Cyprus's Earliest Prehistory: Seafarers, Foragers and Settlers Author(s): A. Bernard Knapp Source: Journal of World Prehistory, Vol. 23, No. 2 (June 2010), pp. 79-120 Published by: Springer Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25801288 Accessed: 12-03-2016 20:28 UTC

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This content downloaded from 128.148.252.35 on Sat, 12 Mar 2016 20:28:46 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions J World Prehist (2010) 23:79-120 DOI 10.1007/sl0963-010-9034-2

Cyprus's Earliest Prehistory: Seafarers, Foragers and Settlers

A. Bernard Knapp

Published online: 3 June 2010 ? Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010

Abstract Over the past 20 years, the earliest prehistory of Cyprus has been completely rewritten as a result of new excavations, survey work and high-resolution radiocarbon dating. This study attempts to summarise the earliest chapter in the prehistory of Cyprus, focusing on published and unpublished results from several new sites and surveys. I attempt to place these results in an interpretative context that focuses on early seafarers, fisher foragers, and the people who were instrumental in establishing the earliest agricultural communities on the island of Cyprus. The pace of change in the study of both the Late Epipalaeolithic and earliest Neolithic is such that all current interpretations must remain open-ended. Nonetheless, these new streams of evidence demand an interim assessment, not least in order to integrate Cyprus into current interpretations of interaction amongst sea farers, fisher-foragers and early agriculturalists in the wider Mediterranean world.

Keywords Cyprus Eastern Mediterranean Late Epipalaeolithic Early Aceramic Neolithic (Cypro-PPNA/B) Faunal extinctions Early seafaring Coastal adaptations Fisher-foragers Early agriculture

It is not unexpected that the first permanently inhabited settlements on islands were preceded by earlier, archaeologically invisible, visitations for the purpose of short term exploitation of island resources and, synchronously, obtaining information about the nature and structure of the landscape. Sarah Colledge and James Conolly 2007, p. 53.

Introduction

Over the past two decades, we have arrived at a revolutionary understanding of the dawn of Cypriot prehistory, from the earliest visits by seafaring fisher-foragers and the presence of

A. B. Knapp (El) Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute, 11 Andreas Demetriou, 1066 Nicosia, Cyprus e-mail: [email protected]

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people exploiting pygmy-hippos or their remains, to the establishment of the earliest Neolithic farming communities. That people had already found their way to Cyprus during what is termed the 'pre-Neolithic' era (Simmons 1999, 2004a) is demonstrated by the well dated and detailed published evidence from Akrotiri Aetokremnos (for sites, see Fig. 1). (The convention for naming Cypriot sites is that the first name, in Roman script, refers to the nearest village, whilst the second name, in italics, is the actual site, as known locally, or by tradition, and typically indicated on cadastral plans.) Meanwhile, new evidence from survey work and preliminary excavations at the sites of Nissi Beach (near Ayia Napa), Akamas Aspros and Alimman reveal the presence of seafaring fishers and foragers exploiting coastal and marine resources from an unknown early phase until well into the 'Neolithic' era (Ammerman et al. 2006, 2007, 2008). Additionally, a newly attested PPNA human presence on the island has been demonstrated at the key site of Ayia Varvara Asprokremmos (Manning et al. 2010). These developments, in turn, have resolved a long-standing debate in the earliest pre history of Cyprus, namely whether the Late Aceramic Neolithic (that is, Khirokitia culture) represented the earliest colonisation of the island (Stanley Price 1977), or whether there were earlier, at the time unidentified, formative precursors?what became known as the 'antecedent hypothesis' (Dikaios 1962, p. 193; Watkins 1973; McCartney et al. 2006, p. 40). Although it is now clear that the Late Aceramic Neolithic Khirokitia culture did not arrive fully formed on Cyprus, current archaeological evidence does not support the notion of any permanent habitation before the 'Cypro-PPNA' period, that is, prior to c. 9,000 cal BC (Manning et al. 2010; also Watkins 2004; McCartney 2007a, 2010) (see Table 1). This study attempts to interpret a wide range of new archaeological and climatic data from Cyprus and the eastern Mediterranean, focusing on early seafarers, fisher-foragers and the earliest agriculturalists on Cyprus itself. In it I seek to integrate Cyprus into current interpretations of mobility, materiality and identity in the wider eastern Mediterranean world at the Pleistocene-Holocene transition. After a brief overview of the often confounding terminology in use on Cyprus for these early periods, the study proceeds by considering first the earliest (Late Epipalaeolithic) evidence for the presence of seafaring fisher-foragers on Cyprus. This includes a detailed reassessment of the crucial evidence from Akrotiri Aetokremnos, the possibility of

Table 1 Periods, dates, sites and socio-economic practices: Late Epipalaeolithic-Aceramic Neolithic Cyprus

Period and sites (with approximate dates Cal BC) Socio-economic practices

Late Epipalaeolithic (c. 11,000-10,000 Cal BC): Aetokremnos (Nissi Beach, Akamas Aspros ??) Seafaring; fisher-forager exploration Cypro-PPNA (c. 9,100-8,500 Cal BC) Asprokremnos (Palaeokamina, Kelaidhoni ??) Seafaring; exploration; game-stocking Cypro-PPNB (Early Aceramic Neolithic?EAN): Shillourokambos, Mylouthkia, Tenta Cypro-EPPNB (EAN 1) (c. 8,500-8,000 Cal BC) Seafaring; cultivators; early farmers Cypro-MPPNB (EAN 2) (c. 8,000-7,500 Cal BC) Seafaring; consolidation of farming economy Cypro-LPPNB (EAN 3 (c. 7,500-7,000 Cal BC) Seafaring; insular adaptation of farming Late Aceramic Neolithic (c. 7,000/6,500-5,500 Cal BC) Development and floruit of 'Neolithic'

