippa Menenius Lanatus (one of the mythical kings
of Alba Longa); and seven other togati signed by the
workshop of Gaius Aulus.101 The context of the togati,
along with their similar size and style, suggests that they
were a single commission. A fragment of an inscribed
elogium of Aeneas survives that matches the inscription
from the Eumachia building in Pompeii.102 Other appropriations include fragments of a frieze decorated
with Augustan themes, a statue base that is very similar
to one found in the Forum of Augustus, and a fragment
of a possible statue of Romulus.103 The high quality of
many of these sculptured fragments points to the work
of an itinerant metropolitan workshop. Local craftsmen probably continued and finished the project,
which would account for technical differences between
some sculptures, such as the caryatids (fig. 15).104
The many similarities with the Forum of Augustus
are striking, but there are local differences. As at Tarraco and Crdoba, the attic level at Augusta Emerita
was decorated with alternating clipei containing heads
of Jupiter Ammon and Medusa, whereas the surviving
For their distribution, see Fishwick 2003, 5961.

De La Barrera 2000, 18486 (with bibliography); Trillmich 2009, 450.
101
Trillmich 1995; Mierse 1999, 6478; De La Barrera,
2000, 18184; Panzram 2002, 13435; Edmondson 2006, 260
72; Nogales Basarrate and lvarez 2006; Geiger 2008, 195;
Nogales Basarrate 2008; Ayerbe Vlez et al. 2009; Trillmich
2009, esp. 46467; Jimnez 2010. For the Aeneas group, see
De La Barrera and Trillmich 1996; Merchn et al. 2011. For
Agrippa Menenius Lanatus, see Livy 1.4.9; De La Barrera
and Trillmich 1996, 120; Ramrez Sdaba 2003, no. 77. The
statue is inscribed AGRIPPA. Since the many portraits of
Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa from Augusta Emerita have his full
name, this image has been tentatively identified as an early
king of Alba Longa. For the togati, see Trillmich 1990, 31316;
Ramrez Sdaba 2003, nos. 7884; Fejfer 2008, 32127, figs.
24448.
102
De La Barrera 1996; De La Barrera and Trillmich 1996,
12836; Arce et al. 1997, 390, cat. no. 178; Panzram 2002, 250;
Ramrez Sdaba 2003, no. 76 (Mrida, Museo Nacional de
99
100
99
Fig. 15. Caryatids from the attic of the Marble Forum,

Augusta Emerita. Mrida, Museo Nacional de Arte Romano:
left, inv. no. 33.003; right, inv. no. 4.399 (courtesy Museo
Nacional de Arte Romano).
clipei from the Forum of Augustus have heads of Jupiter Ammon and torque-wearing barbarians (figs. 16,
17).105 Likewise, the caryatids at Augusta Emerita are
Arte Romano, inv. nos. 712, 33501); Stylow and Ventura Villanueva 2009, no. 9 (with photograph). The fragmentary inscription reads: t]er | regna[vit annos tres i]n luco | Lauren[ti
subito n]on comparvit | apella[tusq(ue) e]st Indiges Pater |
et [in deorum nu]merum relatus (Garca Iglesias 1973, 503;
Ramrez Sdaba 2003, 76). Cf. the copy from the Eumachia
building in Pompeii (see fig. 8 herein) (CIL 10 808; II 13[3]
85). The two inscriptions have very similar borders but different line breaks. For a possible copy of the elogium of Marcus
Valerius Maximus, see Ramrez Sdaba 2003, no. 60; Stylow
and Ventura Villanueva 2009, no. 10 (with photograph).
103
For a study of the architectural dcor of Augusta Emeritas Marble Forum, see De La Barrera 2000; see also Trillmich
2009, 44860. For the statue base, see De La Barrera and
Trillmich 1996, 119. For the fragment, see Nogales Basarrate
2008.
104
Trillmich 1997, 139; Nogales Basarrate and lvarez
2006, 432.
105
Zanker 1968, fig. 28; De La Barrera 2000, pls. 83115.
100
JOSEPHINE SHAYA
[AJA 117
Fig. 16. Clipeus from the attic of the Marble Forum, Augusta
Emerita. Mrida, Museo Nacional de Arte Romano, inv. no.
33.002 (courtesy Museo Nacional de Arte Romano).
Fig. 17. Fragment of a clipeus from the attic of the Forum of

Augustus. Rome, Museum of the Imperial Forums in Trajans
Market, inv. no. FA 2513 ( Roma CapitaleSovraintendenza
ai Beni CulturaliMuseo dei Fori Imperiali).
not carved in the round as in the Forum of Augustus,

and they carry a pitcher in one hand (figs. 18, 19).106
Rafael Mesa offers reconstructions of the complex
based on the fragmentary evidence (figs. 202).
Together with other notably Roman buildings (including a theater, an amphitheater, an aqueduct, and
a temple apparently modeled on the Temple of Concord at Rome), Augusta Emeritas partial and freely
adapted replica of the Forum of Augustus unabashedly
proclaimed the central position of Rome in its urban
landscape. Indeed, one might argue that the Marble
Forum recreated the ideology of Augustus in the far
west of the empire.
To some degree, this is true; however, it is important to note that studies date the forum to the late
Claudian or Neronian period, a half century (or two
generations) after the reign of Augustus.107 It is likely
that the project was brought to completion under the
Flavians.108
Rather than promoting Augustan propaganda, the
Marble Forum spoke to the allure of Romes past and
a desire to be a part of its present. Its appeal lay in its
ability to include the local nobility in the story of the
making of Rome. The Marble Forum, set adjacent to
the municipal forum with its temple of the imperial
cult, seems to have been a place where members of

the imperial family and local elite were honored. We
can imagine that after (or even during) its completion, dedicators began to fill it with honorific statues
and inscriptions that celebrated the accomplishments
of Augusta Emeritas leading citizens. The display of
statues manifested the local social order and collapsed
the distance between the local elite, Rome, and Romes
first emperor.
While at Augusta Emerita such honorary inscriptions do not remain in situ or are yet to be discovered,
in Tarraco they do survive. There, in the provincial
center, the terrace below the upper esplanade with the
sanctuary modeled on the Forum of Augustus was full
of honorary statues that commemorated the services
of at least 33 provincial priests, priestesses, and functionaries.109 Other statue bases honored ambassadors
to the emperor, Roman senators who had served in the
province, and provincial patrons.110 The space probably housed the administrative bureau of the province
and was closely linked with both the sanctuary above,
where statues also may have been displayed, and with
a circus below on a third terrace.111 It seems very likely
that during imperial festivals, processions began at
the upper sanctuary and moved down through the
De La Barrera 2000, pls. 127134.

Mierse 1999, 75; Trillmich 2009, 46467.
108
Trillmich 2009, 44546.
109
Fishwick 2003, 32 (with further references).
106
107
Fishwick 2003, 33 (with further references).

Mar 1993a, 1993b. Another seven or eight statue bases
were found in the uppermost level (Fishwick 2003, 33).
110
111
2013]
Fig. 18. Augusta Emerita, attic level of the portico of the Marble Forum (S. Magal).
Fig. 19. The 1940s reconstruction of the attic level of the portico of the Forum of Augustus in the House of the
Knights of Rhodes ( Roma CapitaleSovraintendenza ai Beni CulturaliMuseo dei Fori Imperiali).
101
102
JOSEPHINE SHAYA
Fig. 20. Axonometric drawing of Marble Forum (De La Barrera 2000, plan 8).
Fig. 21. Elevation drawing of the Marble Forum (De La Barrera 2000, plan 5).
[AJA 117
2013]
103
Fig. 22. Augusta Emerita, Marble Forum (S. Magal).
administrative plaza and its forest of honorary statues,

out a monumental stairway, and into the circus, which
could accommodate an audience of perhaps 23,000
or more (fig. 23).112 Here, the types of festivals and
races that had evoked a collective consciousness at
Rome now evoked a collective consciousness on the
edge of the empire. The enormously expensive complex, which was almost certainly funded by the local
elite, articulated relationships between the emperor,
the local nobility, and the people, effectively telescoping the social and political hierarchy of the empire.
The Marble Forum at Augusta Emerita likewise provided a frame in which the local elite could advertise
their social distinction and their ties to Rome. As the
background for rites of the imperial cult and possibly
the work of local magistrates, it was a stage for a Roman style of life.113 But the Marble Forum also spoke
to a larger imperial order. Statues of the founders of
the empireAeneas, the ancient kings of Alba Longa, and other select heroes of Romes pastprobably
framed statues of local elites (and, over time, their own
112
Fishwick 2003, 367.
ancestors) as well as living local priests, magistrates,

and members of the community who used the space.
Romes history was their history. The town was founded in the age of Augustus. By the mid first century, images of its own great men and the citizens themselves
in some fashion continued the history laid out in the
architecture, images, and inscriptions copied from
Rome. Augusta Emeritas own story began where the
one in the Forum of Augustus ended.
Future work on the Marble Forum will teach us
more about its contents. For now, we can say that it
reflects the strongly self-confident imperial identity
of the communitys leading citizens, who presumably
paid for its lavish construction. It also speaks to a desire to line up local history with that of the capital. In
this case, the allure of the Forum of Augustus, I would
suggest, was the allure of Roman culture and heritage.
The makers of the Marble Forum were driven by a desire to emulate the center of the empire, which was,
as the numerous Roman monuments in Augusta
Emerita attest, the source of the citys own culture.
113
Edmondson 2006, 262.
104
JOSEPHINE SHAYA
[AJA 117
Fig. 23. Reconstruction of Tarraco provincial center, second century C.E. ( Francesc Tarrats-Bou).
By making the summi viri their own, they shared in

the narrative of Romes past and expressed their own
Roman origins and their hopes for a Roman future.
A few local leaders from Augusta Emerita probably
spent time in Rome, where they saw its architectural
marvels.114 Communities sent embassies of elite citizens to Rome to present petitions and matters involving judicial decisions before the emperor.115 Many
famous literary figures came to Rome from the Iberian
peninsula during the years in which Augusta Emerita
built the Marble Forum: Seneca the Elder and Lucan
from Crdoba; Quintilian from Calagurris; Martial
and his contemporary, the poet Valerius Licinianus,
from Augusta Bilbilis; and others of Martials contemporaries, including the poet Canius Rufus from Gades
and the philosopher Decianus from Augusta Emerita.
These men lived their early lives in Iberian cities that
had assumed a Roman character under Augustus and
Tiberius.116 It is against the backdrop of elite ambassadors, administrators, and Roman writers that we
should view the Marble Forum. Such men may have
hired metropolitan craftsmen to carry out the plans
for their magnificent building program. They may also
have brought copies of texts like the elogium of Aeneas

across the empire. Such inscriptions would have been
of particular interest to those who believed that Augustus himself had composed them.117
While the Marble Forum reveals much about the
culture of Augusta Emerita, it also sheds light on the
Forum of Augustus in Rome. The copy enhanced the
monumental quality of the original. As litigants in
Italy, such as Petronia Iusta, traveled to the courts in
Rome, so, too, provincials from throughout the empire
traveled to the capital. While most citizens of Augusta
Emerita did not make the long journey to Rome, the
few that did may have visited the Forum of Augustus.
When thinking of their impressions of the forum, it
is important to bear in mind the distance between
Augusta Emerita and Rome. The sea journey from
Gades to Ostia alone took nine days.118 The overland
journey along the network of Roman roadsone of
the most striking assertions of Roman powerwas
much longer.119
A traveler from Augusta Emerita, picking up the
road to Rome at Crdoba, might have taken almost
the same route as the one recorded on the Vicarello
114
Cf. the ambassadors honored in the provincial center at
Tarraco (Alfldy 1975, 33032).
115
Mierse 1999, 266. For diplomatic embassies from provincial cities to the emperor, see Millar 1977, 37584. For the
base of a small golden statue dedicated to Augustus from the
province of Baetica and erected in the Forum of Augustus
:after 2 B.C.E., see CIL 6 31267.

116
Mierse 1999, 174.
117
Plin., HN 22.6.13.
118
Bakker 2012.
119
St. Augustine, for instance, preferred to travel by road
instead of sea.
2013]
105
Goblets.120 Dating probably from the first century C.E.,

each of these four beakers lists more than 100 post
stations between Gades and Rome and the distances
between them. Their form, typical of drinking vessels, recalls mile markers, suggesting that they might
replicate in Gades a monument like Romes Golden
Milestone.121 The vessels, which seem to have served
as travel cups, guides to the road, and votive offerings,
emphasize the vast length of the journey from Gades to
Rome; each ends with a grand total of miles to travel,
ranging from 1,335 to 1,840, written in large letters
(see figs. 4, 24). They show that some travelers liked
reminders of other cities, much as the copies of the
architecture, images, and inscriptions from the Forum
of Augustus were reminders of Rome.122
For viewers who made the long and arduous journey from Augusta Emerita to Rome, the architectural
resonance between the Marble Forum and the Forum
of Augustus must have been marvelous.123 For them,
the dialogue between the monument at Rome and
its smaller version at home perhaps spoke about the
relationship between Rome and the provinces and
the spread of Roman culture into faraway Spain. The
Forum of Augustus was a material embodiment of the
cultural heritage of Augusta Emerita.
Beyond the Forum of Augustus, other copies and
adaptations of imperial monuments are well known. A
few notable examples include the Res Gestae, the rules
of the Sanctuary of Diana on the Aventine, and the fasti.124 As the examples of the adaptations of the Forum
of Augustus show, each took on its own local meaning
depending on its context and viewers. However, in the
final analysis, all such adaptations and copies pointed
back to Rome.125 All emphasized the monumental
quality of the capital and the primacy of Rome as a
place of origin. Indeed, copies of the Res Gestae made
this explicit: Below is a copy [exemplar sub[i]etum]
of the achievements of the deified Augustus . . . as
inscribed upon two bronze pillars which have been

set up at Rome.126 As with the case of the summi viri,
the original must have been a striking connection for
travelers who made the journey from Galatia to Rome.
120
Discovered at Aquae Apollinares (now Vicarello) in
a thermal bath on the western shore of Lake Bracciano, 20
miles northwest of Rome, each of these four silver goblets
bears an engraved itinerary, with slight variations, from Gades
to Rome, a route known from other sources as well and designed to keep to low ground as much as possible (CIL 11
328184; Heurgon 1952; Chevallier 1976, 4750; Dilke 1985,
12224; Elsner 2000, 185).
121
Elsner 2000, 185.
122
Cf. the glass flasks found in a Roman catacomb and in a
tomb at Ampurias, Spain, with panoramas of the shoreline at
Baia and identifying labels (McKay 1989, 16566).
123
Buildings such as the Circus Maximus and the Flavian
amphitheater, whose types were copied on a smaller scale in
the provinces, must have also been marvelous to travelers to
Rome.
124
For the display of the Res Gestae in Ancyra, Pisidian Antioch, and Apollonia in Galatia, see Elsner 1996; Gven 1998;
Botteri 2003; Drew-Bear and Scheid 2005; Scheid 2007; Cooley 2009, 622. For the rules of the Sanctuary of Diana on the
Aventine in Salona, Narbo Martius, and Ariminum, see Beard
et al. 1998, 23942. For the display of copies of fasti outside
Rome, see Rpke 2004, 334; Beard 2007, 66. A gold clipeus
offered by the senate to Augustus and displayed in the Roman senate is known from a marble copy from Arles that was
probably exposed in the local senate (Corbier 2006, 29 n. 53).
125
Cf. later pilgrimage souvenirs that pointed back to Jerusalem (Elsner 1997).
126
Rerum gestarum divi Augusti . . . incisarum in duabus aheneis pilis, quae su[n]t Romae positae, exemplar
sub[i]ectum (Mon. Anc. [heading]; translation by Cooley
2009, 18).
Fig. 24. Vicarello Goblets. Rome, Museo Nazionale Romano,

