THE
BRONZE AGE : 2500 - 1050 B.C.
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MIDDLE BRONZE (MIDDLE CYPRIOT) |
2000-1650 BC
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| During the Middle Bronze Age (or Middle Cypriot) Red Polished pottery continued while White Painted II ware, the hallmark of the period, began. Ceramic styles became more sharply differentiated from one part of the island to another and recognizable regional styles emerged. Other, profounder changes also occurred. | ||
| Increasing social and cultural divisions among the island's growing population are revealed primarily in cemeteries excavated at Karmi and Lapithos. Settlements have been excavated at Alambra Mouttes, Episkopi Phaneromeni, and Kalopsidha. Fortifications found at sites like Nitoviklia, Dhali Kafkalia and Krini, and weapons included with grave offerings hint at mounting intercommunal conflict, perhaps as a consequence of competition for scarce resources of land, water and copper. Specialized metallurgical installations and evidence of deep-shaft mining as at Ambelikou Aletri attest to the growing importance of Cyprus as a copper producer. | ||
| During the Middle Bronze Age copper became an important export and the island developed relations with Canaanite Syria-Palestine and Minoan Crete. A seventeenth-century BC cuneiform text from Mari on the Euphrates in Syria refers to "copper of Alashiya," the ancient name for the island used throughout the second millennium. Such texts have been found in Anatolia, Syria and Egypt, but not on Cyprus. There is no clue at all as to what the Cypriots themsleves called the island in the Middle Bronze Age. Cypro-Minoan, the enigmatic indigenous Late Bronze Age script of Cyprus, has not yet been deciphered. | ||
| Despite these foreign contacts, Cyprus remained an island of villages largely isolated from the effects of urbanization, literacy, and state formation that swept the mainland. Only in the Late Bronze Age did the island emerge from relative isolation onto the international scene of the eastern Mediterranean. |
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A Middle Cypriot Tomb from Lapithos
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This north coast cemetery at Lapithos Vrysi tou Barbou has the typical rock-cut tombs where several separate burial chambers radiate from a common entrance pit or passage. The dead were accompanied with abundant gifts of food and drink placed in ceramic vessels. At some sites, copper weapons, tools, and ornaments (sometimes made of bronze) were also included in large numbers. Spearheads and daggers can be seen in the drawing at left. Similar pieces are well represented in the metal pages of this publication, such as the Semitic Museum Cesnola Collection Nos. 1995.10.1238 and 1240. | ||
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Last Modified: 11/15/99