For Cypro-PPNA dates, see Manning et al. (2010); for Cypro-PPNB dates, see Peltenburg and Project Members (2003), S/MA 70(4): 99, table 11.3

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This content downloaded from 128.148.252.35 on Sat, 12 Mar 2016 20:28:46 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions J World Prehist (2010) 23:79-120 81 sedentary occupation there, and the controversial issue of faunal extinction as presumed from remains of pygmy hippos and elephants (Phanourios minutus, Elephas Cypriotes) at the site. The study then broadens out to consider the wider early Holocene landscape, including tentative evidence from various coastal sites, and more secure evidence from several inland sites. I evaluate all these cultural developments in their environmental context, considering issues related to coastal adaptations, seafaring and climatic epi sodes?in particular the cooler, arid conditions and more stable sea level associated with the Younger Dryas episode. These conditions must have placed severe pressures on the floral, faunal and even mineral resources upon which the people of this era relied. Finally, I discuss the transition to the so-called 'Cypro-PPNA/B' periods (or Early Aceramic Neo lithic?EAN), over 10,000 years ago, when people finally came to settle permanently on the island, bringing with them cultivated (domesticated?) cereals and herded (managed) animals from the Levantine mainland. During the Aceramic Neolithic overall (c. 8,500-c. 5,500 cal BC), a unique material culture developed on Cyprus, one that became increas ingly isolated from those on the mainland.

Time and Terminology

Despite the long-standing reluctance amongst Cypriot archaeologists to refer to the period preceding the Neolithic as 'Late Epipalaeolithic', it is now clear that Cyprus must be included in attempts to evaluate the seafaring capabilities of Levantine Late Epipalaeo lithic foragers, fishers and hunter-gatherers (Broodbank 2006, pp. 208-213; Ammerman 2010, pp. 82-83), and to contextualise the material as well as the social developments witnessed in the contemporary Levant and Anatolia (Watkins 2005, 2008). As Bar-Yosef (2001, p. 130) noted nearly a decade ago: 'The first visitors evidenced in the prehistory of Cyprus were late Epi-Paleolithic foragers'. In this study, therefore, I refer to the earliest Holocene?a time period encompassing more or less the 11th millennium cal BC?as 'Late Epipalaeolithic', in keeping with the contemporary Levantine and Anatolian asso ciations of the term (presaged by Held 1989, pp. 8-9). Without getting bogged down in the Victorian terminology (Sherratt 2007, pp. 2-3) that plagues attempts to understand these periods and the events or processes that characterise them, suffice it to say that 'Meso lithic'?a term used widely in the Aegean and Europe to refer to the start of the Holocene epoch (Scarre 2005, p. 182)?was deemed inappropriate to the eastern Mediterranean, where Garrod (1957) had applied it to the Natufian culture, a terminal Pleistocene, semi sedentary, hunting and foraging group. And so the term 'Late Epipalaeolithic' came into being. Although 'pre-Neolithic' has been applied to similar phenomena elsewhere in the Mediterranean, it is not used in this study, which seeks to place Cyprus in its wider, and especially eastern Mediterranean, context. For the following period, close material links between the Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPNA, PPNB) cultures of the Levant and Anatolia and the earliest Neolithic archaeological evi dence on Cyprus have led many of the archaeologists most closely involved to classify the evidence as forming the Cypro-PPNA or Cypro-PPNB 'facies' of the mainland, in tandem with the use of the term 'Taurus facies* for the PPNB in southeast Anatolia (Cauvin and Cauvin 1993). Thus the period is now frequently referred to as Cypro-PPNB, with early, middle and late phases (Cypro-EPPNB, Cypro-MPPNB, Cypro-LPPNB) (Peltenburg et al. 2001a, pp. 37-38, 2001b, p. 65). McCartney (2004, p. 108, table 9.1, 2007: table la), who has done much of the pioneering work on the chipped stone materials from this period, initially referred to these three phases as Early Cypriot Aceramic (Neolithic), Middle

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Cypriot Aceramic and Late Cypriot Aceramic (also listed by Peltenburg et al. as an 'alternate system': 2003, p. 87, table 11.3). More recently, in a quandary over how to refer to material from the newly documented PPNA phase on Cyprus, McCartney has come to favour Cypro-PPNB as a more explicit term to indicate all the cultural links involved (personal communication, April 2008). Watkins (2004, pp. 29-31) and Le Brun (2004, p. 10), however, were very explicit about the problems inherent in the 'Cypro-PPNB' terminology. Watkins in particular highlighted the different ways that PPNB is used in the Levant (to refer to stratigraphies, technologies, economic interaction spheres, an 'archaeological culture' in the Childean sense). More recently (Watkins 2008), he has challenged the very notion of a PPNB 'interaction sphere', maintaining that major regional differences in material culture throughout the Levant, Anatolia and the Fertile Crescent render any cultural coherence unlikely. His solution for the terminology, however, based on the neutral numbering of periods as used by Aurenche et al. (1987), seems even less satisfactory, and fails to identify the periods in question as Neolithic. Croft (2003, p. 270), less concerned with terminology but equally negative about the use of 'PPNB' in the Cypriot context, refers to the period as the 'pre-Khirokitian Neolithic'. And if Sherratt (2007, p. 2) found the use of the Levantine terms 'EPPNB' and 'MPPNB' to be just so much 'off-putting algebra', one can only wonder how he would have regarded them when compounded with the conditional prefix 'Cypro-'. The use of the PPNB terminology exemplifies the widespread tendency to view the archaeology of Cyprus through the lenses of Near Eastern, Anatolian or Aegean archae ology; it tends to mask the unique, always different, indigenous traditions of the island. Although I have elsewhere developed what I believe to be a more coherent and consistent terminology for the Aceramic Neolithic (Knapp 2012), in order to avoid terminological anarchy, in this study I retain the use of the Cypro-PPNA/B nomenclature and the divisions within it, but in each case also provide my own terms (Early Aceramic Neolithic?EAN), as follows (and see Table 1): Cypro-EPPNB (=EAN 1), Cypro-MPPNB (=EAN 2) and Cypro-LPPNB (=EAN 3). In line with this, and along with the excavators of the relevant site (Ayia Varvara Asprokremmos), I refer to the newly attested PPNA human presence on the island as Cypro-PPNA (Manning et al. 2010), noting only that the connections of this phase with preceding and subsequent periods have yet to be established firmly.

