cyprus’s earliest prehistory: seafarers, foragers and settlers
TRANSCRIPT
ORI GIN AL PA PER
Cyprus’s Earliest Prehistory: Seafarers, Foragersand Settlers
A. Bernard Knapp
Published online: 3 June 2010� Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010
Abstract Over the past 20 years, the earliest prehistory of Cyprus has been completely
rewritten as a result of new excavations, survey work and high-resolution radiocarbon
dating. This study attempts to summarise the earliest chapter in the prehistory of Cyprus,
focusing on published and unpublished results from several new sites and surveys. I attempt
to place these results in an interpretative context that focuses on early seafarers, fisher-
foragers, and the people who were instrumental in establishing the earliest agricultural
communities on the island of Cyprus. The pace of change in the study of both the Late
Epipalaeolithic and earliest Neolithic is such that all current interpretations must remain
open-ended. Nonetheless, these new streams of evidence demand an interim assessment, not
least in order to integrate Cyprus into current interpretations of interaction amongst sea-
farers, fisher-foragers and early agriculturalists in the wider Mediterranean world.
Keywords Cyprus � Eastern Mediterranean � Late Epipalaeolithic �Early Aceramic Neolithic (Cypro-PPNA/B) � Faunal extinctions � Early seafaring �Coastal adaptations � Fisher-foragers � Early agriculture
It is not unexpected that the first permanently inhabited settlements on islands were
preceded by earlier, archaeologically invisible, visitations for the purpose of short-
term exploitation of island resources and, synchronously, obtaining information
about the nature and structure of the landscape.
Sarah Colledge and James Conolly 2007, p. 53.
Introduction
Over the past two decades, we have arrived at a revolutionary understanding of the dawn of
Cypriot prehistory, from the earliest visits by seafaring fisher-foragers and the presence of
A. B. Knapp (&)Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute, 11 Andreas Demetriou, 1066 Nicosia, Cypruse-mail: [email protected]
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people exploiting pygmy-hippos or their remains, to the establishment of the earliest
Neolithic farming communities. That people had already found their way to Cyprus during
what is termed the ‘pre-Neolithic’ era (Simmons 1999, 2004a) is demonstrated by the well-
dated and detailed published evidence from Akrotiri Aetokremnos (for sites, see Fig. 1).
(The convention for naming Cypriot sites is that the first name, in Roman script, refers to
the nearest village, whilst the second name, in italics, is the actual site, as known locally, or
by tradition, and typically indicated on cadastral plans.) Meanwhile, new evidence from
survey work and preliminary excavations at the sites of Nissi Beach (near Ayia Napa),
Akamas Aspros and Alimman reveal the presence of seafaring fishers and foragers
exploiting coastal and marine resources from an unknown early phase until well into the
‘Neolithic’ era (Ammerman et al. 2006, 2007, 2008). Additionally, a newly attested PPNA
human presence on the island has been demonstrated at the key site of Ayia Varvara
Asprokremmos (Manning et al. 2010).
These developments, in turn, have resolved a long-standing debate in the earliest pre-
history of Cyprus, namely whether the Late Aceramic Neolithic (that is, Khirokitia culture)
represented the earliest colonisation of the island (Stanley Price 1977), or whether there
were earlier, at the time unidentified, formative precursors—what became known as the
‘antecedent hypothesis’ (Dikaios 1962, p. 193; Watkins 1973; McCartney et al. 2006,
p. 40). Although it is now clear that the Late Aceramic Neolithic Khirokitia culture did not
arrive fully formed on Cyprus, current archaeological evidence does not support the notion
of any permanent habitation before the ‘Cypro-PPNA’ period, that is, prior to c. 9,000 cal
BC (Manning et al. 2010; also Watkins 2004; McCartney 2007a, 2010) (see Table 1).
This study attempts to interpret a wide range of new archaeological and climatic data
from Cyprus and the eastern Mediterranean, focusing on early seafarers, fisher-foragers
and the earliest agriculturalists on Cyprus itself. In it I seek to integrate Cyprus into current
interpretations of mobility, materiality and identity in the wider eastern Mediterranean
world at the Pleistocene–Holocene transition.
After a brief overview of the often confounding terminology in use on Cyprus for these
early periods, the study proceeds by considering first the earliest (Late Epipalaeolithic)
evidence for the presence of seafaring fisher-foragers on Cyprus. This includes a detailed
reassessment of the crucial evidence from Akrotiri Aetokremnos, the possibility of
Table 1 Periods, dates, sites and socio-economic practices: Late Epipalaeolithic-Aceramic NeolithicCyprus
Period and sites (with approximate dates Cal BC) Socio-economic practices
Late Epipalaeolithic (c. 11,000–10,000 Cal BC):
Aetokremnos (Nissi Beach, Akamas Aspros ??) Seafaring; fisher-forager exploration
Cypro-PPNA (c. 9,100–8,500 Cal BC)
Asprokremnos (Palaeokamina, Kelaidhoni ??) Seafaring; exploration; game-stocking
Cypro-PPNB (Early Aceramic Neolithic—EAN):
Shillourokambos, Mylouthkia, Tenta
Cypro-EPPNB (EAN 1) (c. 8,500–8,000 Cal BC) Seafaring; cultivators; early farmers
Cypro-MPPNB (EAN 2) (c. 8,000–7,500 Cal BC) Seafaring; consolidation of farming economy
Cypro-LPPNB (EAN 3 (c. 7,500–7,000 Cal BC) Seafaring; insular adaptation of farming
Late Aceramic Neolithic (c. 7,000/6,500–5,500 Cal BC) Development and floruit of ‘Neolithic’
For Cypro-PPNA dates, see Manning et al. (2010); for Cypro-PPNB dates, see Peltenburg and ProjectMembers (2003), SIMA 70(4): 99, table 11.3
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sedentary occupation there, and the controversial issue of faunal extinction as presumed
from remains of pygmy hippos and elephants (Phanourios minutus, Elephas cypriotes) at
the site. The study then broadens out to consider the wider early Holocene landscape,
including tentative evidence from various coastal sites, and more secure evidence from
several inland sites. I evaluate all these cultural developments in their environmental
context, considering issues related to coastal adaptations, seafaring and climatic epi-
sodes—in particular the cooler, arid conditions and more stable sea level associated with
the Younger Dryas episode. These conditions must have placed severe pressures on the
floral, faunal and even mineral resources upon which the people of this era relied. Finally, I
discuss the transition to the so-called ‘Cypro-PPNA/B’ periods (or Early Aceramic Neo-
lithic—EAN), over 10,000 years ago, when people finally came to settle permanently on
the island, bringing with them cultivated (domesticated?) cereals and herded (managed)
animals from the Levantine mainland. During the Aceramic Neolithic overall (c. 8,500–c.
5,500 cal BC), a unique material culture developed on Cyprus, one that became increas-
ingly isolated from those on the mainland.
Time and Terminology
Despite the long-standing reluctance amongst Cypriot archaeologists to refer to the period
preceding the Neolithic as ‘Late Epipalaeolithic’, it is now clear that Cyprus must be
included in attempts to evaluate the seafaring capabilities of Levantine Late Epipalaeo-
lithic foragers, fishers and hunter-gatherers (Broodbank 2006, pp. 208–213; Ammerman
2010, pp. 82–83), and to contextualise the material as well as the social developments
witnessed in the contemporary Levant and Anatolia (Watkins 2005, 2008). As Bar-Yosef
(2001, p. 130) noted nearly a decade ago: ‘The first visitors evidenced in the prehistory of
Cyprus were late Epi-Paleolithic foragers’. In this study, therefore, I refer to the earliest
Holocene—a time period encompassing more or less the 11th millennium cal BC—as
‘Late Epipalaeolithic’, in keeping with the contemporary Levantine and Anatolian asso-
ciations of the term (presaged by Held 1989, pp. 8–9). Without getting bogged down in the
Victorian terminology (Sherratt 2007, pp. 2–3) that plagues attempts to understand these
periods and the events or processes that characterise them, suffice it to say that ‘Meso-
lithic’—a term used widely in the Aegean and Europe to refer to the start of the Holocene
epoch (Scarre 2005, p. 182)—was deemed inappropriate to the eastern Mediterranean,
where Garrod (1957) had applied it to the Natufian culture, a terminal Pleistocene, semi-
sedentary, hunting and foraging group. And so the term ‘Late Epipalaeolithic’ came into
being. Although ‘pre-Neolithic’ has been applied to similar phenomena elsewhere in the
Mediterranean, it is not used in this study, which seeks to place Cyprus in its wider, and
especially eastern Mediterranean, context.
For the following period, close material links between the Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPNA,
PPNB) cultures of the Levant and Anatolia and the earliest Neolithic archaeological evi-
dence on Cyprus have led many of the archaeologists most closely involved to classify the
evidence as forming the Cypro-PPNA or Cypro-PPNB ‘facies’ of the mainland, in tandem
with the use of the term ‘Taurus facies’ for the PPNB in southeast Anatolia (Cauvin and
Cauvin 1993). Thus the period is now frequently referred to as Cypro-PPNB, with early,
middle and late phases (Cypro-EPPNB, Cypro-MPPNB, Cypro-LPPNB) (Peltenburg et al.
2001a, pp. 37–38, 2001b, p. 65). McCartney (2004, p. 108, table 9.1, 2007: table 1a), who
has done much of the pioneering work on the chipped stone materials from this period,
initially referred to these three phases as Early Cypriot Aceramic (Neolithic), Middle
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Cypriot Aceramic and Late Cypriot Aceramic (also listed by Peltenburg et al. as an
‘alternate system’: 2003, p. 87, table 11.3). More recently, in a quandary over how to refer
to material from the newly documented PPNA phase on Cyprus, McCartney has come to
favour Cypro-PPNB as a more explicit term to indicate all the cultural links involved
(personal communication, April 2008).
Watkins (2004, pp. 29–31) and Le Brun (2004, p. 10), however, were very explicit
about the problems inherent in the ‘Cypro-PPNB’ terminology. Watkins in particular
highlighted the different ways that PPNB is used in the Levant (to refer to stratigraphies,
technologies, economic interaction spheres, an ‘archaeological culture’ in the Childean
sense). More recently (Watkins 2008), he has challenged the very notion of a PPNB
‘interaction sphere’, maintaining that major regional differences in material culture
throughout the Levant, Anatolia and the Fertile Crescent render any cultural coherence
unlikely. His solution for the terminology, however, based on the neutral numbering of
periods as used by Aurenche et al. (1987), seems even less satisfactory, and fails to identify
the periods in question as Neolithic. Croft (2003, p. 270), less concerned with terminology
but equally negative about the use of ‘PPNB’ in the Cypriot context, refers to the period as
the ‘pre-Khirokitian Neolithic’. And if Sherratt (2007, p. 2) found the use of the Levantine
terms ‘EPPNB’ and ‘MPPNB’ to be just so much ‘off-putting algebra’, one can only
wonder how he would have regarded them when compounded with the conditional prefix
‘Cypro-’.
The use of the PPNB terminology exemplifies the widespread tendency to view the
archaeology of Cyprus through the lenses of Near Eastern, Anatolian or Aegean archae-
ology; it tends to mask the unique, always different, indigenous traditions of the island.
Although I have elsewhere developed what I believe to be a more coherent and consistent
terminology for the Aceramic Neolithic (Knapp 2012), in order to avoid terminological
anarchy, in this study I retain the use of the Cypro-PPNA/B nomenclature and the divisions
within it, but in each case also provide my own terms (Early Aceramic Neolithic—EAN),
as follows (and see Table 1): Cypro-EPPNB (=EAN 1), Cypro-MPPNB (=EAN 2) and
Cypro-LPPNB (=EAN 3). In line with this, and along with the excavators of the relevant
site (Ayia Varvara Asprokremmos), I refer to the newly attested PPNA human presence on
the island as Cypro-PPNA (Manning et al. 2010), noting only that the connections of this
phase with preceding and subsequent periods have yet to be established firmly.
Early Seafarers and Foragers: The Late Epipalaeolithic
The high antiquity of maritime crossings increasingly forms a topic of current archaeo-
logical research, whether in the Mediterranean (e.g. Costa et al. 2003; Broodbank 2006;
Alcover 2008; Ammerman 2010) or farther afield (e.g. Bailey 2004; Boivin and Fuller
2009). Much of this work was recently synthesised very ably by Broodbank (2006,
pp. 201–204), who finds against any supportable evidence for maritime ventures from
continental landmasses during the Lower and Middle Pleistocene. The (Pleistocene)
Mediterranean islands reveal no undisputed evidence for Lower Palaeolithic sea-crossings
(despite special pleading by Bednarik 2003, pp. 46–47). Separate locales with possible
Middle Palaeolithic stone tools on Kephallonia and Zakynthos (Kourtessi-Phillipaki 1999,
pp. 284–286) and Melos (Chelidonio 2001) in the Aegean form what Broodbank (2006,
pp. 204–205) regards as the only possible strains of evidence. Middle and Upper Palae-
olithic evidence, however, is also reported from Gramiza island in the northern Sporades
(Sampson 1998, pp. 18–20) and elsewhere in that island group (e.g., Efstratiou 1985,
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pp. 5–6, 56–59), as well as in the Ionian islands (e.g., Dousougli 1999; Kourtessi-Phillipaki
1999; Georgiadis 2002, p. 152).
By the Upper Palaeolithic, the indirectly dated (c. 30,000 years old) site of Fontana
Nuova on Sicily (Chilardi et al. 1996) provides the only current evidence for maritime
activity on the Mediterranean islands until about 20–15,000 years ago, when the still-
disputed evidence from Corbeddu cave in Sardinia—a human phalanx found stratified
beneath a thick stratum of Megaloceros deer bones—has been dated to around 16,500 cal
BC (Sondaar et al. 1995). Upper Palaeolithic chipped stone tools have also been found
in a stratified Aeolian deposit, geologically datable to the Late Glacial Maximum
(c. 25–18,000 cal BP), at the site of Santa Maria is Acquas in Sardinia (Mussi and Melis
2002). As Broodbank (2006, pp. 206–207) points out, however, there are no further signs
of human presence on Sardinia for another 8,000 years (9th–8th millennia BC), and none
on Sicily for another 15,000 years (Leighton 1999, pp. 22–30).