Palazzo Massimo, inv. nos. 67497500 (courtesy Ministero
per i Beni e le Attivit Culturali, Soprintendenza Speciale
per i Beni Archeologici di Roma).
the public life of monuments

Made of materials to withstand the ravages of time,
the collection of summi viri and the Forum of Augustus today survive only in fragments and copies. For
all its pretense of permanence, like all monuments,
the collection eventually fell to pieces, and for all the
apparent solidity of its history in stone, that, too, has
been supplanted many times. But in its day it exercised
power as a monumental public history of the empire.
The collection commemorated the growth of the
empire and the legitimacy of Augustus with a seductively straightforward story. The summi viri and the
forum of which they were an essential part seem so
plainly didactic. Despite their fragmentary condition,
we return to them in courses on Roman art, civilization, religion, literature, and more because they are
106
JOSEPHINE SHAYA
a touchstone for the age of Augustus and an emblem

of Augustan ideology.
A full account of the summi viri, however, requires
something morean understanding of their public
life. To make sense of their meaning in antiquity, we
have to understand public perceptions of the monument, see the ways in which it traveled, and perceive
how it was used in new contexts. To examine its public
life is to see it as a commemoration, as a destination,
and as a set of images and texts that moved through
space and time. Ironically, we know the collection of
the summi viri best through its many adaptations because its viewers took it away with them, recreated it
at home, and made the monument their own.
The collection of summi viri outlived the intentions
of its creators, intentions that were overwhelmed by
the ways in which people used the monument. Many
of these uses did not undermine the collections ideological meanings but rather reinforced and built on
them. The collection that once spoke to the creation
of an empire that culminated in Augustus became the
basis of an even greater story about the achievements
of Romes emperors. And it became an emblem of an
imperial culture that members of the provincial elite
put to work as a means to inscribe themselves into the
empires political hierarchy and the story of its past.
The monument that originally celebrated the building of the empire through conquest came, in time, to
play a role in supporting the social hierarchy in the
very lands that had been conquered.
Over the last three decades, scholarship on memory
in antiquity has flourished. We have seen the political
operation of memory, the memorial power of places,
deliberate erasures of the past, and more.127 The case
of the summi viri offers an important addition to this
literature. It shows the ways in which the intentions
of a monuments creator were tempered by the ways
in which its publics made use of it. It shows that the
art of forgetting (to use Flowers apt phrase) was always at work, even in public commemorations. Official memory preserved on monuments was always
in danger of being forgotten or turned to new uses
when old stories lost their meanings or were adapted
to new circumstances.
The summi viri and their adaptations live on, if only
as afterimages. Modern casts of the inscriptions from
Pompeii and Arretium can be found today in the cavernous halls of the Museo della Civilt Romana, which
holds a vast collection of replicas of statues, inscriptions, and building models from ancient Rome and
[AJA 117
the provinces, including Pierino Di Carlos well known

model of Rome in the age of Constantine. The core of
this collection of copies was created for the Archaeological Exhibition of 1911 and expanded in 1937 for
the Mostra Augustea della Romanit that celebrated
the triumph of fascism and the 2,000 years that had
passed since the birth of Augustus. These adaptations
and appropriations remain to be explored.
department of classical studies

the college of wooster
400 e. university street
wooster, ohio 44691
jshaya@wooster.edu
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FORUM ARTICLE
available online as open access
Archaeological Site Looting in Glocal Perspective:

Nature, Scope, and Frequency
BLYTHE BOWMAN PROULX
Abstract
chaeological sites and the orphaned objects removed

from them (which are then bought and sold as commercial commodities) provide limited contributions
to our knowledge about the human past and tell us
little about the culture that produced them. In short,
looted antiquities and archaeological resources retain
little scientific value.4 As finite resources, once they are
gone, they are gone forever.
While the intellectual and material consequences
of looting5 are well known, estimating the occurrence,
frequency, and nature of archaeological site destruction is more problematic. First and foremost, looting
is normally a clandestine undertaking,6 and looters are
not eager to be interviewed about the extent of their
illicit endeavors.7 Second, looting threatens two types
of sites: those known to archaeologists and those that
have not yet been discovered.8 Italy, for example, is
not alone in being likened to an open-air museum
because of the richness of its archaeological landscape,
which includes both discovered and yet-undetected
sites.9 There is, in other words, no master catalogue
of all archaeologically significant sites around the
world both known and unknown, so the task of assessing the extent of the damage caused by looting
around the world is difficult.10
Nonetheless, there is a growing body of research
that attempts to document on-the-ground looting and
archaeological site destruction.11 Much of this docu-
The looting of archaeological sites undermines the

preservation of cultural heritage. The purpose of this
study is to broaden and refine our understanding of the
nature, geographic scope, and frequency of looting and
archaeological site destruction and to place looting in
global perspective. Situated within a glocal (global and
local) context, this study focuses on a large sample of
field archaeologists working throughout the world and
their opinions about and personal encounters with looting. Some key findings are presented: first, that the overwhelming majority of surveyed field archaeologists have
experienced looting firsthand on more than one occasion;
second, that archaeological site looting is in fact a globally pervasive problem and is not limited to certain parts
of the world to the exclusion of others. The paper ends
with a consideration of the implications of such findings
for the broader cultural heritage debate.*
introduction
The looting of archaeological sites, which largely
fuels the international trade in illicit antiquities,1 occurs when undocumented, illicitly obtained artifacts
are ripped from the ground and sold, often on the
legal market.2 Archaeology is a critical component in
the study and understanding of human history, and
the destruction of archaeological finds has both material and intellectual consequences. That is to mean,
not only are archaeological resources finite but so is
the cultural information they may yield.3 Looted ar-
* The original study was conducted in partial fulfillment

of requirements for the authors doctoral degree (University of Nebraska at Omaha, 2008); a version of this paper was
presented at the Archaeological Institute of America annual
meeting, January 2009, and the American Society of Criminology annual meeting, November 2011. A free, downloadable appendix can be found under this articles abstract on
the AJA website (www.ajaonline.org).
1
Brodie et al. 2001.
2
Bowman 2008.
3
Gill and Chippindale 1993; Proulx 2010, 2011a, 2011b.
4
Bator 1982; Atwood 2004; Proulx 2010, 2011b.
5
Looting is defined as the removal of culturally significant material from archaeological sites for commercial gain,
the act of which destroys archaeological context or evidence
needed to learn from the site.

6
Elia 2001.
7
Proulx 2010.
8
Conklin 1994.
9
Pastore 2001, 155.
10
Pendergast and Graham 1989; Bowman 2008. Moreover,
when reported to authorities, archaeological site looting is often mistakenly subsumed under the rubric of art crime or
cultural property theft in official estimates, or it is recorded
by circumstance of theft (e.g., burglary) rather than type of
object stolen. However ill-categorized those reports may be,
site looting remains decidedly underreported (INTERPOL
2007; Proulx 2010).
11
Proulx 2011a, 2011b.
111
112
[AJA 117
mentation takes the form of archaeological field surveys and photographic testimony.12 For example, in an
attempt to assess the extent of Etruscan tomb looting
in central Italy, Lerici estimated that, of the 550 tombs
he discovered, nearly 400 of them had been stripped
of their burial treasures and irretrievably damaged
by tombaroli.13 In a similar effort, Roosevelt and Luke
surveyed the landscape of ancient Lydia and found
that, of the nearly 400 burial tombs they inspected,
90% showed signs of looting.14 In Belize, Gutchen concluded that nearly 60% of the 106 archaeological sites
for which he was able to obtain data had been looted,
and nearly half of those sites had been damaged beyond repair.15 A similar survey of more than 800 Malian
archaeological sites revealed that more than 50% of
them had been looted.16 In Cambodia, Heritage Watch
documented looting and archaeological site destruction at 23 burial mounds within an area of 100 km2
near Thmar Puok.17 And Gado, estimating that more
than 90% of the archaeological sites in the southwestern region of the Republic of Niger had been looted,
recently noted that much of the regions history has
been lost for ever.18 In fact, some archaeological sites
have been destroyed so thoroughly that they are now
known only through those looted antiquities that have
appeared on the market or in collections.19
Other scholars have studied the antiquities market
itself to gauge the extent of archaeological site looting.
For example, Gill and Chippindale showed in their
groundbreaking study that as aesthetic interest in and
demand for Cycladic figurines increased in the late 20th
century, so did the number of unauthorized excavations at Cycladic archaeological sites.20 In a later study,
the authors found that a similar relationship between
market demand and looting was evident not only for

Cycladic objects but also for objects from throughout
classical antiquity.21 In their studies of classical vases on
the antiquities market, both Elia and Nrskov found
similar relationships between market demand and archaeological site destruction.22 The same situation pertains to pre-Colombian antiquities, as Coggins, Gilgan,
and Luke and Henderson have all demonstrated.23
These studies represent important efforts to quantify the damage to the archaeological landscape. But
each deals with only one archaeological site,24 one
geographic region,25 one country,26 or one historical
focus.27 Thus, we are left with a rather inchoate picture
of the global nature, scope, and frequency of looting.
Moreover, the very nature of this scholarly attention
to looting lends itself to the impression that looting is an isolated problem, plaguing some countries
but not others. This impression has proved useful in
downplaying the seriousness of the looting problem,
which is part of dealers and collectors general strategy to minimize connections between looting and the
trade.28 Moreover, scholarly attention to some regions
of the world to the exclusion of others has meant that
many countries have not received as much attention
as they deserve in the international debate on looting
and the illicit antiquities trade. Finally, if looting does,
as has been suggested, coincide with other forms of
transnational criminal activity (e.g., organized crime,
drug trafficking)29 that move in tandem with globalization, then it is critical to examine the geographic
scope and frequency of looting and archaeological
site destruction on a global scale.
This study attempts to fill the lacuna. It employs a
glocal (global and local) approach to the study of
E.g., Gill and Chippindale 1993; Watson 1997, 2006;

Schick 1998; Paredes 1999; Brodie et al. 2000, 2001, 2006;
Chippindale and Gill 2000; Chippindale et al. 2001; Elia 2001;
Gilgan 2001; Nrskov 2002; Toner 2002; Atwood 2004; Kersel
2006; Luke and Henderson 2006; Roosevelt and Luke 2006.
13
Italian slang for tomb-robber (Hamblin 1970). For Lericis estimate, see Meyer 1973.
14
Roosevelt and Luke 2006, 179. Signs of looting activity
include, but are not limited to, holes, pits, missing objects, or
other damage to the site not part of systematic archaeological
excavations.
15
Gutchen 1983, 223, 225.
16
Dembel and van der Waals 1991; Dembel et al. 1993.
17
OReilly 2007.
18
Gado 2001, 59.
19
Brodie et al. 2000.
20
Gill and Chippindale 1993.
21
Chippindale et al. 2001.
22
Elia 2001; Nrskov 2002.
23
Coggins 1995, 1998; Gilgan 2001; Luke and Henderson
2006.
E.g., Meyer 1973.

E.g., Roosevelt and Luke 2006.
26
E.g., Dembel and van der Waals 1991; Dembel et al.
1993; OReilly 2007.
27
E.g., Elia 2001; Nrskov 2002.
28
Brodie 2002; Renfrew 2002. For a discussion of looting
within the context of the broader cultural heritage debate,
see Elia (2009), who has written on the mythologies of the
antiquities trade that facilitate the explanation, justification,
and validation of antiquities collecting. These are the myths
of the old collection, the chance find, the reputable dealer,
the collector as guardian of the past, and the guilty source
country. In light of the intensity and ubiquity of archaeological site looting evidenced by this study, I suggest that perhaps
there is in fact a sixth myth: the myth of exaggerated looting. As Elia (2009, 241) notes: Dealers, collectors, and curators who participate in the antiquities market almost never
acknowledge [the causal relationship between collecting and
looting]. Instead they offer denial, obfuscation, blame, and
self-justification.
29
Proulx 2010.
12
24
25
2013]
ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE LOOTING IN GLOCAL PERSPECTIVE
113
archaeological site looting by focusing on local opinions about and personal encounters with looting
among a large international group of archaeologists
excavating throughout the world. By means of a glocal approach, I aim to broaden our understanding of
looting and archaeological site destruction as global
phenomena by better grounding such issues in the local, on-the-ground contexts in which they happen.
Archaeological site looting is a global concern, but it
does not exist apart from its constituent localities. In
other words, as I have argued elsewhere,30 global phenomena are really locally contextualized phenomena;
the global is in fact local at all points,31 and looting as
a local phenomenon provides the groundwork for our
global way of seeing32 archaeological site destruction
around the world in the broader context of international cultural heritage. There is thus a clear need to
achieve a broader and more refined understanding of
the glocal contexts of archaeological site looting, since,
as Mackenzie notes, [b]efore we can talk of how best to
regulate the market, we must be sure of the existence
and form of the looting problem we wish to address.33
An improved assessment of looting around the world,
one that better links the global with the local, is thus
necessary for laying the empirical groundwork for both
the formulation of international market regulatory
practices and further scholarly analysis.34
This study thus examines global archaeological site
looting in context, situating it in the local experiences
and narratives of field archaeologists worldwide by
means of an online mixed-methods survey. Given that
many archaeologists have worked on the ground at the
very sites of interest to looters, how have they personally experienced looting? Where have they experienced
it, and what is the nature of their experiences? In addition, the survey was designed to determine whether
their assessments and experiences vary significantly
depending on where in the world they work.
I begin with an overview of the study sample, research design, methodology, operationalization, and
analytic procedure employed in this study. Next, I
present findings in three separate sections: archaeologists assessments of the geographic scope of archaeological site looting, their personal experiences
with on-site looting, and their experiences with off-site
looting. I conclude with a discussion of the salience
of these findings.
Proulx 2010.
Latour 1993, 117.
32
Hobbs 1998, 419.
33
Mackenzie 2005, 1.
34
Personal vignettes and isolated documentation of site
damage alone cannot provide a solid enough foundation on
which to base policy and practice because in the end, as Brodie et al. (2001, 1) have noted, when the hard political decisions are made, it is figures that count.
35
At the heart of archaeologys authenticity and identity
as a discipline lies archaeological fieldwork (DeBoer 1999;
Holtorf 2005; Proulx 2010). For the professional archae-
ologist, the ability to do fieldwork has always been central

(Moser 2007, 245). One can safely assume that most, if not all,
practicing archaeologists have firsthand archaeological fieldwork experience of some sort and, by extension, represent an
authoritative source on the experience of fieldwork (Proulx
2010). It stands to reason, then, that if looting is a facet of
that fieldwork experience, and fieldwork is an essential element of archaeology, then archaeologists find themselves in a
prime position to encounter looting activity firsthand; archaeologists are an invaluable resource for the scholarly study of
archaeological site looting and the trade in illicitly obtained
antiquities (Proulx 2010).
30
31
archaeological perspectives on looting

Based on the centrality of fieldwork to the discipline
of archaeology,35 this study is grounded in the premise
that archaeologists are an invaluable source of information about site looting and, by extension, the illicit
antiquities trade at the source end of the problem.
Field archaeologists are in a position to observe looting
firsthand, whether the focus of their work is archaeological survey, excavation, post-excavation analysis, or
site conservation and management. This alone makes
them a significant source of information on looting
and site destruction. Moreover, archaeological interpretation is necessarily preoccupied with systematic
and meticulous methodology. Archaeologists, concerned with learning as much as possible from a site,
are painstakingly precise in their efforts to preserve
archaeological context by recording and photographing features, locating and digging trenches, taking
samples, and drawing detailed plans and maps. Most
archaeologists spend multiple field seasons at one
site meticulously surveying, excavating, or conducting post-excavation analyses. As a result, archaeologists know their archaeological sites and landscapes
intimately. Despite the difficulties in establishing the
presence and extent of looting, archaeologists are
generally sensitive to changes at their sites, which puts
them in a good position to assess the presence and
magnitude of looting activity. In sum, archaeologists
assessments of site looting represent invaluable local
perspectives on a global problem.
research design and sample

To collect field archaeologists accounts of their
personal experiences with looting, I crafted an online
114
survey based on a structured questionnaire format.