Early Seafarers and Foragers: The Late Epipalaeolithic

The high antiquity of maritime crossings increasingly forms a topic of current archaeo logical research, whether in the Mediterranean (e.g. Costa et al. 2003; Broodbank 2006; Alcover 2008; Ammerman 2010) or farther afield (e.g. Bailey 2004; Boivin and Fuller 2009). Much of this work was recently synthesised very ably by Broodbank (2006, pp. 201-204), who finds against any supportable evidence for maritime ventures from continental landmasses during the Lower and Middle Pleistocene. The (Pleistocene) Mediterranean islands reveal no undisputed evidence for Lower Palaeolithic sea-crossings (despite special pleading by Bednarik 2003, pp. 46-47). Separate locales with possible Middle Palaeolithic stone tools on Kephallonia and Zakynthos (Kourtessi-Phillipaki 1999, pp. 284-286) and Melos (Chelidonio 2001) in the Aegean form what Broodbank (2006, pp. 204-205) regards as the only possible strains of evidence. Middle and Upper Palae olithic evidence, however, is also reported from Gramiza island in the northern Sporades (Sampson 1998, pp. 18-20) and elsewhere in that island group (e.g., Efstratiou 1985,

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This content downloaded from 128.148.252.35 on Sat, 12 Mar 2016 20:28:46 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions J World Prehist (2010) 23:79-120 83 pp. 5-6, 56-59), as well as in the Ionian islands (e.g., Dousougli 1999; Kourtessi-Phillipaki 1999; Georgiadis 2002, p. 152). By the Upper Palaeolithic, the indirectly dated (c. 30,000 years old) site of Fontana Nuova on Sicily (Chilardi et al. 1996) provides the only current evidence for maritime activity on the Mediterranean islands until about 20-15,000 years ago, when the still disputed evidence from Corbeddu cave in Sardinia?a human phalanx found stratified beneath a thick stratum of Megaloceros deer bones?has been dated to around 16,500 cal BC (Sondaar et al. 1995). Upper Palaeolithic chipped stone tools have also been found in a stratified Aeolian deposit, geologically datable to the Late Glacial Maximum (c. 25-18,000 cal BP), at the site of Santa Maria is Acquas in Sardinia (Mussi and Melis 2002). As Broodbank (2006, pp. 206-207) points out, however, there are no further signs of human presence on Sardinia for another 8,000 years (9th-8th millennia BC), and none on Sicily for another 15,000 years (Leighton 1999, pp. 22-30). Broodbank (2006, pp. 207-208) draws two salient conclusions from his detailed survey of pre-Holocene sites in the Mediterranean: (1) an early presence (if such there was) of humans on the two largest Mediterranean islands (Sicily, Sardinia) may only have lasted until climatic amelioration enabled them to return to the mainland (if they didn't die out); (2) more generally, almost until the end of the Pleistocene, there is currently precious little evidence of any maritime activity throughout the Mediterranean basin. It must be added, however, that very little targeted survey or exploration, especially along the coastal shelves, has been conducted thus far; it is reasonable to expect that more sites may yet be identified. Beginning in the 11th millennium cal BC, however, this picture of tentative attempts at seagoing (occasional forays into the sea) rapidly takes on new hues, and the island of Cyprus assumes particular importance in the emergence and spread of a more constant, practised and adept form of seafaring (continual use of the sea as a way of life?see also Broodbank 2006, p. 200). The well-known obsidian from the Cycladic island of Melos found at Franchthi cave in the mainland Argolid of Greece (Perles 1987, pp. 142-145) is an obvious case in point. More recent work at Cyclops Cave on Youra in the Sporades and from Maroulas on Kythnos has produced a wealth of material?fish and shellfish, bone fish hooks, 'early' domesticated pig and ovicaprine, round/elliptical stone structures?that demonstrates a Mesolithic presence (9th-8th millennia cal BC?Sampson et al. 2002; Trantalidou 1999, 2008; Sampson and Katsarou 2004; Sampson 2006, 2008; more gen erally, Galanidou and Perles 2003, pp. 27-32). In addition to the now well known Mesolithic midden site at Sidari on Corfu (Sordinas 2003), excavations begun in June 2009 at the site of Ouriakos on Lemnos produced what are classified as Late Epipalaeolithic chipped stone tools (http://www.stonepages.com/news/?29 June 2009), while three other pre-Neolithic sites are reported on Ikaria. In 2008, the Plakias Mesolithic Survey identified Mesolithic sites on Crete using a site location model developed for use in the Argolid (Strasser et al. 2009). The Plakias region in southern Crete has environmental character istics very similar to the preferred site locations of Mesolithic foragers in the Aegean, that is, caves and rock-shelters at the mouths of river gorges near the early Holocene coastline. Over 1,600 chipped stone artefacts were collected from ten lithic scatters associated with small caves or rockshelters. The Mesolithic assemblages, defined as microlithic, are similar to those from Franchthi Cave and elsewhere on the mainland; they are composed of small pebbles of quartz and red and black chert. Such discoveries?largely unpublished?have major implications for the history of seafaring. On Corsica and in northern Sardinia, a few sites dated to the late 9th-early 8th millennia cal BC exhibit what Vigne (1996, p. 118) terms a 'Mesolithic mode de vie'. That is, they represent the presence of very early Holocene 'trapper-fishers' who had seafaring

