Maritime Narratives of Prehistoric Cyprus: Seafaring as Everyday Practice

Journal of Maritime Archaeology (2020) 15:415–450 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11457-020-09277-7 (0123456789().,-volV)(0123456789().,-volV) ORIGINAL PAPER Maritime Narratives of Prehistoric Cyprus: Seafaring as Everyday Practice A. Bernard Knapp1 Accepted: 8 September 2020 / Published online: 16 October 2020  The Author(s) 2020 Abstract This paper considers the role of seafaring as an important aspect of everyday life in the communities of prehistoric Cyprus. The maritime capabilities developed by early seafarers enabled them to explore new lands and seas, tap new marine resources and make use of accessible coastal sites. Over the long term, the core activities of seafaring revolved around the exploitation of marine and coastal resources, the mobility of people and the transport and exchange of goods. On Cyprus, although we lack direct material evidence (e.g. shipwrecks, ship representations) before about 2000 BC, there is no question that beginning at least by the eleventh millennium Cal BC (Late Epipalaeolithic), early seafarers sailed between the nearby mainland and Cyprus, in all likelihood several times per year. In the long stretch of time—some 4000 years—between the Late Aceramic Neolithic and the onset of the Late Chalcolithic (ca. 6800–2700 Cal BC), most archaeologists passively accept the notion that the inhabitants of Cyprus turned their backs to the sea. In contrast, this study entertains the likelihood that Cyprus was never truly isolated from the sea, and considers maritime-related materials and practices during each era from the eleventh to the early second millennium Cal BC. In concluding, I present a broader picture of everything from rural anchorages to those invisible maritime behaviours that may help us better to understand seafaring as an everyday practice on Cyprus. Keywords Maritime practices
Seafaring
Maritimity
Coastscapes
Cyprus
Prehistory Introduction In different time periods and to varying extents, seafaring and the exploitation of marine and coastal resources formed key aspects of everyday life in the prehistoric communities of Cyprus. Of course, there may be a kernel of truth in James R.B. Stewart’s (1962:290) caustic comment: ‘The Cypriote has never been a great sea-farer … nor has he been a keen fisherman, until the coming of dynamite’. Over the past 60 years, however, our views about (and our interest in) seafaring and seafarers—about maritimity in general—have changed rather dramatically, and in this study I seek to present a ‘maritime narrative’ about prehistoric Cyprus, one represented mainly in the terrestrial archaeological record—the ‘quasi objects’ of a maritime cultural landscape (Tuddenham 2010:11). Like Westerdahl Extended author information available on the last page of the article 123 416 Journal of Maritime Archaeology (2020) 15:415–450 (2007:191), however, I eschew making a hard distinction between the maritime and the terrestrial because ‘The human perspective, after all, always consists of both sea and land’. This narrative involves very entangled histories, entangled not just in terms of archaeological discoveries themselves and the individual artefacts that result from fieldwork, but also with respect to the broader interpretations we seek to present on the basis of these sites, contexts and artefacts. If we look at more recent periods, e.g. at the discovery and excavation of the late Classical shipwreck at Mazotos (Fig. 1), it is clear that others also become entangled in these narratives, from fishermen and the diving community, to those who conserve antiquities, to the academic, funding and other institutions involved (Demesticha 2018:67–70; see also Demetriou 2016). Moreover, as Frankel (2019:65) Fig. 1 Fourth century BC Mazotos shipwreck. Photography by Bruce Hartzler; orthophotomosaic by Marinos Vlachos, University of Cyprus, Cyprus University of Technology. Courtesy of Stella Demesticha 123 Journal of Maritime Archaeology (2020) 15:415–450 417 recently commented: ‘… while past peoples left residues behind, it is archaeologists who create and structure the archaeological record, finding and defining the evidence … We also bring to this evidence our current understandings, perceptions and concerns which influence what we identify as significant and choose to write about. We readily—perhaps deceptively easily—envisage life in villages, towns and cities …’—and, we should add, ‘on the sea’. Whereas modern historians and sociocultural anthropologists bear witness to contemporary events and the processes of everyday life, these same events and processes are seldom immediately evident in the prehistoric archaeological record. Not only do some of these social processes occur over centuries or even millennia, they may also engage data sets that stem from vastly different landmasses (e.g. Europe and Asia in the case of ‘Neolithisation’ processes—Parkinson 2017:278) or, as in our case, from an island of some 9000 sq kms as well as the nearby Levantine and Anatolian coasts. Moreover, as Anderson (2010:12) argued, seafaring was intimately connected with terrestrial phenomena like Neolithisation or urbanisation, processes that tend to dominate archaeological thinking about the Holocene. What follows, then, should probably be regarded as a ‘deceptively easy’, terrestrially based narrative about the role of seafaring and seafarers on prehistoric Cyprus. Based on such evidence as can be marshalled at this time, we may suggest that prehistoric seafaring extended peoples’ habitats and gave them access to resources that lay near and beyond the shore. By the Late Epipalaeolithic and continuing into the Early Aceramic Neolithic (EAN) (see Table 1 for terminology and dates), seafaring must have increased the range and links of fisher-foragers and, with the passage of time, it facilitated the movement of people and certain resources in demand; ultimately, by the Bronze Age and later, it paved the way for merchants and colonists to operate on a much greater scale, facilitating the bulk transport of goods and the expansion of trade, and enabling the establishment of maritime states and kingdoms. The core activities of seafaring thus revolved around the exploitation of marine and coastal resources, the mobility (if not innate curiosity) of people and the transport and exchange of goods. On Cyprus, before the Middle Bronze Age (i.e. after ca. 2000 BC), there is only limited ‘direct’ material evidence (like shipwrecks or ship representations), but there can be no question that prehistoric seafarers sailed between the Levantine and/or Anatolian coasts and Cyprus some 12 k years ago, possibly several times per year, in order to transport large ruminants like weaned calves or small wild boar on boats much more sophisticated than we might imagine (Vigne et al. 2013). In the long stretch of time—some 4000 years—between the Late Aceramic Neolithic and the Late Chalcolithic (ca. 6800–2700 Cal BC), it is often assumed that th (...truncated)