Becoming urban and rural in Iron Age Cyprus

The longest syllabic inscription from Cyprus, called the Idalion Tablet, records the transactional relationship between Idalion's king and city, the household of a doctor named Onasilos, and the productive lands, marshes, and territory of the town. Engraved on a bronze plaque, the inscription lays out a spatial representation of a mid-fifth century BCE Cypriot landscape, one marked by farms, orchards, gardens, rivers and plains, as well as the protection of Athena. Although a singular piece of evidence on ancient land use and property, the Tablet raises some interesting questions about Archaic and Classical states in the Mediterranean: how did the town of Idalion come to control such a variegated territory? What were the processes of social and environmental change that co-generated urban and rural development? How were farther plots of land related to, or detached from, the concerns of the state? In this talk, I introduce some of the compelling, if challenging, evidence for the rise of Archaic Cypriot towns and the associated production of rural villages, land use practices, industries, and cultures. I focus on the case study of Amathus and its eastern territory, on the south-central coast, which offers a series of interesting archaeological records, including my own recent excavations of small rural sites, with which to study political landscapes. Looking at town and country, through a range of sources, exposes the rural complexities tied to state formation as well as opens space for countering assumptions about rural backwaters and urban progress.