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This content downloaded from 128.148.252.35 on Sat, 12 Mar 2016 20:28:46 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 84 J World Prehist (2010) 23:79-120 capabilities, exploited coastal resources (fish, shellfish, small game, and the only remaining endemic, Prolagus Sardus), and stayed for short periods in small, mainly coastal sites (Costa et al. 2003); the most important of these sites is Bonifacio-Monte Leone in southernmost Corsica (Vigne and Desse-Berset 1995). Various Late Pleistocene-Early Holocene sites on the southern coast of Anatolia (e.g. Okuzini Cave in Antalya province) or along the Levantine littoral (e.g. Tell aux Scies and Dik el-Mahdi in Lebanon) are discussed at the relevant points in the text below. These, however, are probably only the tip of the iceberg, and we may expect many more sub merged sites along these coastlines to be identified as targeted underwater survey and excavations proceed. The role and significance of all such sites throughout the Mediter ranean are crucial for understanding and contextualising the activities of the earliest peoples who visited Cyprus. At this point, I leave behind for the moment further discussion of seafaring amongst Mediterranean hunter-gatherers, fisher-foragers and trappers, and turn to outline the growing evidence for their presence on Cyprus, as well as the possible reasons for it. In what follows, it should be borne in mind that accumulating evidence from the 'pre Neolithic' Mediterranean indicates that, for at least two millennia before the advent of farming (i.e. 'the Neolithic'), seafarers plied the coasts and islands of the Mediterranean. Archaeologists working on Mediterranean islands have long accepted the notion of Neo lithic seafaring, particularly in light of all the work carried out on the obsidian trade, with sources identified and distinguished amongst two islands in the Aegean (Melos, Giali) and four islands in the central Mediterranean (Sardinia, Lipari, Pantellaria, Palmarola) (Ren frew et al. 1965; Hallam et al. 1976; Le Bourdonnec et al. 2010). Another point to bear in mind is that much prior research on the Neolithic in the Mediterranean islands has con centrated on their earliest permanent occupation (e.g., Patton 1996; Cherry 1990, 2004), rather than on seafaring per se (but cf. Broodbank 2006; Rainbird 2007, pp. 68-89; Ammerman 2010, p. 81). Beyond the more tenuous material from Corsica, Sardinia and the Aegean (noted above), the fully published results of the excavations at Akrotiri Aetokremnos still provide the best witness for human presence on a Mediterranean island in the 11th millennium cal BC (Simmons 1999; Simmons and Mandel 2007) (Fig. 1). In addition, chipped stone materials thus far recovered from survey and limited excavations at the sites of Nissi Beach (near Ayia Napa), Akamas Aspros and Akamas Alimman are not only similar to one other (Ammerman et al. 2006, 2007, 2008), they also appear to belong to a broadly homoge neous tradition of lithic manufacture, which may be defined generally as microlithic and flake-based, like that found in Stratum 2 at Aetokremnos (McCartney 2006, pp. 11-17). At the same time, however, they show at least some similarities with the chipped stone assemblages found at inland sites such at Kalavasos Tenta near the southern coast (Period 5, Cypro-E/MPPNB [EAN 1-2]), Agrokipia Paleokamina in the northern Troodos (Given and Knapp 2003, pp. 183-186) and Ayia Varvara Asprokremmos in the northeastern Troodos (McCartney et al. 2006, pp. 51-54; McCartney 2007a). Asprokremmos, at least, can now be dated to the Cypro-PPNA period, temporally equivalent to the Levantine PPNA (Manning et al. 2010). Taken together, the sites of Akrotiri Aetokremnos, Nissi Beach and Akamas Aspros may be interpreted, provisionally, as places where seafaring fisher-foragers made short-term, periodic visits to Cyprus to exploit resources as varied as pygmy hippos and elephants, salt, shellfish and avifauna (Simmons 1999; Ammerman et al. 2008; Ammerman 2010, p. 82). But what lay behind these visits, and just how tentative are these suggestions (Simmons and Mandel 2007)? To answer these questions, we must look more closely at the individual

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Fig. 1 Map of Cyprus, with sites discussed in the text (drawn by Luke Sollars) coastal and inland sites, consider their commonalities and differences, and contextualise them more broadly within the environmental conditions that prevailed during the Late Epipalaeolithic, in particular the climatic event termed the Younger Dryas (Roberts 1998, pp. 71-76; Broodbank 2006, p. 210; Wasse 2007, pp. 45-46; Rosen 2007, pp. 45, 49, 67-69). Finally, we must bear in mind the crucial importance of the coastal shelves of all the Mediterranean islands and littorals, most of which are now submerged, but which may well have included some of the most favourable environmental settings of Late Pleisto cene-Early Holocene times. Not only are sites on these coastal shelves extremely difficult to locate and access (Flemming 1983, 1998), the archaeological evidence we have does not always reveal the true nature of coastal environments, nor does it portray adequately the activities of past people in such contexts (Westley and Dix 2006, p. 11).

Akrotiri Aetokremnos

Akrotiri Aetokremnos (or 'Site E') is located at the southernmost end of the island of Cyprus, on the Akrotiri Peninsula (Heywood 1982, pp. 162-66), which there rises from a shallow Mediterranean Sea to a height of about 70 m. Geomorphological work has sug gested that the Akrotiri Peninsula was once an island joined to the mainland by a sandbar, two remaining spits of which may be seen today on either side of a shallow salt lake (Mandel and Simmons 1997, p. 570; Simmons 1999, p. 329). The site itself is situated on the narrow slope of a precipitous cliff some 40 m above the sea (Fig. 2). Given the fragility and vulnerability of the site, which even in the 1980s was eroding into the sea, Alan Simmons and an interdisciplinary team excavated Aetokremnos almost entirely (nearly 50 m2) between 1987 and 1990 (and returned to finish the job in June 2009). The following discussion is based largely on the final publication of the site (Simmons 1999; also Sim mons 2004a; Simmons and Mandel 2007), although other points of view are taken into account.

