Idalion 2005 Overview

American Expedition to Idalion III
Michael O. Sugerman

The city of Idalion, Cyprus, was one of the most important cities in the ancient eastern Mediterranean. This center of commerce was founded at the end of the Late Bronze Age, in the 13th century BC, and continued to thrive for more than a thousand years. Although there have been a number of archaeological excavation projects at Idalion between the late nineteenth century and the present, much about the ancient city/kingdom remains unknown. From 1971-1980 the American Expedition to Idalion undertook a multi-level program of regional survey, site survey, and excavation, with broad goals for investigating the Idalion’s long-term development within its environmental and cultural contexts. This project was directed originally by G. Ernest Wright and then by Lawrence E. Stager and Anita Walker. After the invasion of 1974 the directors modified their goals in accordance with the changed political landscape of the region. In subsequent years the excavation team dispersed to other projects and much of the data recovered by the Expedition, though well recorded and well stored, remains unpublished.

It is critical that the results of the Expedition’s fieldwork be published now; current archaeological research in Idalion and the broader region is flourishing and leading to a better understanding of regional cultural development. The goals of this project are (1) to bring together the Expedition’s records and notes, and (2) to conduct a detailed analysis of the collections from the project that are stored in the Larnaca Museum. A pilot project funded by the University of Massachusetts Amherst allowed me to confirm the feasibility and design the methodology of this publication project.

Using these sources of data I will investigate the following research questions: (1) how and why did a small inland settlement become one of the dominant kingdoms of the Archaic Period? (2) to what extent–and in which periods–were the people of Idalion associated with mining, processing, and trading the nearby copper ores? (3) what was the relationship between Idalion and the coastal Phoenician kingdom of Kition? (4) how can we understand the trajectories of urbanization and deurbanization at Idalion in the context of the wider political, economic, and cultural contexts of Cyprus and the eastern Mediterranean?