This research design incorporated both qualitative and
quantitative methodologies. The computer-assisted,
self-administered online survey was e-mailed to nearly
15,000 archaeologists working around the world, each
of whom received a linked invitation to participate in
the study. Embedded within each respondents survey link was a unique numerical identifier (token),
which was used as that respondents study participant
number. Online survey responses were automatically
collected in an electronic database.
[AJA 117
Sample Population
The target population for this study was archaeologists working throughout the world. Since there is no
master database of archaeologists worldwide and
their current contact information, sampling was conducted from a variety of online sources.36 First, five of
the largest international archaeological organizations
were selected:
1. Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) based
in Boston, Massachusetts.37
2. World Archaeological Congress (WAC), whose
current president is based in Adelaide, Australia.38
3. European Association of Archaeologists (EAA)
based in Prague, Czech Republic.39
4. Register of Professional Archaeologists (RPA)

based in Baltimore, Maryland.40
5. Society for American Archaeology (SAA) based in
Washington, D.C.41
From these five archaeological organizations, a
total of 9,945 contacts were gathered to be included
in the sample. Archaeologists who were members of
more than one of these organizations were included
in the database only once. To locate contact information for more archaeologists from around the world,
I conducted online searches, scouring the Internet
for other archaeological research centers, institutes,
societies, organizations, and associations. From these
Internet searches, 43 more sources were identified,
from which 2,031 more contacts were included in the
master target population database. Next, I examined
the websites of each and every school listed online with
programs, departments, schools, centers, or institutes
for archaeology and related disciplines; this yielded
contact information for an additional 1,950 faculty and
staff members whose profiles, teaching and research
agendas, or subunits included the word archaeology.
Finally, to ensure that the master database of potential survey respondents was as representative as
possible, I conducted more online searches to locate
archaeologists working in regions or countries under-
36
I completed data collection for this project in late 2007
and began analyzing the data in 2008.
37
With more than 7,600 members, the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) is the largest North American archaeological organization. Its members work throughout the
world, most notably in the Old World. First and foremost, I
scoured all the AIAs online fieldwork bulletins for participants and their contact information. Next, since the AIA
provides neither a publicly available member directory nor
member contact information on its website, I searched the
AIA annual meeting programs and abstracts from 2006 and
2007 for participants names; I then conducted an Internet
search for their e-mail addresses. This yielded 1,100 potential
survey participants from among those contacts whose information was available in one of the AIA sources noted above.
38
The World Archaeological Congress (WAC) is the only
international organization for practicing archaeologists. Instead of annual meetings, the WAC hosts congresses every
four years in various locations. Like the AIA, the WAC provides no publicly available member directory; thus, I scoured
meeting programs and abstracts from the most recent congress (2003), which was the only one to date to provide online
meeting information. I also searched information from the
Inter-Congress of the WAC. I added all members participating in the WAC newsletter and WAC listserv to the master database of potential survey respondents. The WAC contingent
of the sample population is thus limited to members who participated in one of the above WAC activities; it yielded 632
more potential survey respondents.
39
The European Association of Archaeologists (EAA) is
an archaeological organization geared toward European ar-
chaeologists working in Europe and throughout the world.

Like the WAC and AIA, the EAA does not provide any online
member directory. I searched the 2006 EAA annual meeting
programs and abstracts for contact information and performed supplementary Internet searches to locate meeting
participants email addresses. Another 908 individuals were
included this way. The EAA contingent of the master database
was limited to members who participated in the 2006 annual
meeting and whose email addresses could be located through
a Google search.
40
Since the preceding four organizations are largely academic, I also sampled the Register of Professional Archaeologists (RPA). The RPA includes field archaeologists who work
in a variety of professional outlets outside academia. The organization maintains an online member directory, which includes more than 6,500 archaeologists working throughout
the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, Europe, and the Cayman Islands. The RPA contingent of the target population
was 732 and was limited to members who participated in the
online RPA directory and provided email addresses.
41
Since the fieldwork of AIA archaeologists is largely concentrated in the Old World, in terms of representativeness it
was important to sample from the Society for American Archaeology (SAA), whose members work primarily throughout North and South America. The SAA offers its members
access to an online directory that includes more than 7,000
member names. Not all SAA members participate in this online directory, however, so the SAA potential respondents
were those who both participated in the online directory and
provided an email address. The SAA directory provided another 6,573 potential survey respondents.
2013]
115
represented in the database. I used Boolean operators

to combine country or region names with archaeology, cultural heritage, anthropology, history,
and any other terms that might yield information on
practicing archaeologists or current archaeological
projects in those areas. Finally, I scoured government
agency websites, archaeological fieldwork bulletins,
and online educational resources, which yielded an
additional 503 contacts. No contact was entered into
the database more than once.
Collectively, these search efforts yielded a total of
14,429 archaeologists working throughout the world.
Table 1 in the online appendix (www.ajaonline.org)
summarizes the sources from which potential survey
respondents were compiled; table 2 shows a complete
listing of sources from which the sample population
was drawn. Despite the impressive total of 14,429 archaeologists contacted, the sample population is limited in several respects. First, contact information in
many of the sources summarized above was available
only for members who had participated in a recent annual meeting or congress; clearly, members who had
done neither were not included in the sample. Second,
only online sources were included in the construction
of the sample population. Many universities and organizations in the developing world, for example, simply
did not have websites from which any member contact information could be pulled. For some entities,
in fact, a website was available one day and the next
day either experienced server errors or vanished altogether; for others, the contact information provided
was out of date. Third, at this point in the sampling
there was no guarantee that the individuals for whom
contact information had been pulled were even practicing archaeologists, since many organizations are also
open to the public. Last, I searched only information
that was available in English, Italian, French, Spanish, Greek, Turkish, or Romanian; sources in other
languages were consulted when translation assistance
was available.
Finally, in addition to sampling difficulties, there
are a number of challenges associated with not only
surveys but online surveys in particular. First, not all
archaeologists, especially those working in under-
developed countries, have Internet access. Second,

spam-blocking technology may have routed the
emailed survey invitation to some archaeologists junkmail folders. Last, while online surveys are more cost
efficient and expedient than those delivered through
the post,42 whether online surveys have improved response rates is unclear.43
Despite the limitations discussed aboveand
without advance email notification, financial incentives, telephone solicitation, or mailed survey instructionsthe online survey, sent to a total of 14,429
archaeologists working throughout the world, still
garnered an impressive response rate of more than
16% (n=2,358).44
42
Salant and Dillman 1994; Flaherty et al. 1998; Sheehan
and McMillan 1999.
43
Sheehan 2001.
44
Respondents are referred to only by study participant
(survey token) number and, where available, profession and
location of fieldwork.
45
Survey respondents lacking professional archaeological
training and/or archaeological fieldwork experience of any
kind were thanked for their time and automatically filtered
out of the survey population.

46
Personal experience with looting is defined as firsthand
observation on one or more archaeological sites of looting or
physical evidence of looting activity, such as holes, pits, missing objects, or other damage to the site not part of systematic
archaeological excavations (Proulx 2010).
47
E.g., many questions asked archaeologists to rate their
agreement with a particular statement; response options were
presented on a 5-point Likert scale.
Survey Contents
The survey was a mixed methodological online format yielding both quantitative and qualitative data.
This article presents findings focused on three issues:
1. Respondents experience and training in the field
(i.e., their practical and academic training; the
number of archaeological projects on which they
have worked; and the extent, location, and nature
of their fieldwork experience).45
2. Respondents personal encounters with looting
and site destruction.46 Looting was operationalized as the removal of culturally significant material from archaeological sites for commercial gain,
the act of which destroys archaeological context
or evidence needed to learn from the site.
3. Respondents assessments of the local nature of
archaeological site looting where they personally
participate in archaeological fieldwork.
The survey also collected participants demographic
information, including age, gender, level of education,
occupation, country of origin, country of residence,
and native language.
While most of the survey questions offered mutually exclusive response options,47 many questions
also provided open-ended response fields in which
participants could provide more detailed feedback
about their experiences with and opinions about the
presence, nature, and frequency of archaeological
site looting. At the end of the survey, a sizeable blank
116
response field was also provided in which archaeologists could expand even further on their comments.
Respondents were also asked at the end of the survey
whether they wanted to participate further in the study
by answering structured follow-up questions by telephone or email, and 662 (28%) respondents agreed.
Those respondents were then asked to elaborate on
their opinions about and experiences with looting
and archaeological site destruction. Blank response
fields, open-ended survey questions, and follow-up
interviews by phone and email yielded a total of 3,009
qualitative comments.
[AJA 117
they have personally experienced looting in the field.49

Survey participants were thus asked whether they had
ever personally observed looting activity or evidence
of looting activity while engaged in fieldwork (0 = no ;
1 = yes ). Descriptive statistics for these selected dependent variables are presented in the online appendix
(table 3).
independent variables:
operationalization
Personal Experience with Looting

Archaeologists opinions about looting and site destruction may vary significantly depending on whether
Location of Archaeological Fieldwork

If looting and archaeological site destruction are
phenomena that may vary from one region, country,
and archaeological site to the next, then archaeologists perceptions of such phenomena should vary
significantly depending on where they work in the
world. The survey asked archaeologists, Throughout
your entire career in archaeology or a related field,
in what country have you participated in the majority
of your archaeological fieldwork of any kind? Since
this question yielded 118 different responses,50 country responses had to be aggregated by continent/
geographic region for certain analytical procedures.51
Table 4 in the online appendix presents all the countries reported as locations of archaeological fieldwork
experience among survey respondents, and table 5
shows how countries were aggregated for analysis.52
Most archaeologists who participated in the online survey and subsequent follow-up interviews were
living in the countries in which they had performed
most of their archaeological fieldwork. Of the 2,358
respondents, 44.8% had carried out most of their
fieldwork in the United States. Other top countries
48
Since many field archaeologists have engaged in fieldwork in a variety of locations, participants were asked to answer the survey questions by focusing on the location where
they have done most of their fieldwork. If respondents had information about looting at a site other than the one specified
as their primary fieldwork location, they were encouraged to
share that information in the open-ended response fields as
well as in a follow-up interview.
49
In some analyses, the dependent variable, personal experience with looting, was alternatively employed as an independent variable and is noted as such in the analysis/findings.
50
The software employed to program the online survey
would not permit the creation of an extensive country dropdown menu with hundreds of options for this question. Instead, respondents had to manually type in the country/
region where they engaged in most of their archaeological
fieldwork; if they typed in United States or USA, they were
given the option to specify a state as well.
51
The variable, location of fieldwork, was aggregated for several analytical procedures because the reported 118 country
responses were far too many for any form of regression analysis. After some experimentation with varying levels of aggre-
gation, I collapsed the responses into continent/geographic

regions as defined by the CIA World Factbook (https://www.
cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook),which
yielded a manageable 10 categories: 1 = North America; 2 = Central America and Caribbean; 3 = South America; 4 = western Europe,
central Europe, and the United Kingdom; 5 = eastern Europe, southeastern Europe, and Eurasia; 6 = Asia, Southeast Asia, and southern
Asia; 7 = Oceania; 8 = Africa; 9 = Middle East; and 10 = other. By
making use of the fixed factor feature in IBM SPSS Statistics,
I created eight dummy variables from these regions. North
America served as the reference category, since it is recommended that the group with the largest number of responses
serve as such (Field 2005). Because the 118 country responses
were aggregated into broader geographic regions for regression analysis, countries were left disaggregated in as many other discussions and analyses as possible, in concern for the loss
of specificity in information.
52
The CIA World Factbook represents only one method for
defining world regions. E.g., countries included in Eurasia
in the World Factbook may be referred to elsewhere as central Asia (e.g., www.worldbank.org) or western Asia (e.g.,
www.un.org) (Proulx 2010).
dependent variables: operationalization

Geography of Looting
Participants were asked to assess looting activity in
the country where they had personally performed most
of their archaeological fieldwork (1 = not happening at
all ; 2 = decreasing; 3 = fluctuating; 4 = remaining the same;
5 = increasing ).48 For this question, scores of 2, 3, 4, or 5
were taken as implicit indications that respondents perceived some degree of looting to occur at sites where
they had worked, whether the looting was increasing,
decreasing, fluctuating, or holding constant. Responses
to this statement were collapsed into two dichotomous
categories. Respondents who indicated 1 on this question were recoded as 0 (looting does not happen where I
work); respondents indicating 25 on this question were
recoded as 1 (looting occurs in some form where I work ).
2013]
reported as primary locations of fieldwork experience

were Greece (4.36%), the United Kingdom (3.77%),
Mexico (3.3%), Israel (2.88%), Peru (2.75%), Turkey
(2.29%), Australia (1.48%), Belize (2.08%), Canada
(2.75%), and Egypt (1.14%).
Extent and Type of Fieldwork Experience
If looting and archaeological site destruction vary
not only by location but also by time, then archaeologists perceptions and experiences may vary significantly depending on how long they have been in the
field and the nature of their fieldwork. The following
survey questions were thus selected for analysis as independent variables:
1. In what type of archaeological fieldwork have you
participated (archaeological survey, archaeological excavation, post-excavation analysis, site conservation, other)? (0 = not selected, serving as a reference
category ; 1 = selected ).
2. When did you first participate in archaeological
fieldwork? (0 = 2000present, serving as a reference category ; 1 =19901999 ; 2 = 19801989 ; 3 = 19701979 ;
4 = 19601969 ; 5 = 19501959 ; 6 = before 1950 ).53
3. In how many archaeological projects have you participated? (0 = < 10 archaeological projects, serving as
a reference category ; 1 = 10 archaeological projects )?54
Complete descriptive statistics for these independent variables are presented in the online appendix
(table 6).
the typical survey respondent