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Fig. 2 View of Akrotiri Aetokremnos, situated on a precipitous cliff some 40 m above the Mediterranean Sea on the south coast (Akrotiri Peninsula) of Cyprus (courtesy of Alan Simmons)

The entire deposit at the site?a small, collapsed rock shelter?was sealed after use by massive rock debris: the overhang caved in, thus preserving the stratification. The vertical dimension of the intact archaeological deposits is approximately 1 m, with four major strata identified (numbered 1-4, from top to bottom) (Fig. 3). Stratum 1 formed a mixed context (predominantly cracked and burnt sea shells with an admixture of about 1 % of the bone), while Stratum 3 represented a sterile sediment layer of windblown sand and limestone. Most attention thus fell on Strata 2 and 4, both of which contained chipped stone artefacts and other cultural debris (mostly in Stratum 2; only 12% in Stratum 4), shell and other stone artefacts, bones and features such as 'hearths' (concentrations of ash). Despite ongoing doubts about the overall interpretation of the site, Simmons (2004a, p. 7) recently defended its stratigraphic integrity, stating that there is '... absolutely no evidence for mixing by humans responsible for Level 2 cutting into Level 4' and '... no geomorphic evidence for a sinkhole, water movement, or other natural displacements that could have resulted in the deposition of the bones'. Of the eleven archaeological features identified at Aetokremnos, nine are associated with Stratum 2; the two from Stratum 4 are concentra tions of burned pygmy hippopotamus bones. Human use of the site is inferred mainly from these midden deposits. Cultural materials retrieved from the site include, most importantly, the formal chipped stone tool assemblage (128 tools, 383 pieces of debitage, 510 pieces of other waste). Twenty-eight percent of the tools (36 in number) are distinctive 'thumbnail' scrapers (Simmons 1999, p. 126, table 6.1). All the raw materials used, primarily Lefkara cherts, were available on the island, and point to an expedient technology. Other finds include 14

Fig. 3 Akrotiri Aetokremnos: schematic plan of intact archaeological deposits showing four major strata identified (numbered 1-4, from top to bottom). Note that 'Site E\ indicated on chalkboard, was the designation first given to Aetokremnos (courtesy of Alan Simmons)

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ground stone pebbles (no signs of use wear), 64 fragmentary and shattered ground stone cobbles, and four complete cobbles with faint signs of use wear (one with a 'pecked depression', another with a grooved cruciform pattern, perhaps a net sinker: Swiny 1999, pp. 146-149). In addition to a piece of worked bone (incisor of a pygmy hippo), there were six worked picrolite objects and a fragmentary, pierced and incised calcarenite disk (Reese 1999a, pp. 149-151). Amongst the immense collection of marine shells recovered from the site were over 100 shell beads, with examples worked from dentalium, Conus mediter raneus and Columbella rustica or dove shell, the last forming the majority (Reese 1999b, pp. 188-191). In terms of dating, 27 radiocarbon determinations were made on bone, sediment, shell and charcoal (including one new date on charcoal from Level 2, dated 10,185 cal BC: Simmons and Mandel 2007, p. 479). Problems with the dating of shell, sediment and bone were taken into account; a correction factor was added to adjust for the 'reservoir effect' on marine shells; where reported by labs, <513C values and corrected determinations were provided; stratigraphic issues were taken into account; and the reliability of the material dated as well as the strength of the association between that material and the 14C deter minations were calculated (following Meltzer and Mead 1985). The remains at Aeto kremnos thus pointed to a relatively short-term 'occupation' or a series of periodic visits during the tenth millennium cal BC, centred round a date of 9,825 cal BC, with a range of 10,005-9,702 cal BC at one standard deviation (Wigand and Simmons 1999, pp. 193-215). Of crucial importance for discussions and criticisms related to the interpretation of Strata 2 and 4 at the site (see below) is the fact that the time difference between these strata is so small it cannot be determined in radiocarbon years (Simmons 2004a, p. 5). Ammerman and Noller (2005, pp. 539-540; also Ammerman et al. 2007, pp. 18-19, fig. 9) questioned the reliability of some of the radiocarbon dates, contending that there were serious limitations associated with the ages determined for bone samples, which were not in agreement with the positions of the samples in the site's stratigraphy. Moreover, these dates were regularly cited as either 'BP' or in uncalibrated years BC, leading to some ambiguity and confusion in the literature. Ammerman therefore re-calculated eight char coal samples from Stratum 2 at Aetokremnos in order to provide calibrated radiocarbon determinations (following Bronk Ramsey et al. 2006). Overall the calibrated ages span a period from about 12,000 to 9,200 cal BC (the wide range results from large error values associated with four samples?see Simmons 1999, pp. 196-197, table 8.1). With respect to four AMS-based determinations that had smaller error measurements, the dates range between about 10,900 and 10,100 cal BC. Anticipating further discussion below, it should be noted that eight of the nine radiocarbon determinations made on charcoal from Aeto kremnos fall within the 11th millennium cal BC, the period of the Younger Dryas climatic episode (c. 10,800-9,600 cal BC). This was a time when Levantine hunter-gatherers and fisher-foragers pursued highly mobile living patterns (e.g., Bar-Yosef 2001, p. 140; Wat kins 2004, pp. 25-29), and when some initial steps were taken toward cultivating staple foods (Bar-Yosef 2007, p. 22; cf. Abbo et al. 2010, who argue that the Younger Dryas had little effect on early plant domestication). The large faunal assemblage at Aetokremnos?over 222,000 bones?consisted of two endemic 'mini-megafauna': pygmy hippopotamus (Phanourios minutus, minimum of 505 individuals), which made up about 95% of all bones, and pygmy elephant (Elephas Cypriotes, three individuals). Even if these remains are taken to represent the bulk of the subsistence diet of people who 'occupied' or visited Aetokremnos, a wide range of other mammal, avian and marine resources were present: crabs, sea urchins, limpets, topshell (amongst some 70,000 marine invertebrates); one gray mullet vertebra; dove, goose, grebe,