Broodbank (2006, pp. 207–208) draws two salient conclusions from his detailed survey
of pre-Holocene sites in the Mediterranean: (1) an early presence (if such there was) of
humans on the two largest Mediterranean islands (Sicily, Sardinia) may only have lasted
until climatic amelioration enabled them to return to the mainland (if they didn’t die out);
(2) more generally, almost until the end of the Pleistocene, there is currently precious little
evidence of any maritime activity throughout the Mediterranean basin. It must be added,
however, that very little targeted survey or exploration, especially along the coastal shelves,
has been conducted thus far; it is reasonable to expect that more sites may yet be identified.
Beginning in the 11th millennium cal BC, however, this picture of tentative attempts at
seagoing (occasional forays into the sea) rapidly takes on new hues, and the island of
Cyprus assumes particular importance in the emergence and spread of a more constant,
practised and adept form of seafaring (continual use of the sea as a way of life—see also
Broodbank 2006, p. 200). The well-known obsidian from the Cycladic island of Melos
found at Franchthi cave in the mainland Argolid of Greece (Perles 1987, pp. 142–145) is an
obvious case in point. More recent work at Cyclops Cave on Youra in the Sporades and
from Maroulas on Kythnos has produced a wealth of material—fish and shellfish, bone fish
hooks, ‘early’ domesticated pig and ovicaprine, round/elliptical stone structures—that
demonstrates a Mesolithic presence (9th–8th millennia cal BC—Sampson et al. 2002;
Trantalidou 1999, 2008; Sampson and Katsarou 2004; Sampson 2006, 2008; more gen-
erally, Galanidou and Perles 2003, pp. 27–32). In addition to the now well known
Mesolithic midden site at Sidari on Corfu (Sordinas 2003), excavations begun in June 2009
at the site of Ouriakos on Lemnos produced what are classified as Late Epipalaeolithic
chipped stone tools (http://www.stonepages.com/news/—29 June 2009), while three other
pre-Neolithic sites are reported on Ikaria. In 2008, the Plakias Mesolithic Survey identified
Mesolithic sites on Crete using a site location model developed for use in the Argolid
(Strasser et al. 2009). The Plakias region in southern Crete has environmental character-
istics very similar to the preferred site locations of Mesolithic foragers in the Aegean, that
is, caves and rock-shelters at the mouths of river gorges near the early Holocene coastline.
Over 1,600 chipped stone artefacts were collected from ten lithic scatters associated with
small caves or rockshelters. The Mesolithic assemblages, defined as microlithic, are similar
to those from Franchthi Cave and elsewhere on the mainland; they are composed of small
pebbles of quartz and red and black chert. Such discoveries—largely unpublished—have
major implications for the history of seafaring.
On Corsica and in northern Sardinia, a few sites dated to the late 9th–early 8th millennia
cal BC exhibit what Vigne (1996, p. 118) terms a ‘Mesolithic mode de vie’. That is, they
represent the presence of very early Holocene ‘trapper-fishers’ who had seafaring
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capabilities, exploited coastal resources (fish, shellfish, small game, and the only remaining
endemic, Prolagus Sardus), and stayed for short periods in small, mainly coastal sites
(Costa et al. 2003); the most important of these sites is Bonifacio–Monte Leone in
southernmost Corsica (Vigne and Desse-Berset 1995).
Various Late Pleistocene–Early Holocene sites on the southern coast of Anatolia (e.g.
Okuzini Cave in Antalya province) or along the Levantine littoral (e.g. Tell aux Scies and
Dik el-Mahdi in Lebanon) are discussed at the relevant points in the text below. These,
however, are probably only the tip of the iceberg, and we may expect many more sub-
merged sites along these coastlines to be identified as targeted underwater survey and
excavations proceed. The role and significance of all such sites throughout the Mediter-
ranean are crucial for understanding and contextualising the activities of the earliest
peoples who visited Cyprus.
At this point, I leave behind for the moment further discussion of seafaring amongst
Mediterranean hunter-gatherers, fisher-foragers and trappers, and turn to outline the
growing evidence for their presence on Cyprus, as well as the possible reasons for it. In
what follows, it should be borne in mind that accumulating evidence from the ‘pre-
Neolithic’ Mediterranean indicates that, for at least two millennia before the advent of
farming (i.e. ‘the Neolithic’), seafarers plied the coasts and islands of the Mediterranean.
Archaeologists working on Mediterranean islands have long accepted the notion of Neo-
lithic seafaring, particularly in light of all the work carried out on the obsidian trade, with
sources identified and distinguished amongst two islands in the Aegean (Melos, Giali) and
four islands in the central Mediterranean (Sardinia, Lipari, Pantellaria, Palmarola) (Ren-
frew et al. 1965; Hallam et al. 1976; Le Bourdonnec et al. 2010). Another point to bear in
mind is that much prior research on the Neolithic in the Mediterranean islands has con-
centrated on their earliest permanent occupation (e.g., Patton 1996; Cherry 1990, 2004),
rather than on seafaring per se (but cf. Broodbank 2006; Rainbird 2007, pp. 68–89;
Ammerman 2010, p. 81).
Beyond the more tenuous material from Corsica, Sardinia and the Aegean (noted
above), the fully published results of the excavations at Akrotiri Aetokremnos still provide
the best witness for human presence on a Mediterranean island in the 11th millennium cal
BC (Simmons 1999; Simmons and Mandel 2007) (Fig. 1). In addition, chipped stone
materials thus far recovered from survey and limited excavations at the sites of Nissi Beach
(near Ayia Napa), Akamas Aspros and Akamas Alimman are not only similar to one other
(Ammerman et al. 2006, 2007, 2008), they also appear to belong to a broadly homoge-
neous tradition of lithic manufacture, which may be defined generally as microlithic and
flake-based, like that found in Stratum 2 at Aetokremnos (McCartney 2006, pp. 11–17). At
the same time, however, they show at least some similarities with the chipped stone
assemblages found at inland sites such at Kalavasos Tenta near the southern coast (Period
5, Cypro-E/MPPNB [EAN 1–2]), Agrokipia Paleokamina in the northern Troodos (Given
and Knapp 2003, pp. 183–186) and Ayia Varvara Asprokremmos in the northeastern
Troodos (McCartney et al. 2006, pp. 51–54; McCartney 2007a). Asprokremmos, at least,
can now be dated to the Cypro-PPNA period, temporally equivalent to the Levantine
PPNA (Manning et al. 2010).
Taken together, the sites of Akrotiri Aetokremnos, Nissi Beach and Akamas Aspros may
be interpreted, provisionally, as places where seafaring fisher-foragers made short-term,
periodic visits to Cyprus to exploit resources as varied as pygmy hippos and elephants, salt,
shellfish and avifauna (Simmons 1999; Ammerman et al. 2008; Ammerman 2010, p. 82).
But what lay behind these visits, and just how tentative are these suggestions (Simmons
and Mandel 2007)? To answer these questions, we must look more closely at the individual
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coastal and inland sites, consider their commonalities and differences, and contextualise
them more broadly within the environmental conditions that prevailed during the Late
Epipalaeolithic, in particular the climatic event termed the Younger Dryas (Roberts 1998,
pp. 71–76; Broodbank 2006, p. 210; Wasse 2007, pp. 45–46; Rosen 2007, pp. 45, 49,
67–69). Finally, we must bear in mind the crucial importance of the coastal shelves of all
the Mediterranean islands and littorals, most of which are now submerged, but which may
well have included some of the most favourable environmental settings of Late Pleisto-
cene–Early Holocene times. Not only are sites on these coastal shelves extremely difficult
to locate and access (Flemming 1983, 1998), the archaeological evidence we have does not
always reveal the true nature of coastal environments, nor does it portray adequately the
activities of past people in such contexts (Westley and Dix 2006, p. 11).
Akrotiri Aetokremnos
Akrotiri Aetokremnos (or ‘Site E’) is located at the southernmost end of the island of
Cyprus, on the Akrotiri Peninsula (Heywood 1982, pp. 162–66), which there rises from a
shallow Mediterranean Sea to a height of about 70 m. Geomorphological work has sug-
gested that the Akrotiri Peninsula was once an island joined to the mainland by a sandbar,
two remaining spits of which may be seen today on either side of a shallow salt lake
(Mandel and Simmons 1997, p. 570; Simmons 1999, p. 329). The site itself is situated on
the narrow slope of a precipitous cliff some 40 m above the sea (Fig. 2). Given the fragility
and vulnerability of the site, which even in the 1980s was eroding into the sea, Alan
Simmons and an interdisciplinary team excavated Aetokremnos almost entirely (nearly
50 m2) between 1987 and 1990 (and returned to finish the job in June 2009). The following
discussion is based largely on the final publication of the site (Simmons 1999; also Sim-
mons 2004a; Simmons and Mandel 2007), although other points of view are taken into
account.
Fig. 1 Map of Cyprus, with sites discussed in the text (drawn by Luke Sollars)
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The entire deposit at the site—a small, collapsed rock shelter—was sealed after use by
massive rock debris: the overhang caved in, thus preserving the stratification. The vertical
dimension of the intact archaeological deposits is approximately 1 m, with four major
strata identified (numbered 1–4, from top to bottom) (Fig. 3). Stratum 1 formed a mixed
context (predominantly cracked and burnt sea shells with an admixture of about 1% of the
bone), while Stratum 3 represented a sterile sediment layer of windblown sand and
limestone. Most attention thus fell on Strata 2 and 4, both of which contained chipped stone
artefacts and other cultural debris (mostly in Stratum 2; only 12% in Stratum 4), shell and
other stone artefacts, bones and features such as ‘hearths’ (concentrations of ash). Despite
ongoing doubts about the overall interpretation of the site, Simmons (2004a, p. 7) recently
defended its stratigraphic integrity, stating that there is ‘… absolutely no evidence for
mixing by humans responsible for Level 2 cutting into Level 4’ and ‘… no geomorphic
evidence for a sinkhole, water movement, or other natural displacements that could have
resulted in the deposition of the bones’. Of the eleven archaeological features identified at
Aetokremnos, nine are associated with Stratum 2; the two from Stratum 4 are concentra-
tions of burned pygmy hippopotamus bones. Human use of the site is inferred mainly from
these midden deposits.
Cultural materials retrieved from the site include, most importantly, the formal chipped
stone tool assemblage (128 tools, 383 pieces of debitage, 510 pieces of other waste).
Twenty-eight percent of the tools (36 in number) are distinctive ‘thumbnail’ scrapers
(Simmons 1999, p. 126, table 6.1). All the raw materials used, primarily Lefkara cherts,
were available on the island, and point to an expedient technology. Other finds include 14
Fig. 2 View of AkrotiriAetokremnos, situated on aprecipitous cliff some 40 mabove the Mediterranean Sea onthe south coast (AkrotiriPeninsula) of Cyprus (courtesy ofAlan Simmons)
Fig. 3 Akrotiri Aetokremnos:schematic plan of intactarchaeological deposits showingfour major strata identified(numbered 1–4, from top tobottom). Note that ‘Site E’,indicated on chalkboard, was thedesignation first given toAetokremnos (courtesy of AlanSimmons)
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ground stone pebbles (no signs of use wear), 64 fragmentary and shattered ground stone
cobbles, and four complete cobbles with faint signs of use wear (one with a ‘pecked
depression’, another with a grooved cruciform pattern, perhaps a net sinker: Swiny 1999,
pp. 146–149). In addition to a piece of worked bone (incisor of a pygmy hippo), there were
six worked picrolite objects and a fragmentary, pierced and incised calcarenite disk (Reese
1999a, pp. 149–151). Amongst the immense collection of marine shells recovered from the
site were over 100 shell beads, with examples worked from dentalium, Conus mediter-raneus and Columbella rustica or dove shell, the last forming the majority (Reese 1999b,
pp. 188–191).
In terms of dating, 27 radiocarbon determinations were made on bone, sediment, shell
and charcoal (including one new date on charcoal from Level 2, dated 10,185 cal BC:
Simmons and Mandel 2007, p. 479). Problems with the dating of shell, sediment and bone
were taken into account; a correction factor was added to adjust for the ‘reservoir effect’ on
marine shells; where reported by labs, d13C values and corrected determinations were
provided; stratigraphic issues were taken into account; and the reliability of the material
dated as well as the strength of the association between that material and the 14C deter-
minations were calculated (following Meltzer and Mead 1985). The remains at Aeto-kremnos thus pointed to a relatively short-term ‘occupation’ or a series of periodic visits
during the tenth millennium cal BC, centred round a date of 9,825 cal BC, with a range of
10,005–9,702 cal BC at one standard deviation (Wigand and Simmons 1999, pp. 193–215).
Of crucial importance for discussions and criticisms related to the interpretation of Strata 2
and 4 at the site (see below) is the fact that the time difference between these strata is so
small it cannot be determined in radiocarbon years (Simmons 2004a, p. 5).
Ammerman and Noller (2005, pp. 539–540; also Ammerman et al. 2007, pp. 18–19,
fig. 9) questioned the reliability of some of the radiocarbon dates, contending that there
were serious limitations associated with the ages determined for bone samples, which were
not in agreement with the positions of the samples in the site’s stratigraphy. Moreover,
these dates were regularly cited as either ‘BP’ or in uncalibrated years BC, leading to some
ambiguity and confusion in the literature. Ammerman therefore re-calculated eight char-
coal samples from Stratum 2 at Aetokremnos in order to provide calibrated radiocarbon
determinations (following Bronk Ramsey et al. 2006). Overall the calibrated ages span a
period from about 12,000 to 9,200 cal BC (the wide range results from large error values
associated with four samples—see Simmons 1999, pp. 196–197, table 8.1). With respect to
four AMS-based determinations that had smaller error measurements, the dates range
between about 10,900 and 10,100 cal BC. Anticipating further discussion below, it should
be noted that eight of the nine radiocarbon determinations made on charcoal from Aeto-kremnos fall within the 11th millennium cal BC, the period of the Younger Dryas climatic
episode (c. 10,800–9,600 cal BC). This was a time when Levantine hunter-gatherers and
fisher-foragers pursued highly mobile living patterns (e.g., Bar-Yosef 2001, p. 140; Wat-
kins 2004, pp. 25–29), and when some initial steps were taken toward cultivating staple
foods (Bar-Yosef 2007, p. 22; cf. Abbo et al. 2010, who argue that the Younger Dryas had
little effect on early plant domestication).