Of the respondents, 59.1% were male; 27.9% fell
within the age range of 3140; and 82.6% indicated
that English was their native language. With regard
to level of education and occupation, 55.2% of respondents held a doctorate or equivalent level of education; 36.5% held a masters degree or equivalent
as their highest level of education to date; 38.2% of
respondents were employed as college or university
professors; and 22.4% were employed as professional
archaeologists working in other types of organizations,
institutions, or agencies at the federal, state, regional,
or local level.
Additionally, 29.9% of respondents reported first
participating in some type of archaeological fieldwork between 1990 and 1999, and archaeological site
53
Participation in archaeological fieldwork includes such
activities as excavation, survey, study season, conservation, site
preservation, cultural-resource management, and other archaeological activity.
54
In counting the number of archaeological projects in
which they had participated, respondents were asked to count
the times they had worked on a single site as part of one proj-
117
excavation was the most commonly selected type of

fieldwork experience among respondents (81.8%).
More than 70% reported having participated in 10 or
more archaeological projects in their careers. In sum,
the typical study participant is an English-speaking,
higher-educated male who is professionally trained
in archaeology and living and working in the United
States, with anywhere between 10 and 20 years of archaeological experience, most of which has been on
excavation projects in the field.55
analytical procedure
Since the survey was of mixed methodology, both
quantitative and qualitative analytical procedures
were employed. As regards the quantitative analyses,
binary logistic regression was employed where the
dependent variable was a categorical dichotomy, and
ordinal logistic regression was employed where the
dependent variables were ordinal. With regard to the
qualitative data (N=3,009), a coding strategy was established by means of an emergent approach after all
open-ended responses had been collected.56 Responses
were grouped into categories according to common
response themes, which included archaeologists personal experiences with and opinions about the nature,
scope, and frequency of site looting. All open-ended
responses were processed manually without the help
of qualitative data analysis software. Both quantitative
and qualitative data are presented together in the findings below, organized by dependent variable.
findings: the geographic scope of

archaeological site looting
General Impressions
Participants were first asked to share their general
perceptions about archaeological site looting around
the world. When asked whether they thought looting was a common occurrence in all countries with
archaeological heritage, 1,959 respondents (89.6%)
agreed or strongly agreed. Of the 2,183 participants
who responded to this statement, only 11 (0.005%)
strongly disagreed; they were working in Australia
(n=1), Denmark (n=1), Sweden (n=1), Switzerland
(n=1), Syria (n=1), the United Kingdom (n=1), and
the United States (n=5). When asked whether they
felt that looting happens in only a small number of
ect, whether the project spanned one field season or multiple

seasons.
55
This respondent profile is probably a result of sampling
procedures and limitations, which are discussed earlier in this
article.
56
Neuendorf 2002.
118
countries, 93.6% of respondents either disagreed or

strongly disagreed. When asked whether they felt that
there was in fact a global market for looted antiquities
and other archaeological materials, of the 2,177 participants to respond, 2 (0.1%) disagreed, 20 (0.9%)
neither agreed nor disagreed, 357 (16.4%) agreed,
and 1,798 (82.6%) strongly agreed. Based on the responses to these three questions, it can be said that
most respondents generally perceive looting to be a
common occurrence around the world, not an issue
limited to a handful of countries. According to archaeologists general impressions, then, looting does not
appear to be an isolated phenomenon; it is instead a
globally pervasive problem.
Assessments of Local Looting Activity
Surveyed archaeologists were next asked to assess
the looting activity in the area where they have participated in the majority of their fieldwork. Of the 1,835
respondents who answered this question, only 39
(2.1%) indicated that looting does not, in their opinion, occur where they work; conversely, 1,796 (97.9%)
surveyed archaeologists noted that looting does occur in some capacity where they work, whether it is
increasing, decreasing, fluctuating from one season
to the next, or remaining constant. Of the 118 countries reported as primary locations of archaeological
fieldwork among respondents, looting activity in some
capacity was reported in 103 (87%) of them. Table 7 in
the online appendix shows archaeologists responses
by aggregate location of fieldwork, and a complete,
disaggregated, country-by-country presentation of this
information is presented in table 8.
The preceding descriptive statistics suggest that,
based on field archaeologists assessments of looting
in the countries where they personally participate in
fieldwork, looting is not an isolated problem confined
to some regions or countries. Rather, it appears to be
a pervasive phenomenon. Moreover, commenting
further on the global scope of looting, many archaeologists noted that they thought looting at archaeological sites around the world is in fact an understated
problem. Archaeologist 11488, who has been excavating throughout the eastern United States since the
1970s, wrote, I feel that many people underestimate
the extent of looting and the [illicit] antiquities market. Archaeologist 5557, who has worked extensively
throughout Switzerland, made a similar comment: Pillage is extremely commonplace, and people just dont
[AJA 117
realize this. According to Archaeologist 30760, working in Iowa, Not enough people including myself are
aware of the nature and full extent of this problem.
Other archaeologists commented on the geographic variability of archaeological site looting. Archaeologist 41494, an American graduate student excavating
in Mexico, wrote: I think it is really common, [but]
occurs at different scales. This is a point worth noting, since while looting activity appears to be globally
pervasive, it certainly varies in terms of magnitude, frequency, and destructiveness. Remarking further on the
geographic scope of looting, Archaeologist 40405, an
American university professor who has been engaged
in fieldwork since the 1970s and now works primarily
in Bolivia, made a similar point:
I work in a rather isolated area that does not have the
flashy sorts of objects that many collectors are interested in. For this reason, I think I see less looting than
many othersfor instance archaeologists on the coast
of Peru where looting is absolutely rampant.
Archaeologist 42970, who works in cultural heritage

management in the western United States, added:
Looting in California is not on the scale that it is in
regions with ancient high civilizations or even the
American Southwest. Artifacts in California are mostly
limited to projectile points that dont command high
prices like pottery/figurines/textiles/gold; although
California basketry is highly valued, it rarely is looted
because it doesnt preserve well.
Other respondents noted that archaeological site

looting is not limited to the destruction of archaeological resources on land.57 Archaeologist 17929, who
works in the southeastern United States, wrote:
I work primarily with maritime sites, where looting is
particularly rampant and heinously destructive. I think
this is a huge issue that needs to be addressed from the
international level all the way down to the fishermen
in coastal villages.
Archaeologist 21892, a nautical archaeologist working in Norway, added:

My experience is mainly with underwater sites. Due to
enhanced and relative[ly] cheap scuba technology we
have seen an increase in the looting of sites on deeper
water since about year 2000. Until then these sites (below 60 m depth) in the coastal waters were usually untouchedno[w] they are to a large degree disturbed,
57
Consideration of the damage to submerged archaeological resources is also important, since if site-looting damage on land is
underestimated, then it is likely that damage to underwater sites is similarly underdocumented. For an excellent investigation of the
looting of marine archaeological resources, see Dromgoole 2006.
2013]
mainly by amateur divers with a very material interest

in the history of seafaring.
Based on a combination of these quantitative data

and qualitative feedback, there appears to be a general
consensus among surveyed archaeologists that looting
at archaeological sites is globally prevalent. That an
overwhelming 97.9% of surveyed archaeologists indicated that looting has in fact occurred in some capacity where they work is an interesting finding that, in
combination with archaeologists general impressions
of the global looting situation (discussed above), lends
credibility to the conclusion that archaeological site
looting is not a problem limited to a mere handful of
countries. While there has been speculation throughout the literature that archaeological site looting is a
ubiquitous problem, this study lends firm empirical
support to that assertion. In response to the broader
question regarding the geographic distribution of
archaeological site looting, the answer, according to
surveyed field archaeologists, is simple: everywhere.
If it is in fact widespread, then, just how often are archaeologists encountering it, and how frequently is it
happening from one region or country to the next?
personal experiences with on-site looting

Surveyed archaeologists were asked whether they
had ever personally encountered looting or evidence
of looting activity while participating in fieldwork of
any kind, and 78.5% (n=1,662) replied yes. Only 458
respondents (21.6%) answered no to this question.58
Most affirmative responses were from field archaeologists working throughout the United States (34.0%),
followed by Peru (3.6%), Mexico (2.4%), Belize
(2.3%), Greece (2.2%), Italy (2.1%), Turkey (1.7%),
and Jordan (1.6%). In sum, the overwhelming majority
of surveyed field archaeologistsclose to 80%have
personally experienced looting in some capacity, so
much so that these personal encounters appear to be
commonplace.59 Archaeologist 5025, working in Cyprus, echoed this sentiment:
The possibility that youll meet with looters while
youre working on site is just a given, especially where
I work . . . as graduate students on an excavation for
the first time we are definitely told that we will have interactions with looters at some point. Its just a known
aspect of archaeological fieldwork.
58
There were 149 missing cases for this value, which were
removed from the analysis.
59
Proulx 2011b.
60
Proulx 2011b.
61
Of those respondents who had encountered looting
or evidence of looting activity, 12.7% reported having done
119
Of those who responded affirmatively, only 24.1%

reported that they had personally encountered looters on-site and looting activity in progress. Most respondents instead reported having discovered looters
trenches, holes, pits, or other damage due to unauthorized excavation activity, including, bones and
flakes scattered around near an area that appeared
systematically excavated; sieve screens set up at a site
where no archaeological teams were working; stashes
of hidden looted artifacts near the site (as though the
looters intended to make a surreptitious return for
them at a later date); and human burials disinterred,
ruin walls collapsed or disassembled, pottery vessels
broken, beer cans and cigarette wrappers and other
trash left at sites.60 Nearly half of these respondents
also reported objects stolen from their sites.61
Those respondents who reported having any personal experience with looting were also asked to estimate the frequency with which they had encountered
looting activity at the site level. Most of these surveyed
archaeologists (n=576, or 35.2%) reported that they
had experienced looting or residual evidence of looting activity on two to five individual archaeological sites
over the course of their fieldwork careers. Archaeologist 41491, an American graduate student working
throughout Central and South America, observed:
Nearly every large archaeological site I have worked
at or visited in the Maya area has looter trenches and
looter pits in the major temples. In fact, I cant think
of a Maya site without looter pits.
Respondents were also asked to gauge the frequency

with which those sites where they had observed looting
had been victimized, and nearly half of the respondents (n=492, or 45%) estimated that those sites had
been looted on average on between two and five occasions. Archaeologist 50075, an American museum
employee working primarily in Peru, noted:
I have seen hundreds of sites looted, and looted sites
have been looted thousands of times. One can see the
damage in satellite imagery. Some sites look like they
were used for missile target practice.
Moreover, when participants were asked whether

they felt the looting activity had been getting better
nothing, whereas 50.6% photographed the damage, 44% notified other fieldwork team members, 44.6% notified local
archaeological authorities, and 29.7% notified local law enforcement. For a more detailed discussion of actions taken by
archaeologists upon encountering looting, see Proulx 2011b.
120
or worse since January 2002,62 28.2% (n=628) thought

that although it was fluctuating and some years were
better than others, it was not decreasing in the long
run; 27% (n=600) thought it was holding fairly constant and neither decreasing nor increasing appreciably; 19.6% (n=437) thought it was increasing; and
only 5.9% (n=131) thought it was decreasing. Taken
together, the majority of respondents felt that looting
was either increasing or at the very least not decreasing appreciably. Archaeologist 2137, a Danish graduate student with fieldwork experience on more than
10 projects, echoed this sentiment:
Looting in Jordan, I believe has not increased in resent [sic] years, however, next door in Iraq the looting
has gone through the roof, as several sites have come
close to destruction because of it. It no longer looks
like a coherent tell, but instead resembles a piece of
Swiss cheese.
Another archaeologist, who has been working in

South America since the 1980s, noted:
Looting has dramatically increased in Peru in the
last 10 years. Looters have switched from just looting
cemeteries and mounds to looting every type of site.
Teams of looters will work over a site until it is completely destroyed.
Archaeologist 3424, who also works in South America, made a similar observation:
In Peru, there has definitely been an escalation in
looting activities, and in professional looting activities
using mechanical equipment.
If nearly a quarter of surveyed archaeologists have

observed a noticeable increase in looting activity on
sites where they have worked, what could be driving
this? Archaeologist 34339, a Lebanese university professor, cited lack of state control and economic
reasons. Another respondent, Archaeologist 4027,
There is nothing special about framing frequency questions from January 2002. The online survey was released at
the end of December 2007, so this date yields a manageable
five-year time frame in which respondents could be expected to recall a reasonable number of specific details regarding
their personal experiences with looting and archaeological
site destruction. Other time frames that were tested included 10-year, five-year, and one-year periods; the five-year time
frame was ultimately selected. The 10-year time frame was
too broad, and archaeologists who participated in a test had
trouble recalling explicit details about their experiences with
looting. The one-year time frame was determined to be too
small, since archaeologists are typically engaged in fieldwork
for only a few weeks out of the year. To ask about their experi62
[AJA 117
suggested that this increase in looting activity may be

closely related to land development:
In Cyprus where I have conducted most of my archaeological fieldwork, the increase in looting is closely
linked to property and touristic development which
exposes new archaeological sites which are immediately prey to looting.
Other respondents, such as Archaeologist 37243,

a Czech university professor working in the region of
Moravia, felt that the increase in looting activity had
more to do with globalization:
[The] recent increase in looting . . . is correlated with
two main variables: 1. Spread of new technologies:
especially metal detectors. 2. The fall of communism
that increased the flow of goods and opened international markets.
Archaeologists 3811 (United States) and 35485

(United Kingdom) blamed the Internet, noting respectively that I suspect that eBay and other online
auctions have worsened the situation and [f]rom the
amount of artefactsboth real and obviously fakeI
see offered for sale on Ebay, there can only have been
an increase in site looting. In sum, the majority of
surveyed archaeologists have not only had personal
experiences with looting but have had such experiences at multiple archaeological sites on multiple occasions. Moreover, most also felt that site looting had
not decreased appreciably and that in many places
around the world looting activity had been increasing
for a variety of reasons.
off-site encounters with looting activity

The majority of responding archaeologists (87.1%)
also reported off-site interaction with looters, both admitted and suspected. Admitted looters often spoke
openly about their illegal digging endeavors to the respondents.63 Some archaeologists reported having been
ences within a one-year time frame, in other words, was overly limitingin effect, it asked archaeologists to discuss only
their experiences during the last field season. There was also
some early experimentation with frequency questions about
participants experience over 10-year, five-year, and one-year
periods. While this would have been helpful in constructing
a more detailed picture of the fluctuation of looting activity
around the world, it was determined that the multiple sets
of frequency questions were too time-consuming and confusing for respondents, who often had trouble distinguishing the
proper time frame in which an experience with looting had
occurred.
63
Proulx 2010.
2013]
presented with looted wares by the looters themselves,

who apparently expected the respondents to admire,
appraise, or even purchase items from their collections.64 In fact, when asked whether they had ever been
asked to purchase an item they thought had been looted, nearly half (49%) of the 2,024 archaeologists who
answered this question responded affirmatively. Archaeologist 15853, a German university professor who
has participated in a variety of excavations throughout the United Kingdom, recounted the following:
A metal detectorist came [to me] to show an object he
had found in a plough field and asked for its monetary value. It was clear that the object must have come
from a closed grave.
While it does not appear to be uncommon for looters with illicit goods for sale to approach archaeologists, these occurrences seem to be especially prevalent
in Central America, South America, Asia, Africa, and
the Middle East, as reflected in the online appendix
(table 9).
Why might local looters feel so free to showcase
their looted wares to archaeologists? Survey respondents provided a variety of explanations. Archaeologist
33652, who works in the southern and southeastern
United States, wrote:
The first reason is ego (discoverers bias and bragging
rights). Second, desire to obtain insight on cultural
significance/interpretation and commercial values
specific to the specimen(s). Third, desire to gain information on archeological site locations, techniques
for interpreting artifacts, site materials, locations, etc.
[F]ourth, ignorance for example in that some looters
are nave enough to see professional archeologists as
sympathetic to their activities, etc. Fifth, some looters are anti-government-anti-science-anti-academic to
the point that they enjoy messing with archaeologistspure entertainment for them, i.e. Look what I
foundyou cant touch this or me.
Archaeologist 31087, who works in the western