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shag, teal (avifauna: 73 individuals); burnt eggshell and land snails; turtle, snake, pig (not deer), and a genet. Using anatomical, morphometrical and radiocarbon analyses (on 21 suid bones), Vigne et al. (2009) maintain that that at least two small-sized pigs, aged 18-24 months, were living at Aetokremnos c. 9,500 cal BC. Four phalanges from these animals originally had been attributed to Mesopotamian fallow deer (Dama mesopotamica). The authors also maintain that these suids were introduced to Cyprus from the Levantine mainland, where wild boar were managed some 1,000-1,500 years before the earliest known morphological modifications attributable to domestication (e.g. at PPNA ?ay6nii and Nevali Qon in eastern Anatolia?Ervynck et al. 2001; Peters et al. 2005). The dominance of pig in the faunal data from the PPNA site of Ayia Varvara Asprokremmos (Manning et al. 2010) and in the earliest Cypro-PPNB (EAN) phases at Paraklessia Shillourokambos (c. 8,300 cal BC?Vigne et al. 2003, pp. 240-245, table 1) indicates that pig continued to be a major food resource in the millennia that followed. Eighty-eight percent of the pygmy hippo remains were retrieved from Stratum 4, while the bulk of the other faunal evidence derives from Stratum 2: herein lay the first problem in accepting the excavators' interpretation of Aetokremnos. Amongst the sceptics, it was specifically the association of the pygmy hippopotamus bones with the cultural remains that caused the most concern (Bunimowitz and Barkai 1996; Binford 2000; Grayson 2000). For Grayson (2000, p. 381), the problem involved both (a) the lack of a detailed assessment of the faunal remains and how they came to be where they were found (overwhelmingly in Stratum 4), and (b) the taphonomic analysis of 16,000 pygmy hippo bones, which showed no cut-marks or evidence for fresh bone breakage (Olsen 1999, pp. 230-237). Olsen had concluded that these bones accumulated naturally at the bottom of the shelter, and that human occupation followed later, leading both to the intermingling of the earlier pygmy hippo material with the later artefacts, and to the burning of those specimens. Binford's (2000) review (a) also cited Olsen's taphonomic analyses and concerns, (b) mentioned a 'simple correlational analysis' carried out on 'some of the bones and artifacts' (emphasis added)?indicating that the pygmy hippo (and tortoise) bones could not be associated with the lithic remains?and (c) challenged the ,4C evidence from the bones and shells analysed by Wigand and Simmons (1999, pp. 193-215). Binford concluded that the shells somehow were intrusive in the Stratum 4 bone bed, and that the pygmy hippo bones in the upper levels had been 'dug up' from the Stratum 4 bone bed. More recently, Mithen (2003, pp. 97-100) revisited arguments for and against the hunting of pygmy hippos at Aetokremnos, and also expressed scepticism over arguments for the extinction of Phanourios minutus at the site. In a more detailed critique, Bunimowitz and Barkai (1996) argued that the construction of some of the Stratum 2 hearths and what they termed a 'bell-shaped pit' (cf. Simmons 1996, p. 98) may have caused upward movement (from Stratum 4 to 2) of some pygmy hippo bones, and downward movement (from Stratum 2 to 4) of some chipped stone, burnt bone and other features. They proposed that taphonomic factors such as trampling and grubbing, and erosion, could have compromised the site's stratigraphy. Citing the absence of butchery-related marks on the bone, and arguing that the small thumbnail scrapers could not have been used to process hippopotamus meat, they concluded that the Stratum 4 bone bed represents a natural, mass die-off site of pygmy hippos, completely unrelated to any human activity (Bunimowitz and Barkai 1996, pp. 92-93). In their eyes, the archaeological and palaeontological data from Aetokremnos represent two temporally discrete episodes, the earlier (Stratum 4) a natural die-off of Pleistocene megafauna, the later (Stratum 2) a short-term or sporadic occupation by a small group of early Holocene hunter-gatherers,

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This content downloaded from 128.148.252.35 on Sat, 12 Mar 2016 20:28:46 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions J World Prehist (2010) 23:79-120 89 who may have made some use of the (burnt) bone in this habitat. Alternatively, they argued, any perceived intermingling between Strata 2 and 4 may have resulted entirely from post-depositional processes. For Bunimowitz and Barkai (1996, pp. 94-95), the site of Aetokremnos provides no evidence for the extinction of Pleistocene megafauna, or of the possible role of people in that process. In a set of replies to Bunimowitz and Barkai, members of the Aetokremnos team challenged every point raised (Simmons 1996; Reese 1996), while Strasser (1996) defended the integrity of the deposits and supported the possibility that highly skilled human hunters could easily have overhunted the susceptible, perhaps already endangered megafauna. Vigne (1996), however, citing megafaunal evidence from Corsica and Sardi nia, argued that Cyprus's endemic megafauna were most likely extinct by the time the first humans arrived on Cyprus, and that the people who visited Aetokremnos would have subsisted on fishing, trapping and cropping, like their counterparts in 9th-8th millennia cal BC Corsica. More recently, the environmental setting of Aetokremnos (Mandel and Simmons 1997; Mandel 1999, pp. 52-55) has been reassessed, and further questions raised about the date of the site and whether people ever occupied it. The term 'occupation' has proven prob lematic here. Cherry (1990, p. 198) defined the occupation of a site as 'the point at which it has become the principal provider of a group's subsistence requirements and the focus of its residential pattern throughout the year'. Ammerman and Noller (2005) argue that Aetokremnos was never 'occupied', but when it was in use some 12,000 years ago, sea level would have been some 70 m lower and the site would have been situated near the top of a tall cliff at the end of a 1 km wide coastal plain, not on the coast in an island-like context (also Strasser 1996, p. 113). At that point in time, Ammerman and Noller (2005, pp. 538-539, fig. 1) suggest that dune fields were actively forming immediately in front of the site, and that a thick Aeolian sand ramp may have run right up to the site and beyond. The current bathymetry of the peninsula, moreover, indicates that there was a submerged landscape, sloping moderately to a depth of some 150 m at 5 km from the present-day coastline. The presence of sand dunes along the coast would have severely limited the growth of trees, and Ammerman and Noller (2005, pp. 536, 540) thus maintain?following others already noted?that the mass of hippo bones found in Stratum 4 represents a natural bone midden later exploited by foragers as a fuel source, as wood became scarce during the Younger Dryas (Watkins 2005, p. 203, fig. 6d). Although they note that a human presence is more likely in Stratum 2 than in Stratum 4, the space and elevation of the Aetokremnos rock shelter led them to conclude that any human activities would have been limited to the horizontal ledge above the partially collapsed shelter: the faunal and other remains may have been swept into the shelter, and the hippo bones would have been cached there as fuel (Ammerman and Noller 2005, pp. 536-537). Alternatively, they suggest that the shelter might have been used as a smoke house for drying and curing hippo meat, which would explain the large amount of burnt bone and other features in Stratum 2 (Ammerman and Noller 2005, p. 540). Finally, as already mentioned, they question the reliability of the 14C results from the bone samples, and call for a new series of radiocarbon dates to enable comparison of the age of hippo bones from Strata 2 and 4, and of bird bones from Stratum 2. If all bones from Stratum 2 proved to be basically the same age, then a case could be made for people hunting hippos; if the hippo bones from Stratum 4 proved to be much older than those from Stratum 2, then a case could be made that the bones formed part of a natural midden.