The large faunal assemblage at Aetokremnos—over 222,000 bones—consisted of two
endemic ‘mini-megafauna’: pygmy hippopotamus (Phanourios minutus, minimum of 505
individuals), which made up about 95% of all bones, and pygmy elephant (ElephasCypriotes, three individuals). Even if these remains are taken to represent the bulk of the
subsistence diet of people who ‘occupied’ or visited Aetokremnos, a wide range of other
mammal, avian and marine resources were present: crabs, sea urchins, limpets, topshell
(amongst some 70,000 marine invertebrates); one gray mullet vertebra; dove, goose, grebe,
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shag, teal (avifauna: 73 individuals); burnt eggshell and land snails; turtle, snake, pig (not
deer), and a genet.
Using anatomical, morphometrical and radiocarbon analyses (on 21 suid bones), Vigne
et al. (2009) maintain that that at least two small-sized pigs, aged 18–24 months, were
living at Aetokremnos c. 9,500 cal BC. Four phalanges from these animals originally had
been attributed to Mesopotamian fallow deer (Dama mesopotamica). The authors also
maintain that these suids were introduced to Cyprus from the Levantine mainland, where
wild boar were managed some 1,000–1,500 years before the earliest known morphological
modifications attributable to domestication (e.g. at PPNA Cayonu and Nevali Cori in
eastern Anatolia—Ervynck et al. 2001; Peters et al. 2005). The dominance of pig in the
faunal data from the PPNA site of Ayia Varvara Asprokremmos (Manning et al. 2010) and
in the earliest Cypro-PPNB (EAN) phases at Paraklessia Shillourokambos (c. 8,300 cal
BC—Vigne et al. 2003, pp. 240–245, table 1) indicates that pig continued to be a major
food resource in the millennia that followed.
Eighty-eight percent of the pygmy hippo remains were retrieved from Stratum 4, while
the bulk of the other faunal evidence derives from Stratum 2: herein lay the first problem in
accepting the excavators’ interpretation of Aetokremnos. Amongst the sceptics, it was
specifically the association of the pygmy hippopotamus bones with the cultural remains
that caused the most concern (Bunimowitz and Barkai 1996; Binford 2000; Grayson 2000).
For Grayson (2000, p. 381), the problem involved both (a) the lack of a detailed assessment
of the faunal remains and how they came to be where they were found (overwhelmingly in
Stratum 4), and (b) the taphonomic analysis of 16,000 pygmy hippo bones, which showed
no cut-marks or evidence for fresh bone breakage (Olsen 1999, pp. 230–237). Olsen had
concluded that these bones accumulated naturally at the bottom of the shelter, and that
human occupation followed later, leading both to the intermingling of the earlier pygmy
hippo material with the later artefacts, and to the burning of those specimens. Binford’s
(2000) review (a) also cited Olsen’s taphonomic analyses and concerns, (b) mentioned a
‘simple correlational analysis’ carried out on ‘some of the bones and artifacts’ (emphasis
added)—indicating that the pygmy hippo (and tortoise) bones could not be associated with
the lithic remains—and (c) challenged the 14C evidence from the bones and shells analysed
by Wigand and Simmons (1999, pp. 193–215). Binford concluded that the shells somehow
were intrusive in the Stratum 4 bone bed, and that the pygmy hippo bones in the upper
levels had been ‘dug up’ from the Stratum 4 bone bed. More recently, Mithen (2003,
pp. 97–100) revisited arguments for and against the hunting of pygmy hippos at
Aetokremnos, and also expressed scepticism over arguments for the extinction of
Phanourios minutus at the site.
In a more detailed critique, Bunimowitz and Barkai (1996) argued that the construction
of some of the Stratum 2 hearths and what they termed a ‘bell-shaped pit’ (cf. Simmons
1996, p. 98) may have caused upward movement (from Stratum 4 to 2) of some pygmy
hippo bones, and downward movement (from Stratum 2 to 4) of some chipped stone, burnt
bone and other features. They proposed that taphonomic factors such as trampling and
grubbing, and erosion, could have compromised the site’s stratigraphy. Citing the absence
of butchery-related marks on the bone, and arguing that the small thumbnail scrapers could
not have been used to process hippopotamus meat, they concluded that the Stratum 4 bone
bed represents a natural, mass die-off site of pygmy hippos, completely unrelated to any
human activity (Bunimowitz and Barkai 1996, pp. 92–93). In their eyes, the archaeological
and palaeontological data from Aetokremnos represent two temporally discrete episodes,
the earlier (Stratum 4) a natural die-off of Pleistocene megafauna, the later (Stratum 2) a
short-term or sporadic occupation by a small group of early Holocene hunter-gatherers,
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who may have made some use of the (burnt) bone in this habitat. Alternatively, they
argued, any perceived intermingling between Strata 2 and 4 may have resulted entirely
from post-depositional processes. For Bunimowitz and Barkai (1996, pp. 94–95), the site
of Aetokremnos provides no evidence for the extinction of Pleistocene megafauna, or of the
possible role of people in that process.
In a set of replies to Bunimowitz and Barkai, members of the Aetokremnos team
challenged every point raised (Simmons 1996; Reese 1996), while Strasser (1996)
defended the integrity of the deposits and supported the possibility that highly skilled
human hunters could easily have overhunted the susceptible, perhaps already endangered
megafauna. Vigne (1996), however, citing megafaunal evidence from Corsica and Sardi-
nia, argued that Cyprus’s endemic megafauna were most likely extinct by the time the first
humans arrived on Cyprus, and that the people who visited Aetokremnos would have
subsisted on fishing, trapping and cropping, like their counterparts in 9th–8th millennia cal
BC Corsica.
More recently, the environmental setting of Aetokremnos (Mandel and Simmons 1997;
Mandel 1999, pp. 52–55) has been reassessed, and further questions raised about the date
of the site and whether people ever occupied it. The term ‘occupation’ has proven prob-
lematic here. Cherry (1990, p. 198) defined the occupation of a site as ‘the point at which it
has become the principal provider of a group’s subsistence requirements and the focus of
its residential pattern throughout the year’. Ammerman and Noller (2005) argue that
Aetokremnos was never ‘occupied’, but when it was in use some 12,000 years ago, sea
level would have been some 70 m lower and the site would have been situated near the top
of a tall cliff at the end of a 1 km wide coastal plain, not on the coast in an island-like
context (also Strasser 1996, p. 113). At that point in time, Ammerman and Noller (2005,
pp. 538–539, fig. 1) suggest that dune fields were actively forming immediately in front of
the site, and that a thick Aeolian sand ramp may have run right up to the site and beyond.
The current bathymetry of the peninsula, moreover, indicates that there was a submerged
landscape, sloping moderately to a depth of some 150 m at 5 km from the present-day
coastline.
The presence of sand dunes along the coast would have severely limited the growth of
trees, and Ammerman and Noller (2005, pp. 536, 540) thus maintain—following others
already noted—that the mass of hippo bones found in Stratum 4 represents a natural bone
midden later exploited by foragers as a fuel source, as wood became scarce during the
Younger Dryas (Watkins 2005, p. 203, fig. 6d). Although they note that a human presence
is more likely in Stratum 2 than in Stratum 4, the space and elevation of the Aetokremnosrock shelter led them to conclude that any human activities would have been limited to the
horizontal ledge above the partially collapsed shelter: the faunal and other remains may
have been swept into the shelter, and the hippo bones would have been cached there as fuel
(Ammerman and Noller 2005, pp. 536–537). Alternatively, they suggest that the shelter
might have been used as a smoke house for drying and curing hippo meat, which would
explain the large amount of burnt bone and other features in Stratum 2 (Ammerman and
Noller 2005, p. 540). Finally, as already mentioned, they question the reliability of the 14C
results from the bone samples, and call for a new series of radiocarbon dates to enable
comparison of the age of hippo bones from Strata 2 and 4, and of bird bones from Stratum
2. If all bones from Stratum 2 proved to be basically the same age, then a case could be
made for people hunting hippos; if the hippo bones from Stratum 4 proved to be much
older than those from Stratum 2, then a case could be made that the bones formed part of a
natural midden.
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In their response to Ammerman and Noller, Simmons and Mandel (2007) defend their
interpretation of Aetokremnos as a pygmy hippo processing site, and contest the suggestion
that a massive sand ramp extended from the sea to the top of the cliff where Aetokremnos is
situated (Simmons and Mandel 2007, pp. 476–478). Taking up the dating challenge, further14C analyses were conducted on the pygmy hippo (11), elephant (2) and bird (9) bones
from all strata. These samples, however, could not be satisfactorily dated; the results were
limited to one further (comparatively recent) date on charcoal, so the bones remain
problematic as a chronological signpost. Simmons and Mandel (2007, pp. 479–480)
maintain that even if the bone samples are deemed unreliable, 22 radiocarbon results still
indicate a ‘pre-Neolithic’ date for the site. Here it must be recalled that a series of eight
radiocarbon dates run on samples of charcoal from stratum 2A at Aetokremnos gives an age
range of 12,000–9,200 cal BC (or, with only four AMS-based determinations, a range from
c. 10,900 to 10,100 cal BC) (Ammerman et al. 2006, p. 3, table 1). Thus Aetokremnos is
firmly set in the 11th millennium cal BC, within the context of environmental changes that
took place at the end of the last Ice Age. This is an important point that makes Aetokremnoscrucial for any discussion of seafaring before the Neolithic, and for assessing the role of the
Younger Dryas in the emergence of full-time seafaring (as opposed to occasional
seagoing).
Disagreements thus remain over (a) whether the shelter was ever large enough for
human ‘occupation’ (and just what that term means), and (b) exactly where the shoreline
was situated some 12,000 years ago. Although most scholars who have re-examined the
evidence from Aetokremnos agree on the site’s chronological placement and cultural
significance, they contest the excavators’ interpretation of the Stratum 4 bone bed.
Meanwhile, Ammerman and colleagues have embarked on excavations at Nissi Beach and
Akamas Aspros, both situated on fossil sand dunes (aeolianite), with one primary aim being
to obtain materials suitable for dating (thus far unsuccessful), and so to demonstrate the
approximate contemporaneity of these sites with Aetokremnos (Ammerman et al. 2006,
2007). Simmons and Mandel (2007, pp. 480–481), in turn, call for caution over the ‘pre-
Neolithic’ date suggested for these new sites (until radiocarbon dates are available), and
maintain that the sharp-edged aeolianite is an unlikely place for people to camp. Before
turning to more specific discussion of the aeolianite sites at Nissi Beach and Akamas
Aspros, I conclude this discussion of Aetokremnos by considering possible sedentary
occupation at the site, and its importance in the debate over faunal extinctions in the
Mediterranean islands.
Sedentary Occupation at Aetokremnos?
Nobody doubts a human presence in Stratum 2 at Aetokremnos, whether or not people
actually lived there. This factor, of course, relates to broader issues of seafaring, subsis-
tence strategies and what Cherry (1990, pp. 198–199) termed the earliest ‘utilization’
(‘short-term or seasonal visits to procure resources, or even accidental, unsuccessful col-
onization’) vs. the first ‘occupation’ (the point when an island becomes the main residential
focus of a human group and provides the bulk its subsistence) of the Mediterranean islands.
The perceived lack of evidence for Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene use or occupation of
islands results at least in part from our own ‘temporal chauvinism’ (the notion that pre-
Neolithic people had very limited maritime capabilities—Cherry 1990, p. 201), in part
from the passive belief that most islands were too impoverished to support hunter-gatherers
not involved in food production. Even those archaeologists who allow that Late Epipal-
aeolithic hunter-gatherers were not ignorant of, or incapable of reaching, these islands (but
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rather avoided them, for whatever reason) seem to have accepted the lack of evidence at
face value, or else assumed that rising sea levels in the terminal Pleistocene had submerged
large parts of the coastal shelves on which such sites would have been located (e.g.,
Lambeck and Chappell 2001; Peltier 2002; for Cyprus: Gomez and Pease 1992). As we
have seen, the site of Aetokremnos provides detailed evidence for insular human presence
during the (eastern Mediterranean) Late Epipalaeolithic. But were the people responsible
for its remains mobile or sedentary?
The excavators find it ‘… hard to believe that a locality in which over 500 pygmy
hippos were butchered, as we argue, was not occupied’ (Simmons and Mandel 2007,
p. 477). For them, however, ‘occupation’ refers to any locality that exhibits human activity,
and they regard Aetokremnos as a specialised activity site, where people both consumed
pygmy hippos and made use of their secondary products (Simmons 1999, pp. 310–311,
318). Parts of the Akrotiri Peninsula may have supported a marsh or lagoon environment
attractive to pygmy hippos, but palaeoenvironmental data are not sufficiently robust to
confirm this possibility (Simmons 1999, pp. 11–13). The Akrotiri Peninsula is situated
close to a variety of subsistence resources—mammal, avian and marine. Nearly 30% of the
bone from Aetokremnos is burned, much of it severely charred, which could point to
human activity (Simmons 2004a, pp. 7–8), but not necessarily over the long term.
On the one hand, if pygmy hippos were processed and their meat consumed or pre-
served, their bones may have been stored in the shelter for use as fuel, which could be
taken to indicate at least short-term sedentary occupation at the site (Simmons 1999,
p. 314, suggests ‘up to a few 100 years’). And, if one accepts this scenario, there is a
notable shift in emphasis from an apparent reliance on pygmy hippos as a dietary resource
in Stratum 4, to avifaunal and marine resources in Stratum 2, perhaps pointing to a change
in economic strategy as the number of remaining pygmy hippos dwindled below people’s
subsistence needs. On the other hand, if the people who made use of this site remained
there for any length of time, it is possible they would have adopted a hunting strategy to
suit local conditions instead of wiping out at least one of their vital wild food resources.
The palaeoenvironment in which these mini-megafauna lived was likely evergreen forest,
with a limited and unbalanced terrestrial fauna (Boekschoten and Sondaar 1972, p. 333). In
addition, it has been long been argued that there was a permanently low level of marine
biodiversity in the nutrient-poor waters that surrounded Cyprus (Knapp et al. 1994, p. 491).