United States, cited another reason:
Many locals feel free to show their findings to us because they know they are not going to ever be punished
for their activities. . . . They are actually proud of what
they are finding. . . . Thus they view themselves as helping to salvage what can be salvaged.
Other respondents suggested that such interactions with looters were driven by economic necessity.
Archaeologist 9535, who works in the northeastern
64
Proulx 2010.
121
United States, noted, In most field settings, archaeologists are seen as having access to wealth and power.
So people try to access that through trade or sale or
sometimes gifts. Archaeologist 500754, who works in
Peru, wrote, Sometimes I am approached because
individuals dont know I am an archaeologist. Other
times I am approached because individuals think that
because I am an archaeologist I will want to buy what
they have looted. Finally, Archaeologist 5197, who
works in El Salvador, noted simply, Hey, a customer
is a customer.
Archaeologist 11566, who has worked in Belize, suggested that perhaps archaeologists good rapport with
the locals can best explain why looters feel comfortable
to show archaeologists their looted goods. After all,
the success of an archaeological field project is largely
contingent on the establishment and maintenance of
good relationships with the locals:
I worked with some locals who would protect me with
their lives, and I them. I know they had looted in the
past. I have eaten in their dirt-floored homes. They
are not getting rich by looting. Although they may be
getting by [with] looting.
In sum, while close to 80% of surveyed archaeologists reported personal encounters with looting onsite, even more field archaeologistsclose to 90% of
those surveyedreported encounters with admitted
and/or suspected looters off-site.
likelihood of experiencing looting

firsthand
As noted above, the overwhelming majority of surveyed archaeologists78.5%have had personal experience with looting in some capacity. But are there
any significant differences in archaeologists likelihood of experiencing looting depending on where
in the world they work or how much field experience
they have? To test this, I ran a binary logistic regression
procedure, the results of which are presented in the
online appendix (table 10). A significant likelihood
ratio chi-square value (2 = 224.133; df = 20; p = 0.000)
derived from the models omnibus test indicates that
the independent variables included in this model
provide statistically significant (i.e., not attributable
to chance) explanatory power for the dependent variable. As table 10 shows, there were several significant
differences:
1. The year in which respondents began their careers
in field archaeology, 2 = 44.73 (df = 6; p < 0.001).
122
[AJA 117
2. Whether they have participated in archaeological

excavation, 2 = 10.01 (df = 1; p = 0.002).
3. Whether they have participated in archaeological
site preservation, 2 = 10.79 (df = 1; p = 0.001).
4. Whether they have participated in some other
type of archaeological fieldwork, 2 = 4.84 (df =
1; p = 0.028).
5. The geographic region in which respondents conduct the majority of fieldwork, 2 = 64.52 (df =
8; p < 0.001).
6. The number of archaeological projects on which
respondents have worked, 2 = 1904 (df = 1; p <
0.001).
None of the other independent variables included
in the model (e.g., whether a respondent had participated in post-excavation analysis or site survey) was
significant.65 Taken together, these data can be interpreted to mean that the likelihood of a field archaeologist personally experiencing looting depends on
the extent and type of archaeological fieldwork he or
she has performed and the location of such fieldwork.
See the online appendix (table 11) for these variable
differences.66
The model predicts that archaeologists who began
working sometime between the 1960s and the 1990s
will have lower log odds of never having personally
encountered looting compared with archaeologists
who began their careers during the 2000s (the reference category). In other words, archaeologists with
more time and experience in the field are less likely
to report that they have not personally encountered
looting at any point during their careers. Similarly, archaeologists who have participated on more archaeological projects throughout their careers are less likely
to report not having personally encountered looting.
This makes sense, given that archaeologists who have
simply spent more time in the field and have participated in more projects have had more opportunities
to encounter looting, compared with their less experienced counterparts.
The same can be said for type of archaeological
fieldwork experience. For archaeologists with site ex-
cavation and preservation experience, the log odds of

not having observed looting would decrease by 0.64
and 0.44 units, respectively, compared with the log
odds of those archaeologists who have not participated
in any field excavations or on-site preservation activities. Field archaeologists engaged in either excavation
or conservation, in other words, are more likely to report having personally experienced looting than are
their colleagues who have not excavated or worked in
site preservation.67
Interpretations similar to those discussed above can
be made in regard to fieldwork location, with North
America serving as the reference category. As indicated in the online appendix (table 11), there were
significant differences in a respondents likelihood to
encounter looting personally if he or she was working somewhere in Oceania, Africa, western/central
Europe, or the United Kingdom. Regression analysis,
having controlled for other variables, revealed that archaeologists working in these places were more likely
not to have personally experienced looting than their
counterparts working in North America. This is an
interesting finding, given that even the most cursory
examinations of the extant literature do not place
North America among the regions with the most serious looting problems. It could indicate that the looting problem throughout North American has been
particularly understated.
In sum, the odds that field archaeologists will personally encounter looting vary significantly depending on how long they have been in the field, the type
and extent of fieldwork they have undertaken, and the
location of their fieldwork. Archaeologists with more
time and broader experience in the field have simply
had more opportunities to encounter site looting.
While data presented earlier showed that personal experience with looting was reported in a much broader
spectrum of countries than indicated in the extant literature, it also appears that the chances of happening
upon looting on-site vary geographically. The odds of
experiencing looting are greater throughout North
America than in Oceania, Africa, and central/western
Perhaps when compared with archaeological site

excavation and preservation, surface survey and postexcavation analysis afford less intimacy with the archaeological landscape, putting archaeologists with excavation and
preservation experience in a differential position by which to
encounter site looting.
66
The results in the online appendix (table 11) are based
on the logits of the variables, which means that the coefficients
represent the log odds of the dependent variable (whether a
survey respondent has personally experienced looting). Since
the reference category for the dependent variable is whether
a respondent selected no (coded as 0), indicating that they

have not in fact personally experienced looting as such, the
results must be interpreted based on the log odds of a respondent selecting no in response to this question.
67
Archaeologists without other types of fieldwork experience have lower log odds (by 0.41 units) than archaeologists
who do have experience with these types of fieldwork. Other types of fieldwork reported among survey respondents included but were not limited to archaeological illustration,
GIS analysis, teaching field school, archaeological part
development, educational tours, and aerial survey.
65
2013]
Europe and the United Kingdom; the likelihood

that a field archaeologist will personally encounter
looting are not significantly higher or lower in Central America, the Caribbean, South America, Asia,
eastern Europe, or Eurasia than in North America.
These geographic differences are likely due to differential enforcement and protection efforts, domestic
legal landscapes, or the archaeological landscapes
themselves.
discussion of key findings

Based on the feedback of surveyed archaeologists
working around the world, looting and subsequent
archaeological site destruction are universal. Looting
activity in some capacity was reported in 103 (87%)
of the 118 countries reported as primary locations of
archaeological fieldwork among respondents. The
overwhelming majority (97.9%) of respondents reported that looting was occurring in some capacity in
the country or region where they conduct fieldwork,
and 78.5% of respondents reported having had personal on-site experience with looting at some point
during their careers. While there was some variation
in archaeologists experiences and odds of personally
encountering looting, field archaeologists encounters with looting are hardly surprising given that they
work regularly on the very sites of interest to looters.
Though experiences with residual looting activity are
more commonplace on-site, interactions with looters themselves are generally more common off-site.
Most surveyed archaeologists have observed looting
on multiple sites, and those sites have been looted on
multiple occasions.
That archaeological site looting is globally pervasive,
commonplace, iterative, and not decreasing appreciably is a critical finding. Lootingand, consequently,
the role it may play in the antiquities tradecan no
longer be dismissed as simply exaggerated,68 nor can
concerns about looting be cast off as the mere products of scaremongering archaeologists69 with overblown imaginations and thinly veiled preservationist
agendas. The quantitative and qualitative data presented above clearly lend empirical support to the
conclusion that the global looting phenomenon is
not an exaggerated problem. Such empirical support
in turn provides a firmer, quantifiable foundation on
which to base cultural heritage policy and practice
Brodie 2002; Renfrew 2002.

Brodie et al. 2001.
70
Brodie et al. 2001, 1.
71
Merryman 1995.
72
Brodie 2002.
68
69
123
because in the end, as Brodie and Doole note, when

the hard political decisions are made, its the figures
that count.70
That archaeological site looting is not a problem
simply limited to economically underdeveloped
source countries is another important finding. One
rationale offered by those who champion the internationalist perspective on cultural heritage 71 and
advocate free trade in antiquities (supporters of this
view are traditionally auction houses, museums, dealers, and collectors) is that such open trade would
economically benefit impoverished nations.72 Yet surveyed archaeologists reported looting in countries and
regions of the world reflecting a variety of economic
statuses. This study makes clear that the archaeology
and culture of demand countries themselves are not
immune73 and that the justification for an open antiquities trade on the grounds that it is an important
economic resource for impoverished peoples of underdeveloped source countries is a weak one.74
conclusion
This study represents a fledgling effort to document
the nature, scope, and frequency of archaeological
site looting in glocal perspective by focusing on an
international sample of practicing field archaeologists who represent but one attitudinally heterogeneous group on the source end of things. Surveyed
archaeologists were offered an unprecedented forum
in which to share their perceptions of and personal
encounters with looting, and they provided a colorful
spectrum of observations and opinions with as many
common denominators as variables. While there may
be nothing especially groundbreaking about asking
archaeologists to share their personal experiences
with and opinions about archaeological site looting,
this studys design and sample make it innovative in
its global scope, aim, and execution. Simply put, this
study lends empirical support to the claim that looting
is an iterative problem that is both globally and temporally pervasive, not confined to certain areas of the
world or particular types of archaeological resources.
While we may never be able to measure exactly
what has been materially and intellectually lost to pillage and plunder,75 there is no uncertainty that the
surveyed field archaeologists reports of looting originated in many different parts of the world or that most
Brodie 2002, 2.
For an in-depth examination of dealers and collectors
perspectives on looting and the antiquities trade, see Mackenzie 2005.
75
Roosevelt and Luke 2006.
73
74
124
of those archaeologists have had personal experience

with looting both on-site and off. With hundreds of
archaeologists around the globe reporting similar experiences with looting, it no longer seems feasible to
categorize looting as an isolated problem limited to
underdeveloped countries or exaggerated for political purposes. In broadening and refining our understanding of looting and site destruction in a glocal
sense, this study represents an important step toward
a more globally informed, locally nuanced response
to archaeological site looting and its role in the illicit
antiquities trade.
l. douglas wilder school of government

and public affairs
virginia commonwealth university
923 west franklin street
richmond, virginia 23284
bbproulx@vcu.edu
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NOTE
available online as open access
Symbols of Fertility and Abundance in the Royal

Cemetery at Ur, Iraq
NAOMI F. MILLER
Abstract
can use known archaeological and historical context

to inform interpretations of ancient symbolism. For
example, fertility and abundance are major themes in
the iconography of the ancient Near East in general1
and the Ur cemetery in particular.2 This preexisting
understanding narrows the range of plausible referents for the twisted wire ornaments found in the grave
of Queen Puabi of Ur.
Ancient Ur was one of the most important cities
of Mesopotamia during the third millennium B.C.E.
The site was excavated under the direction of Leonard Woolley in the late 1920s and early 1930s by a
joint team from the University Museum (University of
Pennsylvania) and the British Museum. The remains of
royalty, sacrificed retainers, and sumptuous ornaments
and furnishings were found in its cemetery.3 Queen
Puabis tomb chamber (Tomb PG 800), which dates
to the mid third millennium B.C.E., contained many
precious objects.4 The primary occupant was cloaked
in strings of carnelian, gold, and lapis lazuli beads. She
wore a complex headdress of gold rings, bands, and
leaf-shaped and rosette forms. Her attendants had simpler versions of these ornaments, and the tomb held
many other items of jewelry; vessels of silver, gold, and
carved stone; and other artifacts.5 For about 70 years,
an object called Puabis Diadem was displayed in the
University Museum (renamed the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
in 1994) in Philadelphia. It was fabricated from lapis
lazuli beads and small gold pendants, which were assembled by Woolley based on his considered assessment that the items came from a single object (fig. 1).6
In addition to the twisted wires, which are the focus
Fertility and abundance are important themes of ancient Mesopotamian texts and images. The goddess Inanna and her consort Dumuzi personify these ideas in texts
of the second millennium B.C.E. Excavated by Leonard
Woolley in the 1920s, the Royal Cemetery at Ur dates to
the mid third millennium B.C.E. Among the tombs, that
of Queen Puabi yielded many ornaments of gold, carnelian, and lapis. Some of the pendants realistically depict
identifiable animals. Others are more stylized depictions
of clusters of apples, dates, and date inflorescences. Apples
and dates are both associated with the goddess Inanna,
who is associated with love and fertility. Twisted wire
pendants in the same group of objects are not so readily
identified. I propose here that the twisted wire pendants
in the Puabi assemblage may literally represent rope, symbolically reference sheep, and narratively evoke the flocks
of the shepherd Dumuzi. Pairing symbols of Inanna and
Dumuzi evokes life in a place of death.*
introduction
Ambiguity is inherent in the visual and verbal expression of ideas, and imagery on objects and in texts
often embodies multiple levels of meaning. To understand a representation, it can be useful to start with
its most literal aspect before investigating potentially
richer associations. For example, a photograph of
Rembrandts Supper at Emmaus represents the painting; the figure in the painting represents the artists
model; the model represents Jesus; and insofar as Jesus
is a theological abstraction, the only way to read the
culturally specific meaning of the painting is through
language. For the artifacts of an ancient civilization,
the accuracy of each successive layer of inference may
depend on that of the preceding one. However, we
* I would like to thank Katherine M. Moore for her insightful comments on sheep, Holly Pittman for some suggested
comparanda, and the anonymous reviewer for the AJA for
helpful comments. Figures are my own unless otherwise
noted.
1
Winter 2006.
2
Miller 1999, 2000.
3
Woolley 1934, 1:89.
4
At the time of excavation, the University Museum of the
University of Pennsylvania, the British Museum, and the Iraq
Museum in Baghdad shared the finds from the excavation.
The tripartite division gave most of the Tomb PG 800 material
to the University Museum and the British Museum.
5
Woolley 1934, 1:89.
6
Woolley 1934, 1:89, 2:pl. 140.
127
128
NAOMI F. MILLER
[AJA 117
Fig. 1. Puabis Diadem (courtesy Penn Museum, image no. 152101).
of this contribution, the group of objects that compose the so-called diadem includes representations
of flowering and fruiting date palm inflorescences,
apples, bulls, stags, gazelles, rams, and rosettes.7 No
food offerings are reported from the tomb itself, but
the remains found elsewhere in the cemetery include
charred dates, dried crab apples that had been threaded on a string, and sheep and fish bones.8
Reconsideration and reanalysis of many aspects
of the cemetery deposits were prompted by the traveling exhibition Treasures from the Royal Tombs at Ur
(19982006) and the updated exhibit Iraqs Ancient
Past: Rediscovering Urs Royal Cemetery at the University
of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.9 In preparation for the traveling exhibition,
the so-called diadem was reexamined, and it became
clear that the ornaments and beads were not components of a single item but rather were from as many as
six separate pieces of jewelry that had been deposited
together, perhaps in a since-disintegrated container.10
In the exhibit in Philadelphia, the beads and pendants
have been arranged to reflect this new interpretation.
Even though the artifact known as Puabis Diadem was
not an ancient treasure, the contextual association reported by Woolley suggests its constituent items were
symbolically associated.
In Mesopotamia, the use of text and visual imagery
to create narratives developed in tandem. SchmandtBesserat explains how conventions that organized writing came to organize images in the first half of the third
millennium B.C.E.11 Metaphors were basic to Sumerian
poetic expression.12 Thanks to the multiple possible
phonetic readings of signs, puns are common. Images,
too, can have multiple levels of meaning. They tend to
represent things, sometimes literally (a sheep, a person,