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In their response to Ammerman and Noller, Simmons and Mandel (2007) defend their interpretation of Aetokremnos as a pygmy hippo processing site, and contest the suggestion that a massive sand ramp extended from the sea to the top of the cliff where Aetokremnos is situated (Simmons and Mandel 2007, pp. 476-478). Taking up the dating challenge, further I4C analyses were conducted on the pygmy hippo (11), elephant (2) and bird (9) bones from all strata. These samples, however, could not be satisfactorily dated; the results were limited to one further (comparatively recent) date on charcoal, so the bones remain problematic as a chronological signpost. Simmons and Mandel (2007, pp. 479-480) maintain that even if the bone samples are deemed unreliable, 22 radiocarbon results still indicate a 'pre-Neolithic' date for the site. Here it must be recalled that a series of eight radiocarbon dates run on samples of charcoal from stratum 2A at Aetokremnos gives an age range of 12,000-9,200 cal BC (or, with only four AMS-based determinations, a range from c. 10,900 to 10,100 cal BC) (Ammerman et al. 2006, p. 3, table 1). Thus Aetokremnos is firmly set in the 11th millennium cal BC, within the context of environmental changes that took place at the end of the last Ice Age. This is an important point that makes Aetokremnos crucial for any discussion of seafaring before the Neolithic, and for assessing the role of the Younger Dryas in the emergence of full-time seafaring (as opposed to occasional seagoing). Disagreements thus remain over (a) whether the shelter was ever large enough for human 'occupation' (and just what that term means), and (b) exactly where the shoreline was situated some 12,000 years ago. Although most scholars who have re-examined the evidence from Aetokremnos agree on the site's chronological placement and cultural significance, they contest the excavators' interpretation of the Stratum 4 bone bed. Meanwhile, Ammerman and colleagues have embarked on excavations at Nissi Beach and Akamas Aspros, both situated on fossil sand dunes (aeolianite), with one primary aim being to obtain materials suitable for dating (thus far unsuccessful), and so to demonstrate the approximate contemporaneity of these sites with Aetokremnos (Ammerman et al. 2006, 2007). Simmons and Mandel (2007, pp. 480-481), in turn, call for caution over the 'pre Neolithic' date suggested for these new sites (until radiocarbon dates are available), and maintain that the sharp-edged aeolianite is an unlikely place for people to camp. Before turning to more specific discussion of the aeolianite sites at Nissi Beach and Akamas Aspros, I conclude this discussion of Aetokremnos by considering possible sedentary occupation at the site, and its importance in the debate over faunal extinctions in the Mediterranean islands.

Sedentary Occupation at Aetokremnos?

Nobody doubts a human presence in Stratum 2 at Aetokremnos, whether or not people actually lived there. This factor, of course, relates to broader issues of seafaring, subsis tence strategies and what Cherry (1990, pp. 198-199) termed the earliest 'utilization' ('short-term or seasonal visits to procure resources, or even accidental, unsuccessful col onization') vs. the first 'occupation' (the point when an island becomes the main residential focus of a human group and provides the bulk its subsistence) of the Mediterranean islands. The perceived lack of evidence for Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene use or occupation of islands results at least in part from our own 'temporal chauvinism' (the notion that pre Neolithic people had very limited maritime capabilities?Cherry 1990, p. 201), in part from the passive belief that most islands were too impoverished to support hunter-gatherers not involved in food production. Even those archaeologists who allow that Late Epipal aeolithic hunter-gatherers were not ignorant of, or incapable of reaching, these islands (but

