Mediterranean maritime landscapes: Transport, trade, and society on Late Bronze Age Cyprus

How are a society's cultural and cognitive features or its political and economic institutions related to its maritime trading patterns What roles did coastal settlements play in intra-island social development and dynamics? Was access to Cyprus's natural resources or other sources of wealth and prestige dictated and controlled by a coastal political organization, or by inland elites? To answer these questions, this study proceeds first by introducing the concept of the ideational maritime landscape, and then the maritime landscape of Late Bronze Age Cyprus. As one parr of the Mediterranean maritime landscape, Cyprus's coastal centers are evaluated in light of several recent studies that deal with settlement hierarchies, and with factors of metallurgical production, transport, and wealth. The unifying themes of this study are the movement of people and goods throughout the maritime landscape, the routes they followed, and the social, economic, and ideological relationships involved in such movements.