a monster), sometimes through abstraction (water as
two parallel wavy lines, mountains as a scalelike pile).
Even decorative elements, such as the colored clay wall
cones set into temples, are thought to represent palm
trees.13 Visual metonymy and synecdoche are common;
for example, a reed bundle can stand for the goddess Inanna, who is associated with love and fertility,14
and an image of two sheep might represent an entire
flock. Following Schmandt-Besserats argument, thirdmillennium imagery may be nonnarrative but nevertheless may evoke traditional stories and characters.
The theme of abundance can be traced in visual expression from protoliterate times onward, as suggested
by files of cultivated plants and domesticated animals
in a variety of media.15 In the written narratives of the
second millennium, fertility and abundance remain
important themes. A major corpus of literary texts dating to this time16 celebrates the courtship, love, and
marriage of Inanna, Queen of Heaven, and Dumuzi,
the Shepherd. There are also texts that lament the
death of Dumuzi. These Inanna-Dumuzi stories stem
from an oral tradition that is alluded to in earlier inscriptions and texts of the third millennium B.C.E.17
Applying these specific literary traditions to protoliterate symbolic expression could introduce a circular
argument. Nevertheless, very early examples of syllabic
writing, which is a prerequisite for written syntax and
storytelling, appear as names of the deceased in the
funerary context of the Ur Royal Cemetery, which
dates to ca. 2500 B.C.E.18 It is reasonable to think that
the Inanna-Dumuzi stories developed out of a much
earlier tradition. They may therefore shed light on the
Royal Cemetery finds.
Woolley 1934, 1:89; Miller 2000.

Ellison et al. 1978.
9
Zettler and Horne 1998; Baadsgaard et al. 2011.
10
Pittman 1998a, 92.
11
Schmandt-Besserat 2007.
12
Black (1998, 10) comments that the richness of metaphorical language is a characteristic [of Sumerian] which
seems to find no exact echo in the sister literature in
Akkadian.
13
Giovino 2007, 18485.
14
Sefati 1998, 17. Inanna is the most important goddess in
the Mesopotamian pantheon.
15
Winter 2006.
16
Sefati 1998.
17
Sefati 1998, 32.
18
Schmandt-Besserat 2007, 70.
7
8
2013]
FERTILITY AND ABUNDANCE IN THE ROYAL CEMETERY AT UR, IRAQ
Plant imagery in the ornaments of the diadem

group shows clusters of apples19 and the flowering
male branches and fruiting female branches (i.e., spadices) of the date palm. A hymn to Inanna in praise
of the goddess says, You are she who creates apples
in their clusters(?). . . . You are she who creates the
date spadices in their beauty.20 Though the hymn
postdates the Royal Cemetery by several centuries, it
provides support for the view that the date and apple
representations refer to the Inanna traditions.21 Up to
now, the twisted wire pendants in the diadem group
have remained mysterious. I propose here that they
literally represent rope, symbolically reference sheep,
and narratively evoke the flocks of the shepherd Dumuzi, Inannas consort.
description of the twisted wires

Like most of the other ornaments of the diadem
group, the wire pendants are made of gold (fig. 2).
There are 14 complete ones and one broken one.
They are up to about 2 cm long and about 1 cm wide.
The wire lies flat and is twisted. Nine pendants have
nine loops and three have 11 loops arranged along a
vertical axis. One has four pairs of loops and one has
six pairs. The twisting does not create a tight central
line. The shape does not occur elsewhere in the visual media of ancient Mesopotamia, in either two or
three dimensions. Woolley describes them as inverted
palmettes.22
possible referents for the twisted wire

pendants
We may never know exactly what these pendants
represent or why they were buried with Queen Puabi,
but it is possible to evaluate the plausibility of different identifications. I consider three broad categories:
mere decoration, references to plants, and representations of a linear object or phenomenon.
The Twisted Wires as Decoration
At a basic representational level, much of Sumerian
visual expression seems fairly literal: it tends to represent things. The naturalism with which the diadem
19
Tengberg et al. (2008, 92526) dispute the identification
of these forms as apples. They correctly observe that several other sub-globular fruits with adhering floral pieces exist
in the Middle East, but they do not acknowledge that the
suggested identification of the Ur forms as apples is based on
more than just shape; the fruit imagery evokes the way apples
grow in clusters and the way the apple leaves are distributed
relative to the fruit (Miller 2000).
20
Black et al. 19982006, translation t.4.07.a, lines 239
(parentheses in translation). Sjberg (1988) dates the text to
the Ur III or Isin period (late third to early second millen-
129
Fig. 2. Twisted wire pendant (courtesy Penn Museum, image

no. 227158).
group animals are portrayed is strikingthe facial expression of the gazelle and the curvature of its horns,
the fleece of the ram. The associated plant images are
more stylized, but their salient characteristics make
them recognizable as dates and apples. The twisted
wire pendants are more enigmatic, at least in part because they are unique to Puabis jewelry assemblage;
there are no obvious comparanda from later imagery.
That they are found in the same archaeological context as the animal and plant pendants suggests that
they, too, are meant to portray something tangible.
The Twisted Wires as Plant Forms
The wires might directly represent the growth of
the date palm; perhaps they are even a precursor to
the Assyrian sacred tree.23 The date palm, so important in Mesopotamian subsistence, text, and image,
produces basal suckers that may form a ring around
the parent tree.24 The Assyrian Ashurnasirpal relief,
which features a palmette-topped trunk ringed by baby
palmettes, is a first-millennium example (fig. 3). Analogous images appear on cylinder seals that also date
to the first millennium. There are chronological and
symbolic reasons for thinking the twisted wires are not
related to those images, however. First, there is a gap
of more than 1,500 years between the wire ornaments
and the later imagery, and no comparanda connect
the two. Second, the wire objects clearly do not have
a central stalk, a critical omission for a representation
nium B.C.E.).
21
Miller 2000. Alternatively, one might make the argument
that the apple references Dumuzi. According to Sefati (1998,
89), many metaphors in the Dumuzi-Inanna corpus describe
Dumuzi as a garden or a particular plant in the garden (e.g.,
my blossoming garden of apple trees [no. B 28]).
22
Woolley 1934, 1:89, 2:pls. 140, 141.
23
Porter 2003; Giovino 2007. That may be the reason Woolley (1934, 1:89) called them palmettes.
24
Townsend and Guest 1985, 263.
130
NAOMI F. MILLER
[AJA 117
vetch, acacia), actual pinnate leaves have a midrib,

unlike these pendants. Furthermore, other leaves represented among the ornaments in the Royal Cemetery
are all simple in outline and are manufactured in thin,
solid sheets of gold (e.g., the apple among the pendants, the willow and poplar in Puabis headdress).27
Perhaps the loops represent grapes. Here, too, one
must consider how other fruit forms are made. Both
dates and apples in their clusters are quite threedimensional and are not depicted in outline. Unlike
dates, grapes and grapevines do not appear in the imagery of mid third-millennium Mesopotamia. It should
be noted that recognizable grapes and grapevines, unlike apples, do occur in later Assyrian imagery.
Fig. 3. Detail of the Ashurnasirpal II relief from the Northwest Palace of Ashurnasirpal II at Nimrud (883859 B.C.E.).
London, British Museum, inv. no. ME 124531 ( The Trustees of the British Museum).
of a tree25 or for a cult object that represents a tree.26

Third, the items are pendent rather than upright.
One might argue that the pendants bring to mind
a pinnate leaf, with each loop standing in for a leaflet.
In this interpretation, each leaf would have 9, 11, or
12 leaflets. Although some plants that grow in Mesopotamia have compound leaves of this form (e.g.,
Porter 2003.
Giovino 2007.
27
Miller 2000. Tengberg et al. (2008) critique the consensus view that considers the broader leaf on the headdresses to
be poplar (Populus euphratica). They propose an Indus Valley
tree, sissoo (Dalbergia sissoo). This seems unlikely. The most salient characteristic of a leaf is its shape. Many sissoo leaves are
widest in the central third of their length, but poplar leaves
tend to be widest in the lower third, like the gold leaf forms
under consideration here. The acuminate points resemble
those of sissoo leaves, but Tengberg et al. (2008) cannot refute the view that the attenuated tip was a practical solution
for attaching the carnelian beads to the leaves (Miller 2000).
They also put great store by venation. The vein pattern of the
long gold leaves (willow) is identical to that of the broad
ones (poplar), with parallel incised lines meeting along a
25
26
The Twisted Wires as a Linear Phenomenon

Since the other ornaments depict plants and animals
with some literalness, the linearity of wire could be
key to the interpretation. From direct representation
to increasing abstraction, I suggest wire itself, twined
fiber, snakes, roads, water. Wire is not an important
item in Sumerian material culture, text, or imagery,
so it seems unlikely that the twisted pendants represent wire. Twined fiber includes rope, string, yarn, and
thread. It is round in cross-section, linear, and capable
of looping back on itself. Cordage and yarn as raw materials for weaving were important in Sumerian material
culture. Rope is sometimes depicted in the context of
animal control. For example, the Peace Panel on the
Standard of Ur, another object found in the Royal
Cemetery, shows men leading a bull and an equid with
ropes.28 Rope can also have emotional resonance, as
when depicting bound prisoners. It is most likely that
the twisted wire ornaments represent an ordinary use
of rope, as is discussed more fully below.
Snakes and snake forms appear in Sumerian words
and images and are more symbolically significant than
wire and rope (fig. 4, left). When depicted in glyptic
central incised axis. Actual willow and poplar are in the same
plant family (Salicaceae) and have a similar venation pattern:
a central midrib with gently curving side veins. Mass production easily accounts for the schematic result. If, as Tengberg et
al. (2008, 926) admit, the willow is convincingly identified in
Miller (2000), the same criteria apply to poplar.
28
Zettler and Horne 1998, fig. 36b. Ryan Gardner-Cook
(pers. comm. 2011) alerted me to the Egyptian hieroglyph
za, which bears some resemblance to the wire ornaments.
Za represents a subdivision of a work gang and depicts a
cattle hobble (Lehner 2004). Though similar to the Ur ornaments (a series of paired loops along a central axis), za has a
central spine. The similarity between the two looping forms
is most likely based on independent observations and use of
rope in Egypt and Mesopotamia.
2013]
131
Fig. 4. Drawings of images from glyptic: left, snake (modified from Black and Green 1992, fig. 137); right, flowing water
(adapted from Moortgat 1967, pl. F, no. 5).
nent of the Assyrian sacred tree motif. From a formal

perspective, the intertwined, twisted wires of the pendants bear at best a weak visual evocation of water.
or other art forms, they sometimes wind around one

another. One cylinder seal from the Royal Cemetery
has an elaborate snake interlace,29 but the design
is woven (i.e., over-under), not looped. Similarly,
roads were clearly important to ancient Sumerians,
but actual roads do not twist and turn on themselves.
Depictions of roads have not been recognized in thirdmillennium art, and even the later, maplike representation of Nippur inscribed on a clay tablet from that
site (ca. 1300 B.C.E.) focuses on buildings and canals,
not roads.30
Water is not inherently linear, but rivers, streams,
and irrigation canals were very important to the Sumerians. The use of wavy lines to depict water dates
back to the earliest sign for waterthat is, to the Uruk
period. By the mid third millennium, water was represented on glyptic and other three-dimensional media with parallel wavy lines, which emphasize its flow
(see fig. 4, right). Porter comments, Edith Porada
argued plausibly that the network of wavy lines linking
the trunk [of the Assyrian sacred tree in the reliefs of
Ashurnasirpal II] to the surrounding palmettes represents a network of irrigation canals, and the image as
a whole, a well ordered date palm orchard. 31 There
is no traceable connection between the Ur tombs of
the third millennium B.C.E. and this linear compo-
The strongest argument can be made for twined fiber as the literal referent of the twisted wire pendants.
Ethnographic analogy suggests this fiber is rope: in
rural Syria and Turkey, I have observed sheep tied together head to head with their rumps facing outward,
an arrangement that facilitates milking. Being sheep,
they docilely stand as the milker goes up and down
the line with a pail (fig. 5).
Based on the form of the twisted wires and this
plausible ethnographic analogy, I think it likely that
the wire pendants depict the rope that tethers sheep
as they are milked (fig. 6). Thanks to the existence
of literary texts, it is possible to apply this metaphor
of daily practice to ancient symbolic references and
associations. In particular, if these ornaments represent flocks, they complement the date ornaments.
The dates represent the male flowering branches and
female fruiting branches of the palm, and the date is
associated in texts with Inanna.32 This new interpretation of the wire forms provides a symbolic presence for
the shepherd Dumuzi, Inannas consort.33 It should
Pittman 1998b, 80
Unger 1935.
31
Porter 2003, 23.
32
Miller 2000.
33
Cohen (2005, 130) proposes that the ornaments were
associated with procreation, abundance, and, most likely,
the mythological cycle of Dumuzi and Inanna. Although I
do not agree with some of his specific identifications (e.g.,

the eight-petaled gold rosettes of the diadem group as fivepetaled apple blossoms and the small statue of a goat known
as Ram Caught in a Thicket [Zettler and Horne 1998, pl.
8] as a member of Dumuzis flock), I acknowledge Cohens
prior argument that Dumuzi is conceptually represented in
this assemblage.
29
30
focus on twined fiber
132
NAOMI F. MILLER
[AJA 117
Fig. 6. Visualization of the proposed interpretation of the

wire ornaments.
the twisted wire pendants with rope, flocks, and Dumuzi fills a gap in the symbolic repertoire of Puabis
funerary assemblage, thereby confirming the value that
the Sumerians placed on fertility and abundance, even
in the face of death.
Fig. 5. Sheep roped together to be milked, Syria (C. Roffey;

www.flikr.com/photos/charlesfred/2482781212).
be remembered that the Inanna-Dumuzi stories not

only celebrate life but also address death through
their lamentations. In myth, both Inanna and Dumuzi
travel to the underworld; Inanna visits temporarily, but
Dumuzi dies for good. Given the funerary context, it
could be that the absence of sheep in the underworld
is represented. Yet the other imagery in the ornaments,
especially that of the dates and apples, evokes fecundity. Therefore, the rope is more likely a symbol for
a productive flock, even if the former interpretation
cannot be ruled out unequivocally.
where is dumuzi?
The Royal Cemetery of Ur has fascinated archaeologists and the public for almost a century. Although we
may never know exactly how all the symbolic elements
of Sumerian funerary ritual worked together, we know
that the ancient Sumerians incorporated their own
lived experience in a world structured by nature and
culture. The Inanna and Dumuzi stories link the world
of the living with that of the dead. The association of
near east section

university of pennsylvania museum
3260 south street
philadelphia, pennsylvania 19104
nmiller0@sas.upenn.edu
Works Cited
Baadsgaard, A., J. Monge, S. Cox, and R.L. Zettler. 2011.
Human Sacrifice and Intentional Corpse Preservation
in the Royal Cemetery of Ur. Antiquity 85:2742.
Black, J. 1998. Reading Sumerian Poetry. London: Athlone
Press.
Black, J., and A. Green. 1992. Gods, Demons and Symbols of
Ancient Mesopotamia: An Illustrated Dictionary. London:
British Museum Press.
Black, J., G. Cunningham, J. Ebeling, E. Flckiger-Hawker,
E. Robson, J. Taylor, and G. Zlyomi. 19982006. The
Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature. http://etcsl.
orinst.ox.ac.uk/.
Cohen, A.C. 2005. Death Rituals, Ideology, and the Development of Early Mesopotamian Kingship: Toward a New Understanding of Iraqs Royal Cemetery of Ur. Studies in Ancient
Magic and Divination 7. Leiden: Brill.
Ellison, R., J. Renfrew, D. Brothwell, and N. Seeley. 1978.
Some Food Offerings from Ur, Excavated by Sir Leonard Woolley, and Previously Unpublished. JAS 5:167
77.
Giovino, M. 2007. The Assyrian Sacred Tree: A History of Interpretations. Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 230. Fribourg:
Academic Press.
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Lehner, M. 2004. Of Gangs and Graffiti: How Ancient