More recent work, however, suggests that there may have been greater regional river
discharge during the early Holocene (Meyers and Arnaboldia 2008, p. 112), which could
have improved the nutrient level in these waters, and thus the availability of pelagic
resources. In any case, it seems evident that various limiting factors would have made life
difficult for any hunter-gatherers who attempted to live on the island: an agricultural way
of life may well have been a prerequisite of living year in and year out on Cyprus.
Simmons (1999, p. 322) maintains that because voyages to Cyprus at this time would
have been difficult, those who left their imprint at Aetokremnos were not seasonal, overseas
visitors but rather people who also occupied other sites in or around the Akrotiri Peninsula
at different times of the year. Yet even he seems to agree that Aetokremnos does not
represent a long-term episode of sedentary settlement, since he states that those who used
the site ultimately returned to their mainland point(s) of origin (Simmons 1999, pp. 318,
322–323, 2004a, p. 9). Taken together and on their own, the excavated fauna and
archaeological features of Aetokremnos, along with a coherent series of radiocarbon dates,
point to a specialised activity site that somehow involved pygmy hippos. Although I am
running well ahead of the evidence here, I would also suggest that Aetokremnos was a site
visited periodically by Late Epipalaeolithic fisher-foragers and hunters whose home
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territory—the Levantine coast—was imperilled by rising sea level and the impending loss
of their subsistence base.
Preliminary analyses of chipped stone material from the aeolinate sites of Nissi Beach,
Akamas Aspros and Alimman (McCartney 2006, pp. 11–17; Ammerman et al. 2007,
pp. 13–15; Ammerman et al. 2008, pp. 15–27), allow one to make a case—prima facie and
acknowledging that reliable, coincident radiocarbon dates are still lacking—for the rele-
vance of these sites in achieving a better understanding of Aetokremnos and the ‘pre-
Neolithic’ of Cyprus. If these were all places where fisher-foragers made periodic visits
from the Levantine mainland to exploit resources such as fish, salt, shellfish and avifauna,
then they provide the earliest evidence for seafaring in the eastern Mediterranean. In
addition, they help to provide a fuller picture of the ways that climatic factors impacted on
the increased mobility of seafaring foragers during the eastern Mediterranean Late Epi-
palaeolithic, and to determine whether people played any role in the extinction of the
Mediterranean’s mini-megafauna.
Faunal Extinctions?
Although Cyprus is an ‘oceanic’ island (Held 1989, pp. 11–15), water gaps of 70 km to the
north and 100 km to the east are small enough that it shares the general climatic conditions
and vegetation types of low-lying coastal regions in the northern Levant and southern
Anatolia. The island factor, however, is clear in the fauna. Cyprus has a very limited
number of species and a high degree of endemism suggesting that, even under optimal
conditions, the expanse of water kept out many east Mediterranean species. Although sea-
level change (minus 120/130 m) during the Last Glacial Maximum (c. 25,000–18,000 cal
BP) reduced the distance between the island and the Levantine mainland to about 40 km,
Cyprus must have remained remote even during such notable regressions. The island
received only two large terrestrial mammals, elephant and hippopotamus, which became so
separated from their respective parent gene pools that they underwent extreme changes in
body size and evolved into dwarfed forms (Elephas cypriotes, Phanourios minutus)
(Boekschoten and Sondaar 1972).
These pygmy hippopotami and dwarf elephants evolved and survived over tens, if not
hundreds of thousands, of years on Cyprus (Sondaar and van der Geer 2000, p. 68, suggest
a minimum of 1.8 million years, from the Early Pleistocene). The problematic bone dates
from Aetokremnos have been taken to mean that not long after the first demonstrable
human presence on the island, these endemics became extinct. Palaeontological and
archaeological evidence from a number of islands and mainlands the world around indi-
cates that most ‘unusual’ or dwarf endemics (mammals as well as avifauna) disappeared
soon after the first people arrived (e.g. Diamond 1984; Martin 1984; Macphee and Marx
1997; Alcover et al. 1998, 1999). In the Mediterranean, the only purported evidence for an
extended temporal overlap (a few thousand years) between one of these island endemics
and humans—Myotragus balearicus on Mallorca—has now been discounted (Ramis et al.2002), and it is likely that people co-existed with Myotragus for less than 200 years (Bover
and Alcover 2003; Alcover 2008). Beyond that case, and Aetokremnos, there is little
substantial evidence in the Mediterranean for a close association between the arrival of
humans and the extinction of Pleistocene fauna (e.g., on Sardinia, Cherry 1992, p. 31). One
exception may be the demise of two mammalian endemics (Megaloceros cazioti; Cyno-therium sardus) on early Holocene Corsica and/or Sardinia (Sondaar and van der Geer
2000, pp. 69–70; Costa et al. 2003, p. 6).
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Given this broader Mediterranean picture, the proposed association at Aetokremnosbetween human cultural remains and the bones of three dwarf elephants and at least 505
pygmy hippos of all ages can only be described as striking, and bound to generate con-
troversy. Most endemic dwarf species on islands were naıve, at least as far as human
beings are concerned, because they evolved as they did in an ecological context where
there were no large terrestrial mammals, in particular no humans. Such animals—easy to
hunt, disadvantaged by interbreeding in small insular populations, and subject to climatic
or environmental changes that could have altered their means of survival—would have
been highly susceptible to the presence of people newly arrived in their island niche.
Although controversy over both the proximate and ultimate causes of the demise of the
Mediterranean’s mini-megafauna will continue, the worldwide record of faunal extinctions
at least makes it plausible that humans were involved. And in the case of Aetokremnos,
Cherry (1990, p. 195) maintained that ‘… man has here been discovered, as it were,
holding a smoking gun’.
Yet Cherry also calls for caution before convicting the earliest human visitors to Cyprus
of overkill. Even if people were the catalyst in the demise of these and other Mediterranean
mini-megafauna, it is still necessary to consider whether such an outcome was:
1. the direct result of overkill by humans;
2. the introduction with humans of new species—domesticated or not—competing with
endemic fauna for ecological niches, nourishment, etc.; or
3. the indirect consequence of wider modification of the landscape by both post-glacial
climate changes and human interference (agricultural, pastoral).
With respect to the last factor in particular, Roberts (1998, pp. 83–84) makes two
important points, arguing against any generalised ‘overkill’ scenario. First, Late Pleisto-
cene hunters throughout Eurasia, North America and Australia would have modified at
least partly the structure and stability of various ecological niches, thus rendering various
local mammals susceptible to environmental stress. Secondly, from the faunal point of
view, the deteriorating climate at the end of the last glaciation and during the Younger
Dryas event (see further below) would have forced all such animals to compete with
humans and other animals for increasingly scarce resources. Indeed, Wasse (2007, p. 56)
argues that the presence of humans on Cyprus at or near the time that the endemic
Pleistocene fauna became extinct is the result of the same selective pressure, namely the
rapid rise of cold, dry conditions throughout the eastern Mediterranean at the onset of the
Younger Dryas.
Organisms like Phanourios minutus, about the size of a large pig, can take a heavy toll
on their habitats. They have limited population densities and are highly susceptible to any
kind of environmental change, especially in an island context (Simmons 1999, p. 331). The
colder and dryer weather of the Younger Dryas during the 11th millennium cal BC,
moreover, may have reduced or eliminated some of the dietary sources in the Akrotiri
peninsula upon which Phanourios had come to depend during its long evolution on the
island. Indeed, Bromage et al. (2002, pp. 423–425) now attribute the extinction of Cyprus’s
pygmy hippo to climate change at the transition from the Pleistocene to the Holocene. At
the very least, such developments would have made these pygmy hippos more vulnerable
to extinction. And even if they did not, a healthy population could have been decimated by
small groups of efficient hunters. More recent evidence suggests that these early visitors to
Aetokremnos were most likely seafaring fisher-foragers, rather than exclusively hunters
(see further below).
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The wider archaeological community remains sceptical about the overkill hypothesis at
Aetokremnos (cf. Sondaar and van der Geer 2000). Moreover, even if the data from this site
were to be accepted as demonstrating an overlap between humans and extinct mammals,
we would still need to consider how the people at Aetokremnos could have caused the loss
of Cyprus’s entire Pleistocene megafauna. The archaeological sample at Aetokremnos is
limited to one, approximately 50 m2 excavated area, and the erratic and poorly known
evolution of Pleistocene fauna—along with a suite of possible ecological, climatic and
biogeographic constraints—makes it difficult to distinguish the likely (proximate) from the
real (ultimate) cause of the proposed extinctions.
Although still unpublished, a recently excavated palaeontological site near Ayia Napa
on Cyprus’s southeast coast is very similar to Aetokremnos in its date as well as its location
(a small rock shelter along the coast situated at more or less the same elevation above
current sea level). The site is dated tentatively to the Late Pleistocene and, while an
exposed layer was packed with the fossilized remains of at least 80 pygmy hippos, human
remains were lacking (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/12/071206-AP-
cyprus-dwarf_2.html). If the humans at Aetokremnos caused the extinction of the hippos
on the island, they had to do so over the entire island. If hard comparisons are made
between the two sites, then Stratum 4 at Aetokremos would have to be regarded as a natural
bone bed just like the one at Ayia Napa, and like others at 32 different sites across the
island—19 in caves, 11 at open air sites, two in rock shelters (Hadjisterkotis and Reese
2008).
At Aetokremnos, however, not just pygmy hippos and dwarf elephants but other,
impoverished fauna (e.g. genet, mouse, great bustard, dove, goose, grebe) were embedded
in a human-made context, which makes it harder to deny some cause-and-effect rela-
tionship. People arrived, and, as the radiocarbon dates indicate, within 1,000 or so years
two endemic mini-megafauna became extinct. In other words, even taking into account
such factors as climatic and environmental change, the pygmy hippo evidence from
elsewhere in Cyprus, or the possibility of competition with introduced species, the people
who utilised the site of Aetokremnos may very well have played a role in the overkill of the
mini-megafauna. Even Ammerman and Noller (2005, p. 540), who feel that Stratum 4 at
Aetokremnos represents a natural bone midden, observe that ‘… there is a much better
chance that pygmy hippos were hunted by the human beings who contributed to the
formation of stratum 2’.
The presence of people, some of whom may have been highly specialised hunters, on
islands with animals that previously had lacked predators, almost certainly had disastrous
results. In the case of Corsica–Sardinia, where there is evidence of some overlap in time
between the arrival of people and the extinction of insular Pleistocene fauna, the zooar-
chaeologist who worked most closely with the data concluded: ‘… the far-reaching effects
of people upon island ecosystems are the ultimate cause of most animal extinctions’
(emphasis added—Vigne 1987, p. 167 and fig. 1; also Cherry 1990, pp. 196–197 and
fig. 9). By slaughtering such animals, people eradicated what may have been an abundant
food resource and so jeopardised their own chances of survival in an island habitat (Schule
1993, p. 406). Early attempts to settle the Mediterranean islands were challenging and
often it was only when people brought already cultivated plants and domesticated animals
with them that they managed to establish themselves on a more permanent footing. On
Cyprus, however, it now seems possible that quite another scenario was unfolding in the
Late Epipalaeolithic, one that may have had little to do with the permanent settlement of
the island.
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The Wider Late Epipalaeolithic Landscape
It is a fact of human nature that people tend to see what they have an expectation of
seeing. People tend not to see things with which they are unfamiliar; things that are
not already part of the vocabulary of their visual memory are easily missed.
Trevor Watkins 2004, p. 32.
Akrotiri Aetokremnos remains the only securely dated Late Epipalaeolithic site on
Cyprus. It seems quite likely, however, that the contemporary coastal landscape must have
included a few further sites. At the time of writing, three new possible candidates have
emerged, but it must be emphasized that these sites still lack firm radiocarbon dates. They
are (a) Nissi Beach, just west of Ayia Napa on the southeast coast; (b) Aspros on the
Akamas peninsula along the west coast; and (c) Alimman, a small satellite of Asprossituated some 200 m to its north. These sites only came to light in 2004, and have since
undergone four brief seasons of survey, trial excavations and underwater exploration
(Ammerman et al. 2006, 2007, 2008).
All three sites are located on aeolianite formations, fossilized sand dunes that may be
found all along the shores of the eastern Mediterranean, but less extensively than on
Cyprus (Ammerman et al. 2006, p. 5 note several other, unpublished aeolianite sites around
the island). When Nissi Beach and the Akamas sites were frequented, sea level was lower
by as much as 70 m. Thus these sites would have been situated farther from the shore than
they are today (Ammerman et al. 2007, p. 7); at least part of the Aspros site now lies
underwater (Ammerman et al. 2008, pp. 49). Nissi Beach and Aspros are both in elevated
situations with a good view of the surroundings, including the coastal plain that once stood
in front of each site. In general, the landscape is hard and dry, with little vegetation and a
limited range of terrestrial resources. Both sites are also adjacent to sandy beaches where a
small river or drainage reaches the coast. Thus they could have provided good places for
small boats to land, and so would have offered to fishers or foragers suitable temporary
campsites during the warmer and less stormy months of the year (Ammerman et al. 2006,
pp. 17–18).
Simmons and Mandel (2007, p. 480), however, maintain that sharp-edged aeolianites
would not have offered suitable places for people to camp. At Nissi Beach, the aeolianite
closest to the shoreline does indeed have a rough, irregular surface, but when one reaches
the area of the site with the highest artefact density, some 30–40 m from the current
coastline, the rock tends to be smoother and more rounded, providing what the excavator
believes are places to sit (Ammerman et al. 2008, pp. 12, 16, fig. 7). The same area also has
pockets of reddish-brown soil that reach 30–40 cm in depth (Ammerman et al. 2007, p. 5).
In profile, these soils have a very thin top layer (the A horizon), below which is a layer up
to 40 cm thick (the B horizon). All the chipped stone and ground stone artefacts excavated
at Nissi Beach have been recovered at depths of up to 25 cm in these B-horizon soils
(Ammerman et al. 2007, p. 6).
