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Author ORCID Identifier
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1046-6421
AccessType
Open Access Dissertation
Document Type
dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Degree Program
Anthropology
Year Degree Awarded
2019
Month Degree Awarded
May
First Advisor
Michael Sugerman
Subject Categories
Anthropology | Archaeological Anthropology
Abstract
In archaeology, the analysis of ordinary things does not often lead to assessments of power. Political systems are difficult to trace materially because today they seem separate from our lives, but yet are involved in most everything we do. In this case study of first millennium BCE Idalion, Cyprus, I have found that the producers of undecorated, or utilitarian, pottery are impacted by political behavior and social relationships, which both impact their economic stability. When discussing the political economy, archaeologists describe elites as the controllers of wealth including the consumption and sometimes production of high value goods. However, I argue that they also play a role in the production of utilitarian pottery. I combine craft production theory, archaeological theories of power, and petrographic analysis, to analyze the organization of production of pottery and its role in the political economy. In the Mediterranean, and specifically on Cyprus, political economies are defined most-often through the translation of inscriptions and texts. For the first millennium BCE, the term “city-kingdom” is common on Cyprus. This use of texts and inscriptions causes a problem because archaeologists do not often assess the legitimacy of these political terms, such as kingdoms and states, through material culture, thereby allowing political types to be poorly understood. To better define the Cypriot political type, city-kingdom, I approach politics from the mode of defining power and based my analysis on the multi-dimensional nature of power. The way power impacted producers of utilitarian pottery at Idalion includes political and economic power that placed limits on their access to raw materials, trade routes, and/or markets, and also social power through the relationships potters navigated to ensure their own economic stability and success. At Idalion, power was flexible and impacted by various cultural factors and by analyzing it through pottery production I am able to provide a tentative definition of a city-kingdom.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.7275/ed51-fk14
Recommended Citation
Bartusewich, Rebecca, "Production and Power at Idalion, Cyprus in the First Millennium BCE" (2019). Doctoral Dissertations. 1604.
https://doi.org/10.7275/ed51-fk14
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/1604
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.