The discovery of new hunter-gatherer and early farming occupations on the Mediterranean Island of Cyprus is dramatically changing our understanding of the timing and nature of the first occupants of the island. Archaeological evidence suggests that Epipalaeolithic hunters-gatherers in Cyprus arrived by at least 13,000 years ago. These early islanders remained deeply connected to their mainland (Levantine and/or Aegean) counterparts and, like them, experimented with plant and animal management. These islanders were also engaged in long-ranging, complex networks of exchange and movement—including probable voyages back-and-forth to the mainland—and developing technological innovations that helped them shape their newly settled island landscapes.
The Ancient Seafaring Explorers of Cyprus Project (ASEC) explores these early hunter-gatherer sites in Cyprus, aiming to extend our broader understanding of Epipalaeolithic (EP) wayfinding, placemaking, and technological use through survey and excavation along the southern coast of the island. The discovery and excavation of two of these sites contributes to our broader understanding of landscape use and movement of EP groups during the initial phases of occupation and exploration of Cyprus. Focusing on the innovations and ‘tools’ integral to these movements, we explore technological knowledge and broader interactions during this period of exploration. Through comparing the lithic material culture from a series of known Epipaleolithic sites, we seek to identify cultural technological practices. Broadening outwards, how does the EP material culture in Cyprus relate to contemporary material culture on mainland Anatolia and the Levant? What does this material culture tell us about social networks and interactions during the Late EP?
This project explores the clear connections in material culture at these early Cypriot sites with those of the northern and southern Levant. This project examines human-landscape interactions at a broad scale, linking my previous work at Kharaneh IV into a social landscape that might extend beyond mainland Southwest Asia, for example, exploring unique human-landscape dynamics with the first island colonization(s) of Cyprus. Here, the concepts of human eco-dynamics, transported landscapes and landscape learning are at play as early colonizers would have dealt with completely new ecosystems, plants and animals and, in some cases, clearly mitigated against these challenges by bringing aspects of their old landscape—or home—with them. Given the extensive and expansive networks of movement and interaction by EP hunter-gatherers it is not unrealistic to envisage Levantine groups with seafaring technologies exploring and colonizing nearby islands, perhaps even maintaining continuous and constant contact with the mainland, as seen in the later Neolithic. Similar to my work in Jordan, the colonization of Cyprus by pre-Neolithic hunter-gatherers from the Near East challenges current understandings of the earliest inhabitants of the island as arriving with a ‘full Neolithic package’ of domesticated plants and animals and suggests instead that early migrants were both skilled seafarers (probably traveling to and from the island) and highly adaptable to life in new ecological circumstances.