Three Cyprus Things Thursday

Here’s a short three things Thursday as we wrap up our week of field work at Polis.

Thing the First

Whenever I’m at Polis I think of walls. Partly this is because my run takes me past the site of A.H9 in the Princeton grid where the course of the Late Cypro-Classical (4th century) fortification wall runs. The wall is preserved only at the level of the socle made of rounded river stones set in a simple mortar. The superstructure of the wall would have presumably been mud brick with ashlar reinforcement at key places. The wall in A.H9 loosely followed the course of a low ridge that bordered a ravine to the west. In this area, the wall turns the west and presumably proceeded along the northern slope of the city above the coastal plain.

Looking at this wall as a socle, I got to wondering whether this would have been wide enough (approximately 3 m) to support any substantial mud brick superstructure. Perhaps it was topped by a wooden palisade or similar arrangement to extend its height and protect defenders. 

It also got me thinking about whether Polis received fortification during the Late Roman period. In all likelihood this fortification would have been to the south of the Late Classical wall and enclosed a smaller enceinte which is now under the modern village. Oddly I don’t recall seeing anyone reporting the existence of this wall. 

Thing the Second

I’ve been thinking a good bit about Polis in the Roman period. One of the more interesting objects that we recorded this summer was a hypocaust tile probably in a mid-second century context. The origins of this tile is unclear, but we found it in a secondary context. This might mean that the bath from which this tile derived dated to the end of the 1st century; of course, it’s also possible that this tile was discarded from a bath being constructed in the second century. In either case, the location of a Roman bath at Polis is not known, but a late first or early second century date would place it on the early side of Roman style baths on Cyprus. This is just speculation of course.

It is likewise interesting to relate the discarded hypocaust tile to the small assemblage of Roman lamps nearby. The types of lamps in this assemblage are in no way distinctive or unique. In fact, they derive largely from Italian prototypes and are distinctly Roman in design. They date to around the year 100 and are Vessberg 11 which are locally made versions of Italian Loeschcke V lamps. By 100, if not earlier, Roman style lamps had not only become common on Cyprus, but were being manufactured there.

Scholars have long been interested in the Romanization of the island and have highlighted sites such as the Villa of Dionysios at Paphos to show it in its most dramatic form. Our smaller, more obscure, and unapologetically un-monumental trenches at Polis, however, offer a simpler and perhaps more ubiquitous testimony to the Romanization of the island in the 1st century AD in lamps and baths.

Thing the Third

On my walks along the coast in the evening, I think a good bit about archaeology on Cyprus especially in the Roman and Late Roman period. Like in many places in the Eastern Mediterranean, Roman archaeology is a bit of an ugly duckling of the archaeological community. At worst, it documents a period characterized by a kind of ancient colonialism; at best, the sites are generic and represent a kind of Mediterranean koine that often speaks only quietly to the local situation. On Cyprus, for example, serious archaeologists tend to be interested in early prehistory, the Bronze Age, or Cypro-Archaic to Classical period. These periods tend to emphasize features of Cypriot culture that contribute to a distinctive culture.

Of course, historically those interested in these periods tend to emphasize religious and political developments and when they do delve into economics, it tends to be large scale, state-sponsored activity such as mining or the production of high value prestige and luxury goods. I understand that this is a broad generalization of a rich and complex vein of fieldwork and research — and I certainly recognize that recent scholarship has sought to explore the household and settlement archaeology during this period, but I suspect the interest in religion and politics (as a framework for culture) speaks to certain deep seated Orientalist tendencies in archaeological research. The east is a world of strange religious practices (i.e. non-western) and complex politics machinations in states that seem to hybridize endlessly.

I wonder whether studying the Roman period on Cyprus escapes the Orientalizing trap to some extent. Rather than trying to find an essentialized Cypriot under layers of Roman culture, Roman archaeologists on Cyprus (pace Jody Gordon and others) have tended to spend more time thinking about what Cypriots actually do rather than who they are. This too, I recognize, is an oversimplification.