Although the geological setting of Akamas Aspros in the west of the island differs from
that at Nissi Beach, the soil profile is quite similar, with a reddish-brown B horizon some
20 cm thick. During trial excavations at both Nissi Beach and Aspros in 2007 and 2008,
these reddish soils gave up chipped stone artefacts, hand stones, bird bones and seashells
(Ammerman 2010, p. 82). The soils in both regions have low agricultural or woodland
potential, and once people began to live permanently in Cyprus, such a landscape would
have had little to offer; this may help to explain why some parts of these early sites have
survived so well.
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As already mentioned, McCartney (2006, pp. 11–17) argued that the chipped stone
repertoire recovered from initial fieldwork at all these sites is related, and is not dissimilar
to the lithic industry found in Stratum 2 at Akrotiri Aetokremnos. There are, of course,
differences at all these early sites in the various raw materials used, the technology
employed and the relative frequency of tool types. There is, for example, more evidence of
blade/bladelet production at Aetokremnos than there is at either Nissi Beach or Aspros, and
the grey Lefkara translucent beach pebbles used to produce the flake scrapers at Aeto-kremnos are not found at Aspros. Crucially, however, they seem to belong to a broadly
homogeneous tradition defined as microlithic and flake-based, although some small blades
and bladelets are in evidence (McCartney 2008, pp. 24–26).
Excavations at Nissi Beach in 2008, moreover, produced a small chunk of obsidian and
new tool types, including three long blades, none of which had occurred in earlier surface
survey or excavations. In addition, two marine shells (limpets—Patella caerulea Linnaeus)
excavated in 2007 at Nissi Beach have now produced AMS dates that fall in the 8th
millennium cal BC (c. 7,750–7,100 cal BC). These dates, of course, are much later than
those proposed by the excavator for the surface materials at Nissi Beach and the Akamas
sites. They correspond to a Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) date range (i.e. Cypro-MPPNB
to Cypro-LPPNB, or EAN 2–3—see Table 1), which accords well with the presence of the
three long blades and an obsidian piece.
According to Ammerman et al. (2008, p. 15), the materials recently excavated at Nissi
Beach—including a small hearth feature—represent a case of ‘stratigraphic inversion’, in
which the sub-surface materials occur in situ and have a younger age than the chipped
stone collected from the site’s surface. Ammerman maintains that the earlier, surface
material was deposited there by the action of one or more tsunamis or storm surges (on
Mediterranean Holocene tsunamis, see Pareschi et al. 2007; on Cypriot tsunamis, see
Whelan and Kelletat 2002; Noller et al. 2005). This interpretation is strengthened by the
presence at Nissi Beach, just south of the excavated area, of several large tsunami blocks
(Fig. 4), and further by the countless small pieces of dark-coloured ‘beach rock’ scattered
widely over the surface of the site. The redeposited beach rock, in fact, virtually obscures
the hundreds of pieces of chipped stone tools and debris, and thus has helped to preserve it
(the Nissi beach site is within a stone’s throw of one of Cyprus’s most popular tourist
beaches).
In other words, the excavator maintains that the materials originally collected on the
surface at Nissi Beach are not in their primary context but instead derive from an area now
submerged in front of the land-based part of the site; they would have been re-deposited on
Fig. 4 View over Nissi Beachwith several large tsunami blocksto the south of the excavated area(photograph by StellaDemesticha)
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the site’s surface by the action of the sea. We may expect that these sequences and their
interpretation will be refined further by future excavations at both Nissi Beach and Akamas
Aspros. For now, one of the most important, preliminary conclusions to be derived from all
these excavations—Aetokremnos, Nissi Beach, Akamas Aspros—is that for at least two
millennia prior to the advent of farming (i.e. ‘the Neolithic’), and for some two millennia
thereafter, foraging seafarers persisted with a coastal way of life, continually adapting to
the sea and exploiting the marine and other resources available along Cyprus’s shores.
The microlithic, flake-based tradition seen in the chipped stone from Nissi Beach and
the Akamas sites differs markedly from the blade-oriented tradition of lithic reduction that
typifies sites of the later Cypro-PPNB (EAN). This early technological tradition, based on
the production of flakes and small blades/bladelets, is also evident at Aetokremnos and
other small sites on the Akrotiri Peninsula, where diminutive flake scrapers were produced
using beach pebbles alongside geometrics made on higher quality cherts (Simmons 1999,
pp. 137–138, figs. 6.3–6.4; 252–253, figs. 10.4–10.5). Similarly, the most common formal
tools found at Aspros and Nissi Beach are scrapers and geometrics such as truncations and
backed pieces (McCartney 2006, pp. 13–14, figs. 8–9). Notable amongst the tools are
‘thumbnail’ scrapers, very similar to those in the chipped stone assemblage recovered at
Aetokremnos (Simmons 1999, pp. 245–246, fig. 10–2). The predominant material worked
was Lefkara chert, but the assemblages also include jasper and chalcedony. The people
who visited Aspros used a wider variety of materials, including other variants of chert
available in the riverbed.
During underwater survey carried out at Aspros during the summer of 2007, at depths of
6–15 m below current sea level and at distances of 50–200 m off the present-day coastline,
divers recovered 40 pieces of chipped stone (including ten tools, predominantly made on
flakes) and two likely ground stone tools (Ammerman et al. 2008, pp. 18–19, table 3). In
terms of the broader Epipalaeolithic landscape, the artefactual if not spatial distribution of
Aspros can now be seen as extending some 300 m, from the east end of the lithic scatter on
land to the area off the coast to the west, where chipped stone tools were found. Nissi
Beach also could have been more extensive than today, since it is possible that most
artefacts found there came from submerged areas in front of the site (limited underwater
reconnaissance in this area during July 2009, however, failed to produce any chipped stone
artefacts). In this context, it should be remembered that the site of Aetokremnos amounts to
50 m2 and produced a total of 128 formal tools; current counts for tools at Nissi Beach
(316) and Akamas Aspros (288) are much greater (Ammerman et al. 2008, pp. 25–26,
table 7). I would suggest that these functionally limited, coastal lithic assemblages are at
least consonant with the notion of temporary campsites periodically visited by Late Epi-
palaeolithic fisher-foragers over a substantial period of time.
Inland Late Epipalaeolithic
The goal of another new field project, Elaborating Early Neolithic Cyprus (EENC), is to
move beyond the coastal or near-coastal Late Epipalaeolithic sites in order to examine the
island’s wider landscape. This project is conducting survey—and excavations at Ayia
Varvara Asprokremmos (McCartney et al. 2007, pp. 30–36, 2008; Manning et al. 2010)—in
landscapes rather different from those that would have suited early farming. Along the
interface between the Pillow Lavas and the Lefkara Formation in the northeastern Troodos,
there are abundant high-quality chert sources (for example, at Alambra Koundourka and
Spileos), basal rocks for use as grinding tools, good water resources, and access to a broad
spectrum of lowland-upland fauna and flora suitable for hunting and foraging (McCartney
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et al. 2006, 2007). At sites such as Agrokipia Paleokamina, on a drainage of the Akaki
River in the northern Troodos (Given and Knapp 2003, pp. 183–186), Politiko Kelaidhoniat the interface between the Troodos forest and the Tamasos plain (Given and Knapp 2003,
pp. 182–183), and Ayia Varvara Asprokremmos on the Yialis River in the northeastern
Troodos (McCartney 2005, pp. 6–7, 2007a; McCartney et al. 2006, pp. 51–54; McCartney
et al. 2007) (see Fig. 1 for site locations), the EENC project has identified distinctive
chipped stone industries: (1) flake-based assemblages—like that at Paleokamina or Pera
Chorio Moutti—showing parallels with the coastal, Late Epipalaeolithic sites, and (2)
blade-based assemblages—like that at Asprokremmos and Alambra Koundourka—(Mc-
Cartney et al. 2006, p. 58), which are Neolithic traditions but with a core technology and
tool types quite different from those of the later, Cypro-PPNB (EAN) sites (McCartney
et al. 2007, p. 29). (Figure 5).
On the one hand, and in addition to new diagnostic types, aspects of the chipped stone
technology and tool types identified by the EENC project from the so-called flake-based
assemblages reveal similarities with those used at Aetokremnos, Nissi Beach and Akamas
Aspros. In particular, sites such as Paleokamina and Asprokremmos, as well as Pera Chorio
Moutti and Alambra Koundourka, show evidence of a microlithic chipped stone industry
focused on the manufacture of diminutive scrapers and geometrics dominated by double
truncations. On the one hand, these elements of the lithic industry are thus broadly rem-
iniscent of Aetokremnos’ chipped stone assemblage (McCartney et al. 2006). On the other
hand, these inland assemblages also include new elements—well-made drills and a
clear dominance of double truncation—suggesting that they are more evolved than their
coastal counterparts.
Moreover, the production of prismatic blades at Asprokremmos, Koundourka and
Kelaidhoni is distinct from the above. Furthermore, a suite of blade-based tool types—
including arrowheads, burins, scrapers, notches, glossed segments and retouched pieces—
in these assemblages clearly belong to Neolithic traditions (McCartney et al. 2006, 2007,
pp. 33–35, 37 fig. 4). Interestingly, the presence of a few microliths and specific features of
the blade core technology at Asprokremmos can be seen in the Period 5 tool industry at
Kalavasos Tenta. Such features may hint at a local continuity of tool manufacture between
the Cypro-PPNA and Cypro-PPNB periods (McCartney and Todd 2005; McCartney 2003,
2007a). McCartney also emphasizes that these traits of Tenta period 5 (Cypro-E/MPPNB,
or EAN 1–2) are more in keeping with the assemblage at Aetokremnos, in contrast with
other Cypro-PPNB (EAN) assemblages. Moreover, it must be borne in mind that all these
comparisons are of the broadest level and form a generalised pattern that also exists in
mainland Levantine assemblages. Thus, whilst this clearly evolved Tenta industry does not
equate to that of Late Epipalaeolithic Aetokremnos, the persistence of such traits into the
Cypro-E/MPPNB (EAN 1–2) may imply some level of cultural continuity from the Late
Epipalaeolithic into the Neolithic era on the island. Other differences between the
Asprokremmos and Tenta period 5 assemblages, however, suggest that this may not be a
simple linear process. It is precisely the extent of such continuity that the EENC is
investigating. Thus a definitive answer to this question cannot be given on the basis of
current levels of understanding and must remain a focus of ongoing research (McCartney
et al. 2007, 2008).
Obsidian, an imported material that increasingly appears to be a time-marker for the
Cypro-EPPNB (EAN 1) period, is nearly absent at both Tenta period 5 (one example) and
Asprokremmos (one obsidian chip). The latter site is most distinctive for its arrowheads,
and the essentially blade-based technology seen there is similar to those known from PPNA
98 J World Prehist (2010) 23:79–120
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assemblages in the northern Levant and southeastern Anatolia (McCartney et al. 2007,
2008), and at the same time distinct from those of the later Cypro-EPPNB (EAN 1) on
Cyprus.
Fig. 5 Distinctive chipped stone industries identified by EENC Project (drawing by Carole McCartney): (1)flake-based assemblages (Pera Chorio Moutti; Agrokipia Palaeokamina) showing some parallels with thecoastal, Late Epipalaeolithic sites, and (2) blade-based assemblages (Ayia Vavara Asprokremmos). a PeraChorio Moutti—thumbnail scraper, b Pera Chorio Moutti—double truncation, c Agrokipia Palaeokamina—thumbnail scraper, d Agrokipia Palaeokamina—double truncation, e Agrokipia Palaeokamina—perforator,f Ayia Vavara Asprokremmos—burin, g Ayia Vavara Asprokremmos—projectile point, h Ayia VavaraAsprokremmos—perforator, i Ayia Vavara Asprokremmos—notched blade, j Ayia Vavara Asprokremmos—glossed element, k Ayia Vavara Asprokremmos—backed blade
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In practice, the distinction between flake-based and blade-based assemblages is an
oversimplification (C. J. McCartney, personal communication, September 2008). The
manufacture of tools on flakes from discoidal cores or using the so-called ‘side’-blow blank
segmentation technique, the production of small blades for tools from well-prepared
unidirectional cores, and the presence of microlithic tools, are all features shared amongst
both flake-based and blade-based lithic assemblages. It is the degree to which each trait is
found that suggests change over time within dated perimeters bounded by the finds from
Aetokremnos and Tenta period 5. These features of the Cypro-E/MPPNB (EAN 1–2) lithic
assemblages may have some ‘heritage’ in the Late Epipalaeolithic, although the assem-
blage from Asprokremmos in particular has clear parallels with late PPNA—early PPNB
industries, especially in the northern Levant (Simmons 2000, p. 12; McCartney 2005,
pp. 14–15, 2007; McCartney et al. 2006, pp. 51–54, figs. 67).
Although it remains unclear just how closely related the lithic assemblages found in the
interior of the island may be to their possible coastal counterparts, overall this evidence
points to an early Neolithic landscape of inland sites situated adjacent to riverine corridors
(McCartney et al. 2006, p. 51). McCartney (2005, pp. 15–16, 2007) has suggested that the
chipped stone assemblages from Paleokamina and Kelaıdhoni might represent temporary
activity sites used by foragers, while the more substantial material at Asprokremmos could
indicate a semi-permanent camp (McCartney et al. 2007). She also emphasizes the clear
distinction between lithic production practices at these sites and the chaıne operatoire that
characterised blade tool manufacture and use at the later, Cypro-EPPNB (EAN 1) sites of
Parekklesia Shillourokambos (naviform) and Kissonerga Mylouthkia (bidirectional navi-
form-related blade core reduction). Such differences might be explained in terms of either
the spatial (coastal vs. inland) or the temporal setting, although the complexity of dating
deflated surface scatters makes it difficult to establish an absolute chronological sequence
here, just as it does with the early coastal sites.
If the differences prove to be chronological, sites such as Asprokremmos, in particular,
would fall within a Cypriot time frame equivalent to the Levantine PPNA, and would thus
be later—by up to 1,000 years—than Aetokremnos (and possibly Nissi Beach and the
Akamas sites), but antecedent to the Cypro-EPPNB (EAN 1) sites. New radiocarbon dates
from Asprokremmos have now confirmed that the differences in the chipped stone reper-
toire noted above are in fact temporal in nature. Charcoal samples excavated at Aspro-kremmos have produced six radiocarbon dates, from the late 10th to mid-9th millennia cal
BC (overall range of ages at 2r, 95.4% confidence: 9,141–8,569 cal BC) (Manning et al.