Egyptians Organized Their Labor Force. Aeragram 7(1):
1113. www.aeraweb.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/
09/aeragram7_1_2004.pdf.
Miller, N.F. 1999. Date Sex in Mesopotamia! Expedition
41(1):2930.
. 2000. Plant Forms in Jewellery from the Royal
Cemetery at Ur. Iraq 62:14955.
Moortgat, A. 1967. The Art of Ancient Mesopotamia. London:
Phaidon.
Pittman, H. 1998a. Jewelry. In Treasures from the Royal
Tombs of Ur, edited by R.L. Zettler and L. Horne, 85
122. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum
of Archaeology and Anthropology.
. 1998b. Cylinder Seals. In Treasures from the Royal
Tombs of Ur, edited by R.L. Zettler and L. Horne, 7484.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum of
Archaeology and Anthropology.
Porter, B.N. 2003. Trees, Kings, and Politics: Studies in Assyrian Iconography. Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 197. Fribourg: Academic Press.
Schmandt-Besserat, D. 2007. When Writing Met Art: From
Symbol to Story. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Sefati, Y. 1998. Love Songs in Sumerian Literature: Critical
133
Edition of the Dumuzi-Inanna Songs. Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan

University Press.
Sjberg, . 1988. A Hymn to Inanna and Her Self-Praise.
Journal of Cuneiform Studies 40:16586.
Tengberg, M., D.T. Potts, and H.-P. Francfort. 2008. The
Golden Leaves of Ur. Antiquity 82:92536.
Townsend, C.C., and E. Guest. 1985. Flora of Iraq. Vol. 8.,
Monocotyledones Excluding Gramineae. Baghdad: Ministry
of Agriculture and Agrarian Reform.
Unger, E. 1935. Ancient Babylonian Maps and Plans.
Antiquity 35:31122.
Winter, I. 2006. Representing Abundance: The Visual Dimension of the Agrarian State. In Settlement and Society:
Essays Dedicated to Robert McCormick Adams, edited by E.
Stone, 11738. Ideas, Debates and Perspectives 3. Los
Angeles: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology.
Woolley, C.L. 1934. The Royal Cemetery: A Report on the Predynastic and Sargonid Graves Excavated Between 1926 and
1931. 2 vols. Ur Excavations 2. London and Philadelphia: British Museum and Museum of the University
of Pennsylvania.
Zettler, R.L., and L. Horne, eds. 1998. Treasures from the Royal Tombs of Ur. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.
REVIEW ARTICLE
Always Present, Ever Changing, Never Lost from

Human View: The Athenian Acropolis in the 21st
Century
JOHN K. PAPADOPOULOS
Gli epistati dellAcropoli: Edilizia sacra nella

citt di Pericle, 447/6433/2 a.C., by Giovanni
Marginesu (Studi di Archeologia e di Topografia
di Atene e dellAttica 5). Pp. 215, figs. 33, tables
6. Pandemos, Paestum 2010. 55. ISBN 978-8887744-36-1 (cloth).
ally, the topography of Athens, ancient and modern.

The sheer bibliography on the subject is daunting, and
as I have noted elsewhere, the result of this weighty
scholarship is that there has been something of a tendency to argue by response to previous scholarship
rather than by a more straightforward assessment of
the evidence.1 The four volumes reviewed herethree
published in 2010, one in 2011set out to do very
different things, yet all four are concerned not only
with understanding the Acropolis and its immediate
surrounds but also with bringing together and interrogating in detail certain aspects of the material record
to open new vistas of interpretation and to flesh out
the story of one of the most remarkable ensembles of
monuments in human history. The two volumes edited by Greco set out to provide nothing less than a
comprehensive overview of the topography of Athens
and Piraeus, whereas Krumeich and Witschels edited
volume takes a more focused look at the Acropolis in
the Hellenistic and Roman periods. I begin, however,
with what is in many ways the most original and interesting of the volumes, not least because it is the only
one written by a single author and the only one with
a well-structured narrative.
Die Akropolis von Athen im Hellenismus und in

der rmischen Kaiserzeit, edited by Ralf Krumeich and Christian Witschel. Pp. x + 445, figs. 141,
tables 2, map 1. Reichert, Wiesbaden 2010. 98.
ISBN 978-3-89500-713-2 (cloth).
Topografia di Atene: Sviluppo urbano e monumenti dalle origini al III secolo d.C. Vol. 1,
Acropoli, Areopago, Tra Acropoli e Pnice, by
Emanuele Greco (Studi di Archeologia e di Topografia di Atene e dellAttica 1). Pp. 304, figs. 155,
maps 2. Pandemos, Paestum 2010. 90. ISBN 97888-87744-34-3 (cloth).
Topografia di Atene: Sviluppo urbano e monumenti dalle origini al III secolo d.C. Vol. 2,
Colline sud-occidentali, Valle dellIlisso, by
Emanuele Greco (Studi di Archeologia e di Topografia di Atene e dellAttica 2). Pp. 278, figs. 153,
maps 3. Pandemos, Paestum 2011. 90. ISBN 97888-87744-38-5 (cloth).
perikles and the EPISTATAI EPI TOIS EN POLEI ERGOIS

At first sight, I had misgivings about reviewing
Marginesus Gli epistati dellAcropoli. After all, an archaeologist wandering into the blood-soaked minefield of Greek epigraphy is a scenario that rarely
plays out well. Happily, this is a volume written by an
epigrapher who is able to go beyond the inscribed
text, for Marginesu is a scholar who appreciates the
historical significance of his material and is able to
place it in its historic and broader social context.
The volume is a seminal study of the epistatai, the
It seems that every generation has to discover the

Athenian Acropolis for itself. Indeed, few areas of classical archaeology have received the sustained attention
bestowed on the Athenian Acropolis and, more gener-
Papadopoulos 2003, 27172.
135
136
Athenian magistrates who were entrusted with the

construction of buildings and public works, and it is
a must-read for anyone interested in any aspect of the
Golden Age of Periklean Athens. In other parts of the
Greek world, epistatai served a variety of functions
for example, in Eleusis, Kyzikos, Ilion, Rhodes, and
Miletos. In Marginesus volume, we are dealing with
the committees of citizens who oversaw the Athenian
public building projects of the Periklean age.
Marginesu proceeds methodically across four chapters. He first reviews the sources on the subject and
points to the discrepancy between the extant literary
sources, which virtually ignore the epistatai, and the epigraphic record, which showcases the central role they
played. Marginesu then focuses on the actual work of
the epistatai (ch. 2), who were nominated only for the
duration of a particular work or project and had to
interact with various other officers, treasurers, magistrates, priests, builders, and sculptors, among many
othersnot least the entire citizen bodyto achieve
what was achieved in record time in the years between
447/6 and 433/2 B.C.E. as part of the Acropolis building project. As it turns out, the epistatai were more than
just overseers; they were capable and crucial agents
linking various components of the radical democracy.
Indeed, their efficacy and efficiency is readily borne
out by the success of the project.
In his third chapter, Marginesu examines the financial responsibilities of the epistatai and the funds
they managed from several different sources. Often
overlookedor at least not fully appreciatedare
the enormous sums of money that the epistatai, as individual Athenian citizens, dealt with. The matter is
well put by Davies in his preface to the present volume:
Not only were they [the epistatai] carrying out a highly politicised programme, in part replacing what the Persians had
destroyed, but they were also handling astronomical sums
of money, of a whole order of magnitude larger than any
Greek community had ever disposed of, and were doing so
in a context which required literacy, numeracy, mental clarity, managerial competence, and sufficient diplomacy and
political nous to be able to face public accountability in a
potentially rumbustious Assembly. (12)
In chapter 4, Marginesu turns his gaze to the ideology underpinning the responsibilities of the epistatai
and, in particular, their management of public moneys and the immense quantities of reserves they spent.
In the final section of this chapter, titled Gestire il
denaro: Corruzione e akribeia (Managing Money:
Corruption and Akribeia), Marginesu shows the epistatai for what they were, not only the curators of a par-
Martin-McAuliffe and Papadopoulos 2012.
[AJA 117
ticular project but Athenian citizens who exploited a

new type of administrative language, at the same time
sophisticated and modern, and who took pride in seeing Athena take possession of the new sanctuary of
their polis and, by extension, their newly won empire.
Marginesu has milked a great deal from the surviving
epigraphic documentsno mean feat given the fragmentary and battered state of much of the material. As
Eugene Vanderpool famously said, any inscription is
easy to read if you already know what is says. The beauty
of Marginesus volume lies in the fact that not only has
he read the inscriptions for us so we know what they
say but he has also brought them out of the blinkered
world of Greek epigraphy and made them available to
a larger public of historians and archaeologists.
Together, Plutarchs Life of Perikles (esp. sec. 13) and
the largely fragmentary accounts set up by the committees of citizens who were in charge of each of the
major projects (which this book details so well) provide a narrative that is both readable and compelling.
I would add only that the building program inspired
by the Athenian victories at Marathon and especially
Salamis not only began earlier than 447 B.C.E., involving as it did Kimon, but was also considerably larger
than the Acropolis alone. As Martin-McAuliffe and I
have recently argued, the Kimonian-Periklean building program that irrevocably changed the landscape
of Athens also included the new classical Agora to the
northwest of the city, which replaced the earlier prePersian Agora to the east of the Acropolis.2 Memory,
glory, and architecture are nowhere better articulated
than in Demosthenes Against Androtion (22.76):
Once they possessed greater wealth than any other Hellenic
people, but they spent it all for love of honor; they laid their
private fortunes under contribution, and recoiled from no
peril for glorys sake. Hence the People inherit possessions
that will never die; on the one hand the memory of their
achievements, on the other, the beauty of the memorials set
up in their honoryonder Propylaia, the Parthenon, the
stoas, the docks.
In this passage, Demosthenes does not mince his

words. The Greater Propylaia and the Parthenon,
together with the stoas (which must be those of the
Athenian Agora) and the ship docks of Piraeus, which
were all conceived in the period immediately following Salamis, became enduring memorials of Athens
greatest victory.
always present, ever changing . . .

By the end of the fifth century B.C.E., all four of
the iconic buildings on the Acropolisin more or less
2013]
THE ATHENIAN ACROPOLIS IN THE 21ST CENTURY
chronological order, the Parthenon, the Propylaia, the

Temple of Athena Nike, and the Erechtheionwere
ostensibly completed, though some of the sculptural
detailing on the Erechtheion may have extended into
the early fourth century, and certain details of the
Propylaia indicate that it was unfinished. Although
popular books, such as Hurwits The Athenian Acropolis,
provide good overviews of the Hellenistic and Roman
Acropolis, and various detailed studies, such as Stewarts Attalos, Athens, and the Akropolis, deal with particular Hellenistic dedications on the citadel, there is a
good deal more that can be said about the Acropolis
in the Hellenistic and Roman periods.3
Krumeich and Witschels timely collection of essays
brings to the fore the continued erection of smaller
monuments that transformed the Acropolis in the Hellenistic and Roman periods. With the exception of the
round Temple of Roma and Augustus to the northeast
of the Parthenon, the new postclassical monuments
were largely of bronze and stood on stone bases, often
with preserved inscriptions (many reused). Although
most of the bronze is long goneincluding the earlier bronze Athena that stood near the foundations
of the archaic temple (long known as the Drpfeld
foundations), which may or may not have been the
one referred to by Niketas Choniates in Constantinople and destroyed in 1203the stones have fared
better, and it is these stones that form much of the
focus of Krumeich and Witschels project. Particularly
revealing illustrations of the sheer quantity of these
stones are provided by two postcards of the Acropolis from ca. 1900 (pl. 2, figs. 3, 4). But this volume is
much more than just an archaeological study, as it incorporates history, topography, politics, religion, and
identity on the Athenian Acropolis in the Hellenistic
and Roman periods.
Following the editors introduction, the essays
which are mostly in German, though there is one
each in Italian and English (by Di Cesare and Keesling, respectively)are arranged into four groups.
The first of these, titled Athen in hellenistischer und
rmischer Zeitder historische und urbanistische
Kontext, consists of three essays. The first, a contribution by Rathmann, covers the attraction of Athens
in the Hellenistic period; the influence of the citys
cultural and intellectual traditions on visitors; and
especially the nondemocratic potentates of the era,
beginning with Alexander III, continuing through
the Pergamene kings, and ending with Sullas sack
of the citywhen blood flowed in the Kerameikos
(Paus. 1.20.6)and the period of reconstruction that
Hurwit 1999, 26182; Stewart 2004.
137
followed. In a similar vein, Rdel looks at Roman donations and dedications on the Acropolis and its surrounds, including the classical Agora, in the period
between Lucius Aemilius Paullus and Augustus. Like
so many other patterns, the one we see in the Roman
period closely follows Hellenistic practice. Only now
it was the Romans, not the Diadochi, who threw their
weight and their money around.
No volume on postclassical Athens would be complete without some overview of the Athenians abysmal record of repeatedly choosing the losing side in
the political struggles of both the Hellenistic and Roman periods. This curious propensity is discussed by
Rathmann for the Hellenistic period, by Mango in her
essay on first-century B.C.E. Athens, and by Cicero in
De finibus 5.2 (Tanta vis admonitionis inest in locis;
ut non sine causa ex memoriae ducta sit disciplina).
Mango proceeds chronologically from the aftermath
of Sullas sack to Athens in the Augustan period. Here,
it is the Agora, more so than the Acropolis, that looms
large. This essay discusses major projects, such as the
relocation of the Temple of Ares to its current site and
the construction of the Odeion of Agrippa, among
other monuments, before the classical Agora was itself
replaced by the new Roman forum. Following in the
footsteps of Alcock and Zanker, Mango highlights the
importance of place and memory.4
The second group of papers (Die Akropolis als religiser Raum) is concerned with the Acropolis as the
religious center of the polis. The first paper, by Mller, looks at the postclassical dedications to the goddess Athena and is accompanied by a hefty catalogue
of inscriptions. The catalogue begins with dedications
to Athena without epithet (20 inscriptions) before
presenting dedications to Athena Polias (21 inscriptions), Athena Ergane (9 inscriptions), and other
(10 inscriptions); finally, it gives 2 inscriptions with
no addressee preserved. The text presents a full discussion of these dedications. The second paper in this
section is more circumscribed. In it, Schmidt turns her
attention to the 20 preserved bases of young girls who
served as arrhephoroi. In so doing, she highlights the
persistence and continuity of the arrhephoroi well into
the second century C.E., if not beyond.
Two relatively short papers, one each by Di Cesare
and Scholl, constitute the third section of the volume (Die Akropolis als politischer Raum und Erinnerungsort). Scholls paper looks at the pre-Persian
dedications on the Acropolis that are described by
Pausanias, the indefatigable traveler writing in the second century C.E. The list of statues is impressive and
Zanker 2000; Alcock 2002, 2012.
138
[AJA 117
reminds us how much has not survived, beginning with