2010; see Table 1). These dates confirm a very early Neolithic phase contemporaneous
with the late PPNA or early PPNB of the Levant, and speak directly to a previously
unattested human presence on the island, after Aetokremnos but before Mylouthkia and
Shillourokambos.
How can we understand these new sites, the materials found in them, and the dates they
signal? In my view, that is only possible if we step back and consider broader issues related
to early fishers and foragers, how they adapted to the changing coastal configurations of the
time, and the climatic conditions that set the backdrop to all these changes.
Coastal Adaptations, Seafaring and Climatic Episodes
Habitat by the waterside is the most general term proposed for the primitive ecology
of mankind, be it along stream, lake, or seashore.
Sauer 1962, pp. 42–43
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Stereotypes of prehistoric hunter-gatherers and farmers have obscured the persistent and
widespread role that coastlines—mainland or insular—have played as zones of attraction
for human dispersals, exploiting marine resources, social contacts and population growth
(Bailey 2004; Bailey and Milner 2002–2003, p. 129; Bailey and Parkington 1988; Westley
and Dix 2006). Moreover, the proliferation of terms relevant to such social groups—
hunter, gatherer, fisher, forager—suggests that the variety of marine or aquatic resources
and the role they played in prehistoric economies are still poorly understood by archae-
ologists and ethnographers alike (Palsson 1988). For example, the term ‘complex hunter-
gatherers’ is often applied to societies where abundant marine resources facilitated semi-
sedentary populations, the storage of food and even social hierarchies (e.g., Ames and
Maschner 1998), but this does not mean that other groups of hunter-gatherers only resorted
to aquatic resources in times of scarcity, stress or population growth. Moreover, a foraging
lifestyle involved a range of locally available components—wild cereals in some areas;
fish, shellfish or avifauna in others—within a spectrum of hunted, gathered or fished
resources (Sherratt 2007, p. 6).
Although the material markers of fisher-foragers—such as fish-hooks, harpoons and
boats—are seldom seen in the pre-Holocene archaeological record, in this case the absence
of evidence almost certainly reflects the fact that late glacial shorelines are tens if not
hundreds of metres beyond present-day coasts (Bailey 2004, pp. 43–44; Bailey and Milner
2002–2003, pp. 132–135; Lambeck and Chappell 2001), a point to which I return below.
Moreover, if we were to accept at face value the evidence from stable isotope analysis of
human bone, large skeletal samples of Mesolithic and Neolithic populations from Britain
and northwest Europe indicate a marine-dominated diet for the former and a terrestrial-
based diet for the latter (e.g., Richards and Hedges 1999a, b; Schulting and Richards 2002;
Bailey and Milner 2002, pp. 136–141). In the eastern Mediterranean, however, with its
(presumed) meagre marine resources, the lack of evidence for intensive marine exploita-
tion may come as no surprise. The Natufian culture, for example, seems never to have been
reliant on coastal resources (Campana and Crabtree 1990; Boyd 2002). As we shall see,
however, other reasons may lie behind the paucity of evidence for coastal exploitation
along the Levantine seaboard.
Early seafaring fishers and foragers in the Mediterranean must have set out to acquire
knowledge of coastal areas and to exploit the resources available there. The advent of, or
increase in, seafaring capabilities enabled previously land-bound hunters and gatherers to
exploit coastal and marine resources more expeditiously, and while doing so to make use
of certain hospitable, coastal sites—whether on the mainland or on islands. Broodbank
(2006, p. 208) describes this change in attitude to the sea in epoch-making terms: ‘… this
shift constitutes the origin point of the seaborne networks that gradually started to criss-
cross sub-basins and archipelagos, thus by degrees bringing trans-Mediterranean societies
into being’. Gamble (2003, pp. 232–233) believes that seafaring provided an attractive
option for exploration and subsistence long before this, and did not necessarily represent a
way of life borne out of ‘crisis’ (Broodbank’s position). With respect to Cyprus, Le Brun
(2001, pp. 116–117) emphasizes that in order to reach Cyprus, some people had to have
mastered the craft of building boats, gained a practical knowledge of waves and currents,
and nourished a long-term intimacy with marine exploration and the sea itself.
The excavations at Aetokremnos produced over 70,000 marine invertebrates, including
crabs, sea urchins, limpets and topshell. Limited excavations at both Nissi Beach and
Akamas Aspros have also produced seashells, and there is little doubt that fish, shellfish
and various avifauna (dove, goose, grebe, shag and teal at Aetokremnos) were also valued
by these coastal dwellers of the Late Epipalaeolithic. Ammerman et al. (2008, pp. 28–29,
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fig. 10) maintain that the salt which forms in small basins in the aeolianite at Aspros may
also have been targeted by mainland-based seafaring foragers; such ready sources of salt
could have played some role, they suggest, in taming and managing early domesticates
such as sheep, goats and cattle.
Although concerned primarily with the Neolithic period and the maritime transport
(boats propelled by wind and sail) of five ungulate and three carnivore animal species from
the mainland to Cyprus, Vigne and Cucchi (2005, p. 188) feel that people were not only
capable of reaching the island during the Late Epipalaeolithic (contemporary with the end
of the Natufian period in the Levant), but that climatic conditions favourable to navigation
would have facilitated their journey. Just what were these climatic conditions?
In general, Horowitz (1998) suggests that, during the early Holocene, the combination
of a ‘stratified’ Mediterranean Sea, higher precipitation with some summer rains, and the
lack of thunderstorms resulted in a calmer sea that made sailing and navigation consid-
erably easier than it was during earlier (and later) periods (see further below). More
specifically, in order to acquire a fuller understanding of the possible reasons that brought
seafaring fisher-foragers to Cyprus at this time, and to gain a better picture of Late Epi-
palaeolithic land- and seascapes, it is instructive to consider both within the context of the
Younger Dryas climatic episode.
The Late Glacial Maximum (LGM, c. 25,000–18,000 cal BP), when continental ice
sheets reached their maximum extent, and the cold, dry Younger Dryas event (c. 10,800–
9,600 cal BC) are widely seen as representing the most profound environmental shifts of
the Late and Terminal Pleistocene (Wasse 2007, pp. 45–46; Rosen 2007, p. 45; Stutz et al.
2009). Watkins (2008, pp. 148–149) has criticised the ‘melodramatic’ manner in which
most archaeologists have attempted to model the impact of the Younger Dryas phenom-
enon, whilst Meltzer and Holliday (2010) questioned its impact on Paleoindian groups
living in Late Glacial North America. Yet it is difficult to deny its impact in the Medi-
terranean and the Levant (e.g., Moore and Hillman 1992; Bottema 1995; Weiss 2000; cf
Abbo et al. 2010). The Younger Dryas has also been identified in pollen diagrams from
Europe, Asia and the Americas (Cronin 1999, p. 205), and in marine and ice cores from
several places round the world (Roberts 1998, pp. 72–76).
Despite earlier concerns about poorly dated pollen evidence in the Levant (Baruch and
Bottema 1991), palynological records for the Aegean and the Near East generally embed
good evidence for the Younger Dryas (Bottema 1995; Sanlaville 1997, pp. 250–254;
Geraga et al. 2005). Using a combination of oxygen-isotope stratigraphy, radiocarbon
dating and palynology, Rossignol-Strick (1995) showed that in marine cores taken from
both the Mediterranean and Arabian Seas, the Younger Dryas was marked everywhere by
arid conditions, areas with less than 100 mm mean annual rainfall, and an increase in
plants (Chenopodiaceae) associated with saline soils (see also Rosen 2007, pp. 46–61). In
the northern Levant, for example, where we can expect conditions to have mirrored those
taking place on Cyprus, forests were replaced by dry, steppe-like vegetation (Wasse 2007,
p. 45; Rosen 2007, p. 69). By contrast, during the preceding (Bølling-Allerød) and suc-
ceeding (early Holocene) periods, the climate was warmer and wetter; the early Holo-
cene—to judge by high abundances of oak and Pistacia—was very wet with mild winters
(Rossignol-Strick 1999).
While there is some disagreement amongst marine and terrestrial palaeoclimatic records
over the severity of the Younger Dryas, Robinson et al. (2006, pp. 1535–1537, and
fig. 15C) maintain that multiple datasets point to a comparatively cold and extremely arid
period, perhaps the most arid of the Late Pleistocene. Roberts (1998, p. 76) notes that
ecologically sensitive areas near climatic limits, like the limits of tree growth in the
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northern Levant or Cyprus, would have been susceptible to even relatively minor tem-
perature changes or moisture variations. Willcox et al. (2009), for example, show how rye,
a cold-tolerant plant, extended its range into northern Syria during the colder conditions of
the Younger Dryas, while heat-resistant barley remained in warmer regions to the south of
the Euphrates River, only advancing north as temperatures increased at the end of the
Dryas episode.
Such conditions are argued to have led to (1) droughts and a reduction or severe changes
in the plant and animal resources upon which Late Epipalaeolithic people depended (Rosen
2007, pp. 104–105), and to (2) population dispersals as well as increased mobility amongst
those people affected (Goring-Morris and Belfer-Cohen 1997; Bar-Yosef 2001, p. 140;
Rosen 2007, p. 174). In a variation on this theme, Manning et al. (2010, fig. 3) observe that
the (PPNA) radiocarbon data from Ayia Varvara Asprokremmos lie on one plateau
(c. 9,000 cal BC) in the 14C calibration curve whilst those from the later, Cypro-EPPNB
(EAN 1) period cluster around another plateau (c. 8,000 cal BC). If one then takes the
single 14C date on charcoal from Akrotiri Aetokremnos (Stratum 2A)—with a small
measurement error, and derived using the most recent radiocarbon calibration dataset
(Reimer et al. 2004; Simmons and Mandel 2007, p. 479)—it appears that this date also lies
on a plateau (c. 10,000 cal BC) on the 14C calibration curve. Because these plateaux
represent periods of reduced production of 14C, Manning argues that they point to warmer
and likely wetter intervals, and that Cyprus thus may have been more attractive to early
human populations during these intervals. In this scenario, the earliest human presence on
Cyprus (i.e., at Aetokremnos) corresponds to the time at the end of the cool and arid
Younger Dryas climate episode. With the following, warmer and wetter climatic regime
came a time of greater potential for both agricultural pursuits and hunting activities,
perhaps rendering the Cypriot environment more attractive and sustainable to increasingly
permanent human populations (during the Cypro-PPNA and Cypro-EPPNB [EAN 1]
periods). Taken together, then, Manning et al. (2010) suggest that the radiocarbon data and
the climatic inferences derived from them may help to explain why the early human
exploitation of Cyprus, initiated in the more challenging times of the Younger Dryas (that
is, during the Late Epipalaeolithic), would have developed into more permanent occupa-
tion during the warmer periods that followed.
Ammerman (2010, p. 88) paints a rather more complex picture, and suggests that the
Younger Dryas episode in the eastern Mediterranean may have prompted two different
adaptations: (1) intensification of available floral and faunal resources, the pathway leading
to agriculture (but cf. Abbo et al. 2010) and, in contrast, (2) ‘extensification’, the pathway
leading to seafaring. At this time, however, we do not know whether increased seafaring
predated the Younger Dryas, or whether the halt in rising sea levels associated with this
event (Lambeck and Chappell 2001) served to motivate these new fishers and foragers
even further. Before the Neolithic, however, there is no evidence for the means of transport
nor are there any other proxy measures (e.g. remains of domesticated animals and culti-
vated plants, obsidian) with which one might estimate the size of the boats or the number
of journeys involved (Vigne and Cucchi 2005). Nonetheless, I would venture that the
people who came to Aetokremnos or other coastal (and perhaps inland) sites could have left
material traces during periodic visits, probably at times of the year favourable to sailing.
Early seafaring and coastal adaptations by fisher-foragers may have benefitted from cli-
matic conditions buffered by the oscillations of the Younger Dryas; these conditions would
have provided subsistence and other advantages enabling them to adapt more readily to a
changing world than the intensive cultivation of cereals and the domestication of animals
would have done.
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Despite the impact that the excavations at Aetokremnos have had on the archaeology of
Cyprus, it may not have been the only focus of insular living in the 11th millennium cal BC
(Simmons 1999, p. 322). Instead Aetokremnos may reflect—like Akamas Aspros and Nissi
Beach in different ways and at different times—several episodic visits over at least a few
centuries if not a millennium. Based on the new radiocarbon data from Ayia Varvara
Asprokremmos (Manning et al. 2010), but awaiting a more comprehensive understanding
of the site’s material sequences, we can at least postulate that inland sites like Agrokipia
Paleokamina, Politiko Kelaidhoni, Pera Chorio Moutti and Alambra Spileos belonged to a
time period almost 1,000 years after Aetokremnos, equivalent to the PPNA period in the
Levant; they may well represent the first solid evidence for a more permanent occupation
sequence on Cyprus.
In sum, along with 11th millennium cal BC evidence of Melian obsidian from Lithic
Phase VI at Franchthi cave in the Argolid (Perles 1987, pp. 142–145; Renfrew and Aspinall
1990), the remains from Aetokremnos and the new sites at Akamas and Nissi Beach
(whether Late Epipalaeolithic, or Cypro-PPNB [EAN], or both in date) represent repeated,
return maritime undertakings and coastal explorations, probably carried out on a seasonal
basis, to exploit resources as varied as obsidian (at Franchthi only), salt (for dietary
purposes, preservation, animal management), shellfish, fish and avifauna. These examples
conform closely to what Sherratt (2007, pp. 4–6) termed the ‘forager climax’, with its
networks of contact and interaction extending from the Aegean through the Anatolian
plateau to the hilly flanks of the Fertile Crescent. They also formed part of what Barker
(2005, pp. 47–49, fig. 3.2) views as ‘foraging seascapes’, where (for him, early Holocene)
fishers and foragers well aware of Mediterranean winds, tides and currents began to make
purposeful sea ventures.
The upshot of all this was well summarised by Broodbank (2006, p. 210):
In different ways both the attested exploits [mainland to Cyprus and back; Argolid to
Melos and back] therefore represent risky, dangerous journeys, requiring greater skill
at manoeuvring craft in different conditions and over a longer duration, predictive
and navigational knowledge of currents and winds, and more extensive mental maps
of land- and seamarks. … Put another way, it represents a change in attitude towards
the sea, from simply a local provider of resources to a vector for travel.
The fact that many of these new maritime undertakings took place during the Younger
Dryas episode, with its cooler, arid conditions and more stable sea level, suggests that Late
Epipalaelothic semi-sedentary hunters and foragers had diversified their food base and
expanded their spatial horizons in a time of new, somewhat sudden pressures on the
mineral, faunal and floral resources to which they had become accustomed, or on which
they relied. Evidence from the Levantine mainland for a return (by some semi-sedentary
people) to a more mobile way of life to procure diminishing resources during the Late
Natufian period may point to at least one source area for these new maritime ventures
(Broodbank 2006, p. 211). Some have suggested, however, that the origin of the fisher-
foragers at Aetokremnos might be sought in and around Okuzini Cave in Anatolia’s
Antalya province (14,500–11,000 BC), because of similarities in chipped stone assem-
blages (backed bladelets, microliths, thumbnail scrapers) (Bar-Yosef 2001, pp. 136–137,
fig. 3; see also Simmons 1999, p. 320).
Comprehensive analysis of multiple chipped stone assemblages, however, suggests that
the origin of the visitors to Late Epipalaeolithic Cyprus cannot be traced to any source area
on the mainland, and nor should it be linked to a single ‘colonisation’ event (McCartney
et al. 2007, pp. 27, 29). Instead of thinking about links with one mainland region, this very
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early evidence from Cyprus more likely represents a mix of traits assimilated by a mobile
population whose way of life was based at least in part on seafaring (Ammerman et al.
2008, p. 27). In any case, it is impossible to provide definitive answers at this stage, when
we have barely formulated the questions.
The Late Epipalaeolithic in the eastern Mediterranean was an era that stood in stark
contrast with what preceded it: the climate became colder and dryer, certain plant resources
disappeared, some animal populations declined or became extinct, and some human
populations became much more mobile. Along with all these changes, the social dynamics
of Late Epipalaeolithic peoples must have accelerated and become transformed. Those who
came to Akrotiri Aetokremnos, whether on a permanent or periodic basis, may well have
encountered the last remnants of some endemic mini-megafauna, or else exploited their
bones for fuel. Those who may have come on seasonal visits to Nissi Beach or the Akamas
peninsula supplemented their diets with salt and by fishing or exploiting other marine
resources (e.g., sea turtles and their eggs, seaweed), and perhaps by hunting birds, practices
also echoed in the avifauna and marine invertebrates found in Stratum 2 at Aetokremnos(Simmons 1999, pp. 170–191, 322–323; Ammerman et al. 2006, p. 18). However one
views the origins of these early visitors to the island of Cyprus, the material and climatic
evidence associated with their maritime ventures indicates a period of stress and unprec-
edented demand upon a dwindling set of resources. In turn, by the onset of the Early
Aceramic Neolithic, the earliest and still-growing evidence for seafaring, foraging and
early farming in the eastern Mediterranean suggests that the perceived risks of insular
living, including—on Cyprus—a restricted and unbalanced terrestrial food base and
uncertain pelagic resources, must have outweighed the benefits of remaining where they
were.
The Transition to the Early Aceramic Neolithic (Cypro-PPNA/PPNB)
Over 40 years ago, Binford (1968) argued that the archaeological remains of the post-
Pleistocene era are widely characterised by the appearance of small, highly specialized
chipped stone implements that occur frequently on later sites in coastal and riverine regions
where aquatic resources were systematically exploited. Within the eastern Mediterranean,
we can see both a validation of and some variation within this model. Practices associated
with seafaring—developed initially as a mobile, diversification response by complex
fishers, foragers and hunters during the Late Epipalaeolithic—became more established in
the early Neolithic. Such practices enabled closer communications and more developed
connections between the various sub-basins of the Mediterranean (Broodbank 2006,
p. 217), a phenomenon repeated in the webs of communication that characterised the early
Holocene ‘forager complex’ in the Levantine Corridor and the ‘hilly flanks’ region around
the upper courses of the Balikh and Khabur rivers (Sherratt 2007, pp. 4–5).
On Cyprus, given all the new discoveries related to seafaring fishers and foragers during
the Late Epipalaeolithic, it is clear that the basic contours and orientations of the Aceramic
Neolithic—as they were once known—must now be redrawn entirely. At the same time,
the place of Cyprus within the emerging agropastoral economies of the Levant and Ana-
tolia must be re-evaluated carefully (Kuijt 2004; Simmons 2004b). The ‘climatic forcing-
mechanism’ of the Younger Dryas (c. 10,800–9,600 cal BC) was likely but one part of an
intricate ‘conjunction of conditions’ (Sherratt 2007, p. 7) that pushed complex foragers and
hunters in the Levant and western Asia into an increasing preoccupation with and
dependence on cultivating and storing plant food resources (see also Garrard 1999;
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Watkins 2008; Zeder 2009, pp. 45–48). This climatic shift resulted in droughts, the
environmental deterioration of woodlands and steppe (not least in the so-called ‘Levantine
Corridor’), and a reduction in food resources (Bottema 1995, p. 890; Bar-Yosef 2001,
p. 140; Rosen 2007, pp. 104–105). The social responses—movement and migration,
changing lifeways, adjusting to new plant and animal regimes—would have been very real
and strongly felt, however intangible they may be in the material record.
The practical responses were twofold: (1) some people became more mobile, whether
on land or at sea, and dispersed or migrated to previously unsettled areas (like Cyprus) or
to regions that may have been less affected by the cooler, drier climate (like the Medi-
terranean coastal plain); (2) other people, reacting to stress on their food supply (Goring-
Morris and Belfer-Cohen 1997), or else just optimising their resource options (McCorriston
and Hole 1991), began to cultivate cereals more systematically. Both factors are important
if we wish to gain a fuller understanding of the Cypro-PPNB (EAN) period on Cyprus.
The early Holocene era (c. 11,500–7,000 cal BP), during which a Neolithic way of life
culminated throughout the eastern Mediterranean and western Asia, was the wettest phase
those regions experienced during the last 25,000 years (Robinson et al. 2006, pp. 1535–
1536, fig. 15d). The extensive coastal landscapes that had been so attractive to human
settlement throughout earlier eras of lowered sea levels were inundated between about
16,000 and 6,000 years ago. By the end of the early Holocene (some 7,000 years ago),
over 600 km of the eastern Mediterranean coastal plain, from the Gulf of Alexandretta in
the north to the Sinai peninsula in the south, had lost a stretch of land ranging from 2 to
40 km wide, varying from region to region. This coastal inundation affected complex
hunters, fisher-foragers and would-be farmers alike, reducing their territories and subsis-
tence bases, destroying their habitats, and limiting their access to marine resources (Bar-
Yosef 2001, p. 133; Stewart and Morhange 2009, pp. 401–402). It is within this climatic
and environmental context that we must consider the origins, motivations and movements
of the people who came to the island of Cyprus, whether on periodic visits or in order to
settle permanently.
The attempt to assess their origins is complicated by several factors. One is that on the
Syrian coast nearest to Cyprus, agriculturalists are currently first attested only at Ras
Shamra VC, in the latest PPNB levels (de Contenson 1992, pp. 197–199; Cauvin 2000, pp.
154–155, 161), some 1,000 years after the earliest agricultural communities appeared on
Cyprus. One possible exception, albeit somewhat inland, is the site of Tell Ain el Kerkh in
the Rouj basin of northwest Syria (Tsuneki et al. 2006; Arimura 2007). The closest eco-
nomic and material parallels—plant–animal subsistence package, human skull treatment,
chipped stone technologies, grooved stones, figurines, polished stone maceheads, engraved
pebbles—for the earliest Cypriot Neolithic culture would appear to come from various
(PPNA, PPNB) sites in the Levantine Corridor, some 200 km inland from the eastern
Mediterranean coast (illustrations and references in Peltenburg et al. 2001a, p. 38 fig. 2, 58;
see also Stordeur 2003; Peltenburg 2004a, pp. 3–4). It has also been suggested (Peltenburg
et al. 2001a, b, pp. 41–42, fig. 4) that there are close structural similarities between some
buildings at Kalavasos Tenta and those from Jerf el-Ahmar in Syria and Gobekli Tepe in
Anatolia (Beile-Bohn et al. 1998, p. 48, fig. 20; Stordeur 2003, pp. 355–360). Close
similarities also exist in the chaınes operatoires of lithic manufacture seen at several
Cypriot sites and at various PPNB sites in the Levantine corridor, both in the south (e.g.,
Aswad, Ramad, Ghoraife) and the north (e.g., Dja’ade, el Mughara, Mureybet, Assouad) as
well as in eastern Anatolia (e.g. Cafer Hoyuk, Demirkoy Hoyuk) (McCarthy, in Peltenburg
et al. 2001a, pp. 49–53, fig. 9).
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Other Anatolian imports (obsidian), or material parallels (chipped stone), on the earliest
Cypriot sites have been cited (Cauvin 1991; Bar-Yosef 2003, pp. 76–77), but the only
Anatolian sites (beyond those in the distant southeast) contemporary with the Cypro-
EPPNB (EAN 1) on Cyprus (c. 8,500–8,000 cal BC) are on the central plateau (Ozdogan
2004; Baird 2005). All other currently known sites are either too early or too late to be of
relevance. In Antalya province along the southern coast of Anatolia, for example, the Late
Pleistocene foraging communities that occupied caves at Beldibi or Okuzini (e.g. Otte et al.
1995; Yalcınkaya et al. 1995; Sherratt 2007, p. 11) are much too early, although Bar-Yosef
(2001, p. 137) regards Okuzini as a possible origin for the fisher-foragers who came to
Akrotiri Aetokremnos. The best-known sites on the Cilican plain (e.g. Mersin), in a staging
ground where people might have set off to Cyprus, were only occupied some 1,000 years
later, c. 7,000 cal BC at Yumuktepe for example (Caneva 1999, pp. 108–110, 112; cf.
Peltenburg 2004b, p. xvii, for possible earlier sites), much the same case as for the northern
Levantine coast.
Leaving aside these earlier and later coastal sites, it seems unlikely that people who
lived so far inland, whether in the Levantine Corridor or on the central Anatolian plateau,
would have had the requisite maritime expertise or boat technology to reach an island
target and establish permanent bases there. Given this conundrum, we may speculate—
extrapolating from the slightly later, PPNC evidence at the submerged coastal site of Atlit-
Yam in Israel (Galili et al. 2002, 2004)—that some indigenous, late PPNA or early PPNB
agriculturalists did live along the Levantine or Cilician costal plains, had undertaken
overseas forays, and thus were aware of the potential that Cyprus offered for permanent
settlement. But why do we find no evidence for coastal agropastoralists before about
7,000 cal BC?
Following the Late Glacial Maximum, when the Mediterranean Sea fell to some 120 m
lower than present-day levels, the most notable rise occurred between about 17,000 and
11,000 BP (Shackleton et al. 1984; Gomez and Pease 1992, p. 1; Lambeck and Purcell
2005, pp. 1985–1987, fig. 14). At one point, around 14.6 ka BP, sea level is estimated to
have risen by around 20 m in less than 500 years (about 4 cm per year—Clark et al. 2002;
Weaver et al. 2003), which would have utterly transformed the spatial and environmental
context of any human being living on or exploiting the resources of the coast (Stewart and
Morhange 2009, p. 402). By the 11th millennium BC, sea level had risen to about 40–50 m
below its present level (Lambeck and Chappell 2001, p. 683; Broodbank 2006, p. 209); by
the 8th millennium BC it had risen even further, to a level only 7 m lower than present
(Cherry 1990, pp. 192–193). Not until some 6–7,000 years ago did the sea reach its modern
levels (van Andel 1989, p. 736; Lambeck and Chappell 2001, p. 683; Pirazzoli 2005, pp.
1996–1999). Most shorelines that existed before that time are thus now submerged, and
any prehistoric sites, activity areas or maritime features that may have been situated on
them are now lost to view (Flemming 1998); some are several kilometres from present-day
shorelines (Bailey and Milner 2002, pp. 132–133).
During Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN) times along the eastern Mediterranean littoral,
therefore, the shoreline would have been at least 15–25 m lower than it is at present. As the
climate became warmer and wetter, the coastal plains would have been rich and fertile,
providing unique habitats for relatively dense foraging groups (Sherratt 2007, pp. 4–5). If
any of these people were living permanently or even periodically in settlements along an
increasingly diminishing Levantine coastal plain, they would have suffered acute social
and environmental stress and, in the end, would have lost not just their land and homes but
their very means of subsistence. The disappearance of these broad, level, well-watered
coastal plains and the resources—marine, plant and animal—available there must have had
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major social repercussions. As a consequence, the pull of an uninhabited place like Cyprus,
perhaps well known (through earlier visits) to any coastal dwellers from the Cilician Plain
to the cliffs of Carmel, would have been strong. In other words, although ecosystemic
stress may have served as the catalyst for a purposive settlement of Cyprus, the incentive of
coastal dwellers to travel to the island already existed, as witnessed by the remains at
Aetokremmos and perhaps by those at Nissi Beach and Akamas Aspros, even if such earlier
visits attest to seafaring fisher-foragers, not agro-pastoralists.
Whereas the new work by Ammerman et al. (2007, 2008) has gone some way towards
demonstrating the existence of sites on the submerged coastal plain of Cyprus during the
8th millennium cal BC (if not earlier), the only material evidence currently available for
such sites along the coasts of southern Anatolia or the Levant is either too early or too late
to be of relevance. Peltenburg (2004b, p. xvii) pointed out that the faunal assemblage from
the Upper Palaeolithic Ucagızlı Cave site on the northernmost Levantine coast (Gulec et al.