the bronze lioness set up for Leaina (Lioness), whom
Hippias kept under torture until he killed her because
he believed she was the mistress of Aristogeiton (his
brothers murderer) (Paus. 1.23.12). Also on the list
are the seated Athena by Endoios, the Athenian apprentice of Daidalos;5 the celebrated bronze Athena,
often referred to as the Promachos; and the enigmatic
bronze statue of Kylon, the man who attempted to become tyrant of Athens in the seventh century B.C.E.
and received a dedication nevertheless.6 Di Cesares
paper points out an interesting dichotomy between
dedications of Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic dynasts, on the one hand, and dedications of/to
Rome, on the other. The former highlight the conflict
of Greeks vs. barbarians, whereas in the period immediately before and during the reign of Augustus, there
was something of a rupture in Athenian identity, and
dedications on the Acropolis displayed a certain deference to Rome. The culmination of this rupture was the
recovery of identity under Hadrian (the humanist
emperor, as he is fashioned by Di Cesare), whose aim
was to restore Athens to its former glory.
The final section of the volume (Statuarische Weihungen und Ehrenstatuen auf der nachklassischen
Akropolis) is more focused on specific groups of votives. Through a series of tables enumerating dedications both on the Acropolis (tables A.16) and beyond
(tables B.16), Aneziri examines the identities of individuals receiving honorary dedications. Keeslings
paper, which builds on the important contribution of
Shear, looks at the Hellenistic and Roman afterlives
of dedications on the Acropolis and the prevalence of
reuse of fourth- and third-century B.C.E. statues that
were recycled through reinscription with formulas
naming new Roman honorands.7 She concludes that
nearly all the surviving portrait statues of earlier periods were reinscribed. The final essay, by Krumeich,
is also concerned with reuse of earlier statuary; like
Keesling, Krumeich concludes that such reuse was
common but that certain monuments were nevertheless saved from such desecration. His paper is also accompanied by a catalogue.
There is much in this edited volume on postclassical
Athens. Among other things, it is a rich bibliographical repository for anyone wishing to continue study
of Hellenistic and Roman Athens and the Acropolis;

however, given the repetition of certain titles in the
individual chapter bibliographies, I wonder whether a
combined bibliography might have been a good idea.
This volume, like all books on the Acropolis and its
surrounds, shows how enduring the contributions of
three scholars in particular have been: Manolis Korres,
Tasos Tanoulas, and Giorgos Despoinis.
For which see Marx 2001.

The story of Kylon is well known (see esp. Hdt. 5.71; Thuc.
1.126). He was an Olympic victor married to the daughter of
the tyrant Theagenes of Megara. With Theagenes help, and
that of a few friends, he seized the Acropolis with a view to tyranny. He and his followers were besieged, and although Kylon
escaped, his friends surrendered on the understanding that

they would not be harmed; they were, however, put to death,
which led to the curse attached to those responsible, in particular Megakles, who was archon at the time, and his family,
the Alkmeonids; see also Harris-Cline 1999.
7
Shear 2007.
5
6
lost in translation
It has to be stated up front that the two volumes of
Topografia di Atene are not written by Greco but rather
edited, or more accurately overseen, by him. In fact, in
the 582 pages that constitute these books (the pages
are numbered continuously across the two volumes),
Greco has penned no more than 25 pages, by way of
an introduction. Most of the first volume is written by
Longo and Monaco, who compose the first tier of collaborators, with Di Cesare, Marchiandi, and Marginesu
constituting the second tier. These are the names that
appear on the title page of volume 1. The contributors of the first volume alone number no fewer than
20. Volume 2 follows the same pattern: the first tier of
collaborators comprises Longo, Marchiandi, and Monaco, while Di Cesare and Marginesu form the second
tier; the actual number of contributors to volume 2
is 18. There is a very clear pecking order here, a hierarchy of collaborators, editors, and contributors, all
spearheaded by the direttore della collana, Greco.
To say that this is an ambitious volume is an understatement. These two volumes are the first installments
of a projected eight volumes (at 90 each for vols. 1
and 2, this is an expensive proposition for both individuals and libraries). The city of Athens is divided into
14 zones (illustrated on pp. 1617 in two unnumbered
figures, which are not the only unnumbered figures
in the text): Zone 1 is the Acropolis and its slopes;
zone 2, the Areopagus; zone 3, the area between the
Acropolis and the Pnyx. Zone 4, which includes an
area both within and outside the Themistoklean Wall,
is labeled the southwest hills and Koile (le colline
sud-occidentali e Koile). Zone 5 is the area south of
the city and the valley of the Ilissos River. Zone 6 is the
area between the Acropolis and Olympieion. Zone 7 is
the area to the northeast, including the road toward
the Lyceum. Zone 8 is that north of the Acropolis;
2013]
THE ATHENIAN ACROPOLIS IN THE 21ST CENTURY
139
zone 9, the Kolonos Agoraios and the Agora in the

Kerameikos. Zone 10 is the inner Kerameikos and the
deme of Melite; zone 11 is from the Dipylon Gate to
the Academy. Zones 12 and 13 comprise the area of
the long walls. The former is limited to the North Long
Wall completed under Kimon and the later South or
Middle Wall constructed in 445 B.C.E. on the advice
of Perikles; the latter is the area between the Middle
Wall and the Phaleric Wall. Zone 14 is the port of Piraeus. Volume 1 is concerned with the Acropolis, the
Areopagus, and the areathough not quite all of it
between the Acropolis and Pnyx. Volume 2 deals with
the hills to the southwest and the valley of the Ilissos.
Where individual areas stop and others begin is not
always clear. In volume 2, for example, there is the
area of the Zappeiona totally modern building and
toponymand a separate area labeled between the
Olympieion and the Acropolis; the two could well have
been treated together. Similarly, why zones 3 and 4
are separated where they are is not clearly articulated.
By carving Athens into these various zones, these volumes marginalize potentially important topographical features of the city. One lost feature is that the city
proper is bounded by two riversthe Ilissos to the
south, the Eridanos to the north (both, incidentally,
personified on the Parthenon west pediment)that
merge together and then into the Kephisos, which
flows to Phaleron. Also marginalized is the important
distinction between the city within the Themistoklean
Wall and that outside (e.g., zones 4 and 5 are both inside and out). More to the point, the Themistoklean
Wall falls into virtually all the zones.8 And what of the
mountains that define Athens (and surround the area
that modern Athenians refer to as to lekanopedio):
Hymettos, Pentelikon, Parnes, the Aigaleon Ridge?
There are, however, more serious problems with
this undertaking. A lot of the scholarship is derivative,
summarizing the research of others but rarely presenting anything new or original. Moreover, the presentation of past scholarship is not always evenhanded,
and throughout both volumes the secondary studies
by, and opinions of, Italian scholars are too often
highlighted to the neglect of others. What is also far
from clear is for whom these volumes are intended.
For example, scholars working on the topography of
Athens will find these two volumes difficult to use, for
although they summarize a lot, they are no substitute
for the original reportswhether those of the Greek
and German teams that worked on the Acropolis, the
American excavators in the classical Agora, or the German archaeologists in the Kerameikosand the many
reports published by Greek archaeologists in various
venues, chiefly the Archaiologikon Deltion and the Praktika of the Archaeological Society at Athens. Scholars
interested in specific areas of Athens will need to return, time and again, to these primary sources. I am
also unclear as to what value these volumes might be
to students (whether undergraduates or graduates)
of Athens and of classical archaeology outside Italy,
both in Europe and north America.9 Although very
well illustrated, the text is something that I would not
recommend to students, and this is not because it is in
Italian. One result of so much summary is inevitable:
much detail and nuance is lost in translation.
In the end, these first two volumes in the series
lack the authority, clarity, and succinctness of Judeichs Topographie von Athen, the ease of reference of
Travlos Pictorial Dictionary of Ancient Athens, the sheer
elegance of Llewellyn Smiths Athens, or the insights
of Harrisons Primitive Athens as Described by Thucydides,
among many others.10 Although these first two volumes
of the Topografia di Atene stand on the shoulders of giants, they are a pale reflection of, and no substitute
for, the originals.
8
For a lucid overview of the Themistoklean Wall, see Theocharaki 2011.
9
A much more accessible introduction to the topography
of Athens for students is provided by Camp 2001.

10
Harrison 1906; Judeich 1931; Travlos 1971; Llewellyn
Smith 2004.
department of classics
cotsen institute of archaeology
university of california, los angeles
los angeles, california 90024
jkp@humnet.ucla.edu
Works Cited
Alcock, S.E. 2002. Archaeologies of the Greek Past: Landscape,
Monuments, and Memories. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
. 2012. Spare Values: The Decision Not to Destroy.
In The Construction of Value in the Ancient World, edited
by J.K. Papadopoulos and G. Urton, 906. Los Angeles:
Cotsen Institute of Archaeology.
Camp, J.M. 2001. The Archaeology of Athens. New Haven:
Yale University Press.
Harris-Cline, D. 1999. Archaic Athens and the Topography of the Kylon Affair. BSA 94:30920.
Harrison, J.E. 1906. Primitive Athens as Described by Thucydides.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hurwit, J. 1999. The Athenian Acropolis: History, Mythology,
and Archaeology from the Neolithic Era to the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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J.K. PAPADOPOULOS, THE ATHENIAN ACROPOLIS IN THE 21ST CENTURY
Judeich, W. 1931. Topographie von Athen. 2nd ed. Munich:

Beck.
Llewellyn Smith, M. 2004. Athens: A Cultural and Literary
History. Cities of the Imagination. Oxford: Signal Books.
Martin-McAuliffe, S., and J.K. Papadopoulos. 2012. Framing Victory: Salamis, the Athenian Acropolis, and the
Agora. JSAH 71:33261.
Marx, P.A. 2001. Acropolis 625 (Endoios Athena) and
the Rediscovery of Its Findspot. Hesperia 70:22154.
Papadopoulos, J.K. 2003. Ceramicus Redivivus: The Early
Iron Age Potters Field in the Area of the Classical Athenian
Agora. Hesperia Suppl. 31. Princeton: American School
of Classical Studies at Athens.
Shear, J.L. 2007. Reusing Statues, Rewriting Inscriptions
and Bestowing Honours in Roman Athens. In Art and
Inscriptions in the Ancient World, edited by Z. Newby and
R. Leader-Newby, 22146. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Stewart, A.F. 2004. Attalos, Athens, and the Akropolis: The Pergamene Little Barbarians and Their Roman and Renaissance Legacy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Theocharaki, A.M. 2011. The Ancient Circuit Wall of
Athens: Its Changing Course and the Phases of Construction. Hesperia 80:71156.
Travlos, J. 1971. Pictorial Dictionary of Ancient Athens. New
York: Praeger.
Zanker, P. 2000. The City as Symbol: Rome and the Creation of an Urban Image. In Romanization and the City:
Creation, Transformation, and Failures, edited by E. Fentress, 2541. JRA Suppl. 39. Portsmouth, R.I.: Journal
of Roman Archaeology.

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AMERICAN JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGY

Erika Weiberg and Martin Finn: Mind or Matter? People-Environment

Jennifer M. Webb and David Frankel: Cultural Regionalism and Divergent

AJA ONLINE (www.ajaonline.org)

lvarez-Mon and Garrison, eds., Elam and Persia (A. Zournatzi)

List of Books Received

Mind or Matter? People-Environment Interactions

when the event occurred and to comparisons of the

* This article is an extended and reworked version of a

American Journal of Archaeology 117 (2013) 131

ERIKA WEIBERG AND MARTIN FINN

developments were subsequently reversed beginning

be found in the trade networks of the coeval spheres

Haley and Blegen 1928.

THE DEMISE OF EARLY HELLADIC II SOCIETY IN THE PELOPONNESE

may help contextualize the changes at the transition

patterns in the argive landscape

Cf. Knappett 2005; McEnroe 2010.

the three periods of the relative chronology of the

fig. 2.2). Furthermore, if one calculates the number of cites

ERIKA WEIBERG AND MARTIN FINN

THE DEMISE OF EARLY HELLADIC II SOCIETY IN THE PELOPONNESE

and the high-altitude Miyio Valley.19 In all, this new

ERIKA WEIBERG AND MARTIN FINN

between these main settlements averaged 10 km,30 a

Wiencke 1989, 499.

tion of this coastal region may have been different;

THE DEMISE OF EARLY HELLADIC II SOCIETY IN THE PELOPONNESE

Berbati Valley and findspot 12 in the neighboring

Wiencke 1989, 49799.

ERIKA WEIBERG AND MARTIN FINN

The settlement of Makrovouni, north of Argos, was

THE DEMISE OF EARLY HELLADIC II SOCIETY IN THE PELOPONNESE

EH II period, was Tsoungiza in the Nemea Valley.42

of the occupation changed. Both the House of the

theories of change: the argolid and

With the above variations in mind, we turn now to a

Basin, however, no division is made between EH II and EH III

ERIKA WEIBERG AND MARTIN FINN

the EH II/III transition, considering specifically the

Zangger 1991, 1993, 1994a.

streams and rivers, and by the deposition of loam.63

THE DEMISE OF EARLY HELLADIC II SOCIETY IN THE PELOPONNESE

(the Argive Plain, Asine, and survey locations in the

connection can be made between Early Bronze Age

inclusion of Early Neolithic pottery and an Early Bronze Age

ERIKA WEIBERG AND MARTIN FINN

sequences suggest a rapid increase in aridity ca. 2200

THE DEMISE OF EARLY HELLADIC II SOCIETY IN THE PELOPONNESE

ERIKA WEIBERG AND MARTIN FINN

archaeological data.86 The dry climate within the zone

Roberts et al. 2011a.

string of settlement destructions by fire around the

Contra Fuchs 2007.

THE DEMISE OF EARLY HELLADIC II SOCIETY IN THE PELOPONNESE

Forsn, new features of material culture seem to

In Marans model, therefore, the only really active

Forsn 1992, 257.

III, proposed parallels in material culture between the west

ERIKA WEIBERG AND MARTIN FINN

transition itself but the increased socioeconomic

above. There is thus much to support the argument

THE DEMISE OF EARLY HELLADIC II SOCIETY IN THE PELOPONNESE

be argued that the dispersal of settlements into new