2000), opposite Cyprus’s Karpass Peninsula in present-day Turkey, shows intensive
exploitation of deer (as is the case on Cypro-PPNB [EAN] Cyprus), as well as the use of
goat, cattle and pig, all species introduced much later to Cyprus. Although not a submerged
site, and dated far too early (c. 41,000 BP) to be pertinent here, the remains of Ucagızlı—like those of the Mesolithic cave sites in Antalya province (noted above)—reveal the kind
of habitat exploited by Late Epipalaeolithic, coastal-dwelling fisher-foragers. Despite
Ucagızlı’s current physical location, perched on a steep slope some 18 m above the low-
lying coastal plain (Kuhn et al. 1999, p. 509), the site might well be a forerunner of those
Late Pleistocene–Early Holocene coastal sites still so scarce in the archaeological record.
The situation along the southern Levantine coast becomes clearer because of the
underwater site at Atlit-Yam, opposite Mount Carmel (Galili and Nir 1993; Galili et al.
2002). Dated to the final PPNB (= PPNC, late 8th–early 7th millennium cal BC), this site is
situated today some 200–400 m offshore, at a depth of 8–12 metres. It extends over an area
of some 40,000 m2, and contains everything from human skeletons, floral and faunal
remains (wild and domestic ovicaprids, pig, cattle and dog) and marine fish, to structural
foundations and stone-built water wells (Fig. 6). The excavators characterised Atlit-Yam
as an archetypal Mediterranean Fishing Village (MFV), where the inhabitants survived
through not just agropastoral practices but also the intensive exploitation of marine
resources.
Galili et al. (2002), pp. 187–190, 2004, pp. 94–97) make two contentious points in
discussing the wider ramifications of the MFV. First, they argue that this phenomenon
emerged as a response to ‘environmental degradation’ (deforestation, overgrazing) only
during the later Levantine PPNB (c. 7,000 cal BC or later). Secondly, they maintain that
the earlier Cypriot sites (Cypro-EPPNB [EAN 1]) are not true MFVs as they show little
evidence for the exploitation of marine resources (cf. McCartney 2007b, p. 88). With
respect to the first point, because the authors are sceptical about the existence of earlier
Levantine coastal sites that would also be submerged today, they downplay any likelihood
of a similar human response to the environmental upheavals wrought by rising sea levels
during earlier, Late Epipalaeolithic or PPN times. With respect to the second point, they
could not have known that archaeological fieldwork would soon uncover submerged sites
on the coastal plain of Cyprus, that is, Akamas Aspros and possibly Nissi Beach, both of
which were exploited by fisher-foragers who relied heavily on fish, shellfish, avifauna and
similar marine resources. Their argument that intensive land and underwater survey had
previously failed to recover any submerged sites on the Levantine coast pertains mainly to
the southern Levant (modern-day Israel), as virtually no coastal or underwater surveys
targeted specifically on early prehistoric sites have (yet) been undertaken elsewhere.
108 J World Prehist (2010) 23:79–120
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Moreover, some PPN coastal sites in Lebanon (Tell aux Scies, Dik el-Mahdi) may well fit
the MFV model (Cauvin 1968, pp. 219–229; Peltenburg 2004b, p. xvii).
What Galili and his colleagues have defined as the MFV in fact requires more than one
set of temporal and spatial parameters. Such sites will have emerged, developed and
changed at different times, for different reasons (McCartney 2007b, pp. 88–89, raises
similar concerns regarding their limited view of the MFV). Above all, their definition is
overly restricted: ‘environmental degradation’ cannot be confined to the actions of agro-
pastoralists alone. Most likely the MFV already existed during the environmental and
social crises associated with rising sea levels in the Late Pleistocene or Early Holocene, at
well-situated, fertile, harbour-like locations along the east Mediterranean coast—anywhere
from Cilicia in the north to the Bay of Acco in the south. We might expect, therefore, that
any Late Epipalaeolithic or early Neolithic Mediterranean fishing villages located along
these coasts will only be found today—like Atlit-Yam—on submerged coastal plains, at
various depths under the sea, and at different lengths from the current shoreline of the
eastern Mediterranean (similarly, Rollefson 2004).
Increasingly, therefore, it is apparent that the full story of the earliest Neolithic in the
Mediterranean remains to be told, and that these submerged coastal sites will be central to
its telling. With respect to Cyprus, Simmons (1999, pp. 321–322) suggested a decade ago
that ‘…those responsible for Aetokremnos were a conservative group of early Levantine
Neolithic peoples’ who rejected a farming way of life in order to pursue their customary
hunter-gatherer lifestyle in a new, insular setting. It is now clear that Aetokremnos—and
perhaps Nissi Beach and Akamas Aspros—were Late Epipalaeolithic sites frequented by
fisher-foragers, not hunter-gatherers per se, people who were moving away from what is
typically regarded as a Neolithic (i.e. farming) way of life, or who at least regarded
Fig. 6 Atlit-Yam: underwater site (final PPNB [= PPNC]), showing distribution of installations andfeatures (courtesy of Ehud Galili; published in Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 15 [2002] 176 fig. 6)
J World Prehist (2010) 23:79–120 109
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cereals—wild or cultivated—as only one component within a resource spectrum of hunted
and gathered foods that supported a primarily foraging lifestyle (Sherratt 2007, p. 6).
Equally important is the fact that none of these Late Epipalaeolithic sites shows any strong
material affinities with the best-published sites of the Cypro-PPNA/B periods.
Various factors, from invisibility beneath the sea to the ephemeral nature of the sites
themselves, thus far has made it impossible to demonstrate the existence of any Levantine
PPN Mediterranean fishing village that might have served as a jumping-off point for the
earliest agropastoral settlers of Cyprus (Peltenburg et al. 2001a, p. 59; Peltenburg et al.
2003, p. 97). However, the multiple material components that the earliest settled villages
on Cyprus shared with various sites in the PPNA–PPNB Levant—themselves demon-
strating great variability in everything from chipped stone manufacture to mortuary tra-
ditions (McCartney 2004, pp. 104–105; Watkins 2008)—indicate that the new, permanent
settlers of Cyprus most likely came from the Levantine coast, which on present evidence
could include anywhere from the Gulf of Iskenderun to the Bay of Acco (Broodbank 2006,
p. 216; Sherratt 2007, p. 11). Whatever their origins within this wider arena, they represent
one of the earliest successful overseas migrations of farmers in the Mediterranean world,
bringing with them both domesticated and wild fauna as well as seed crops—no mean feat.
The case for such a migration, or migrations, has been made convincingly (Peltenburg
et al. 2001a, pp. 55–60; Peltenburg 2004a, pp. 4–5; Sherratt 2007, p. 11), if not to
everyone’s satisfaction (e.g., Watkins 2004, 2008, p. 146). The processual legacy that
rejected migration and diffusionism as hallmarks of cultural history has itself been rejected
by a new generation of archaeologists emboldened by postmodernist and postcolonial
thinking and critical of most ideas associated with the global and imperial. In this context,
migrations are understood ‘… as a behavior that is typically performed by defined sub-
groups (often kin-recruited) with specific goals, targeted on known destinations and likely
to use familiar routes’ (Anthony 1990, pp. 895–896). There is no denying the historic or
prehistoric reality of migration, a social phenomenon tied up with mobility, subsistence,
exploitation and exchange.
On Cyprus, we find in the main Cypro-EPPNB (EAN 1) sites the co-existence of the
‘founder crops’ and managed or early-domesticated animals at a date equivalent to or even
earlier than that at which they appear throughout southeastern Anatolia and the Levantine
Corridor (Legge 1996; Peters et al. 1999, 2005; Vigne et al. 2003, pp. 250–252). Once
again this means that we must re-evaluate long-standing assumptions about the primacy of
the Levant in matters of mobility and subsistence, as well as the nature, extent and rele-
vance of exploitation and/or exchange in PPN ‘interaction spheres’ (Bar-Yosef and Belfer-
Cohen 1989; cf. Kuijt 2004; Sherratt 2007; Watkins 2008), all of which have long coloured
how we view the earliest Neolithic. Indeed, Zeder (2009, p. 45) maintains that the Neo-
lithic ‘revolution’ in the Near East took more than 10,000 years to be fully realized, and
that its chief components were ‘rolled out’ in different ways and at different times
throughout a vast area extending from the Zagros in the east to the Aegean area (and
Cyprus) in the west.
Broodbank (2006, p. 216) observed that the earliest settlement of Cyprus most likely
reflects a fusion of two, perhaps competing, ideologies: (1) the ethos of seafaring fisher-
foragers whom we now know continued to exploit Cyprus’s coast during PPNB times (at
least at Nissi Beach—Ammerman et al. 2008, p. 15); and (2) the ‘expansionist’ and
exploratory outlook of stressed coastal dwellers (whether complex foragers or agropas-
toralists), in search of new lands to settle, new places to live. In other words, the earliest
known permanent settlement of Cyprus during Cypro-EPPNB (EAN 1), if not in Cypro-
PPNA, was not part of some inevitable maritime expansion into the Mediterranean, but
110 J World Prehist (2010) 23:79–120
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was conditioned initially by challenging local circumstances and propelled by people
whose demographic situation, combined with a working knowledge of the sea, led them to
explore, migrate and eventually to exploit the unknown. Broodbank (2006, p. 217) suggests
that seafaring may have emerged initially as a response by foragers, fishers or hunter-
gatherers to various climatic or social crises, including subsistence needs. Gamble (2003,
pp. 232–233), by contrast, believes that much earlier voyaging and coastal or island
exploration was a purposive and attractive option, a ‘heroic tradition’ driven by the ide-
ology of discovery and subsistence (or to acquire high-value items), rather than part of a
way of life borne out of crises. Whatever the case may have been in the Late Epipalae-
olithic, seafaring now facilitated human movement throughout the eastern Mediterranean
and beyond. At the same time, it also played a crucial role in transporting the people, plants
and animals involved in agricultural origins.
Overview
The pace of change in the study of the Late Epipalaeolithic (or ‘Mesolithic’) throughout
the Mediterranean is such that all discussion, and all current interpretations, must remain
open-ended. On Cyprus, at the time of writing, it is still tenuous to argue (Peltenburg
2004a, pp. 4–5; Watkins 2004; McCartney 2005, p. 16, 2007) that some form of continuous
occupation occurred between the Late Epipalaeolithic ‘Akrotiri phase’, now clearly dated
to the 11th millennium cal BC, and the earliest Aceramic Neolithic, which began in the
late-10th to mid-9th millennia cal BC. Perhaps we should decouple the issue of Cyprus’s
permanent settlement during the Cypro-PPNA or Cypro-PPNB (EAN) from the question of
the earlier seafaring visits to the island’s coasts and the likelihood of semi-permanent
camps inland. As Ammerman (2010, p. 89) has observed with respect to seafarers and the
coastal way of life they pursued: ‘…we are now beginning to realize that the early foragers
who were making seasonal trips to Cyprus were not heading toward the Neolithic but away
from it (in terms of their life style and interests)’ (see Simmons 1999, pp. 321–322 for a
similar scenario, but one based on hunter-gatherers rather than fisher-foragers).
Ongoing excavation and survey work alike have revealed that during the Early Ace-
ramic Neolithic new, now permanent settlers reached Cyprus over 10,000 years ago,
bearing cultivated (if not domesticated) cereals and herded (‘managed’) animals from the
Levantine (‘Syro-Cilician’) mainland. Because some recently explored sites in and around
the northern and eastern foothills of the Troodos—Asprokremmos, and perhaps also Pal-aeokamina and Kelaıdhoni—belong to a time frame equivalent to the Levantine PPNA,
they must also be included in discussions of the island’s earliest permanent settlement. At
the same time, it now seems likely that a coastal, non-farming way of life continued to
flourish, something heretofore unimagined in the Neolithic of Cyprus. The identification of
all these sites and their attribution to the earliest phase of the Neolithic is a phenomenon of
the twenty-first century. This trajectory of research marks out Cyprus as a key island
context for understanding the emergence of farming and sedentary living, the continuation
of seafaring, and all the associated social transformations, within an eastern Mediterranean
core zone.
The Aceramic Neolithic as a whole (c. 9,000–c. 5,500 cal BC) was a time when a
uniquely Cypriot culture crystallised and, after an extensive period of insular development,
became increasingly isolated, for diverse reasons, from the mainland. The permanent
settlement of Cyprus may have been sparked initially by climatic and environmental stress,
as well as by social factors related to mobility, insularity and establishing a distinctive, new
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identity. In the end, however, people succeeded in settling the island because of human
design and adaptability. To what extent the nature of insularity, the role of distance, the
dictates of adjusting to a new climatic and ecological regime, or basic social choices
prolonged this period of settlement and adaptation are issues that can be investigated
empirically, now that the essential groundwork has been laid systematically.
Acknowledgments Over the past decade, archaeologists working on Cyprus have produced an extraor-dinary amount of new and unprecedented information—based on new fieldwork and new research onindividual classes of material—related to the earliest prehistory of the island. The complexity and breadth ofmaterials and ideas I have attempted to summarise in this paper presented real challenges to me, not leastbecause all these issues lie (or have lain) well beyond my own area of expertise. I am therefore deeplyindebted to the following individuals, listed in alphabetical order, for their comments on earlier drafts ofvarious sections, and/or for providing unpublished papers, lectures and very timely discussions related tothis research. I relied heavily on their comments and criticisms, but the opinions expressed and the inter-pretations argued here remain my own responsibility, not theirs. Albert Ammerman (Colgate University);Paul Croft (Lemba Archaeological Project, Cyprus); Paula Louise Jones (Independent Scholar); CaroleMcCartney (Lemba Archaeological Research Centre); Sturt Manning (Cornell University); Edgar Pelten-burg (School of History, Classics and Archaeology, Edinburgh University); Alan Simmons (University ofNevada, Las Vegas). I am also grateful for discussions and comments received following presentations ofseveral earlier versions of this paper given in workshops, seminars or lectures at the following institutions:University College London, Cornell University (Mediterranean Colloquium, Dept. of Classics), 2008Annual ASOR Meeting (Boston), University of California, Berkeley (Depts. of Anthropology, Near EasternStudies, Group in Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology), University of Glasgow (Dept. ofArchaeology), and the Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute, Nicosia. The perspectivesprovided by everyone from palaeontologists to classical archaeologists have, I hope, helped to sharpen thepoints I tried to make in this study.
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