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rather avoided them, for whatever reason) seem to have accepted the lack of evidence at face value, or else assumed that rising sea levels in the terminal Pleistocene had submerged large parts of the coastal shelves on which such sites would have been located (e.g., Lambeck and Chappell 2001; Peltier 2002; for Cyprus: Gomez and Pease 1992). As we have seen, the site of Aetokremnos provides detailed evidence for insular human presence during the (eastern Mediterranean) Late Epipalaeolithic. But were the people responsible for its remains mobile or sedentary? The excavators find it \.. hard to believe that a locality in which over 500 pygmy hippos were butchered, as we argue, was not occupied' (Simmons and Mandel 2007, p. 477). For them, however, 'occupation' refers to any locality that exhibits human activity, and they regard Aetokremnos as a specialised activity site, where people both consumed pygmy hippos and made use of their secondary products (Simmons 1999, pp. 310-311, 318). Parts of the Akrotiri Peninsula may have supported a marsh or lagoon environment attractive to pygmy hippos, but palaeoenvironmental data are not sufficiently robust to confirm this possibility (Simmons 1999, pp. 11-13). The Akrotiri Peninsula is situated close to a variety of subsistence resources?mammal, avian and marine. Nearly 30% of the bone from Aetokremnos is burned, much of it severely charred, which could point to human activity (Simmons 2004a, pp. 7-8), but not necessarily over the long term. On the one hand, if pygmy hippos were processed and their meat consumed or pre served, their bones may have been stored in the shelter for use as fuel, which could be taken to indicate at least short-term sedentary occupation at the site (Simmons 1999, p. 314, suggests 'up to a few 100 years'). And, if one accepts this scenario, there is a notable shift in emphasis from an apparent reliance on pygmy hippos as a dietary resource in Stratum 4, to avifaunal and marine resources in Stratum 2, perhaps pointing to a change in economic strategy as the number of remaining pygmy hippos dwindled below people's subsistence needs. On the other hand, if the people who made use of this site remained there for any length of time, it is possible they would have adopted a hunting strategy to suit local conditions instead of wiping out at least one of their vital wild food resources. The palaeoenvironment in which these mini-megafauna lived was likely evergreen forest, with a limited and unbalanced terrestrial fauna (Boekschoten and Sondaar 1972, p. 333). In addition, it has been long been argued that there was a permanently low level of marine biodiversity in the nutrient-poor waters that surrounded Cyprus (Knapp et al. 1994, p. 491). More recent work, however, suggests that there may have been greater regional river discharge during the early Holocene (Meyers and Arnaboldia 2008, p. 112), which could have improved the nutrient level in these waters, and thus the availability of pelagic resources. In any case, it seems evident that various limiting factors would have made life difficult for any hunter-gatherers who attempted to live on the island: an agricultural way of life may well have been a prerequisite of living year in and year out on Cyprus. Simmons (1999, p. 322) maintains that because voyages to Cyprus at this time would have been difficult, those who left their imprint at Aetokremnos were not seasonal, overseas visitors but rather people who also occupied other sites in or around the Akrotiri Peninsula at different times of the year. Yet even he seems to agree that Aetokremnos does not represent a long-term episode of sedentary settlement, since he states that those who used the site ultimately returned to their mainland point(s) of origin (Simmons 1999, pp. 318, 322-323, 2004a, p. 9). Taken together and on their own, the excavated fauna and archaeological features of Aetokremnos, along with a coherent series of radiocarbon dates, point to a specialised activity site that somehow involved pygmy hippos. Although I am running well ahead of the evidence here, I would also suggest that Aetokremnos was a site visited periodically by Late Epipalaeolithic fisher-foragers and hunters whose home

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territory?the Levantine coast?was imperilled by rising sea level and the impending loss of their subsistence base. Preliminary analyses of chipped stone material from the aeolinate sites of Nissi Beach, Akamas Aspros and Alimman (McCartney 2006, pp. 11-17; Ammerman et al. 2007, pp. 13-15; Ammerman et al. 2008, pp. 15-27), allow one to make a case?prima facie and acknowledging that reliable, coincident radiocarbon dates are still lacking?for the rele vance of these sites in achieving a better understanding of Aetokremnos and the 'pre Neolithic' of Cyprus. If these were all places where fisher-foragers made periodic visits from the Levantine mainland to exploit resources such as fish, salt, shellfish and avifauna, then they provide the earliest evidence for seafaring in the eastern Mediterranean. In addition, they help to provide a fuller picture of the ways that climatic factors impacted on the increased mobility of seafaring foragers during the eastern Mediterranean Late Epi palaeolithic, and to determine whether people played any role in the extinction of the Mediterranean's mini-megafauna.

Faunal Extinctions?

Although Cyprus is an 'oceanic' island (Held 1989, pp. 11-15), water gaps of 70 km to the north and 100 km to the east are small enough that it shares the general climatic conditions and vegetation types of low-lying coastal regions in the northern Levant and southern Anatolia. The island factor, however, is clear in the fauna. Cyprus has a very limited number of species and a high degree of endemism suggesting that, even under optimal conditions, the expanse of water kept out many east Mediterranean species. Although sea level change (minus 120/130 m) during the Last Glacial Maximum (c. 25,000-18,000 cal BP) reduced the distance between the island and the Levantine mainland to about 40 km, Cyprus must have remained remote even during such notable regressions. The island received only two large terrestrial mammals, elephant and hippopotamus, which became so separated from their respective parent gene pools that they underwent extreme changes in body size and evolved into dwarfed forms (Elephas Cypriotes, Phanourios minutus) (Boekschoten and Sondaar 1972). These pygmy hippopotami and dwarf elephants evolved and survived over tens, if not hundreds of thousands, of years on Cyprus (Sondaar and van der Geer 2000, p. 68, suggest a minimum of 1.8 million years, from the Early Pleistocene). The problematic bone dates from Aetokremnos have been taken to mean that not long after the first demonstrable human presence on the island, these endemics became extinct. Palaeontological and archaeological evidence from a number of islands and mainlands the world around indi cates that most 'unusual' or dwarf endemics (mammals as well as avifauna) disappeared soon after the first people arrived (e.g. Diamond 1984; Martin 1984; Macphee and Marx 1997; Alcover et al. 1998, 1999). In the Mediterranean, the only purported evidence for an extended temporal overlap (a few thousand years) between one of these island endemics and humans?Myotragus balearicus on Mallorca?has now been discounted (Ramis et al. 2002), and it is likely that people co-existed with Myotragus for less than 200 years (Bover and Alcover 2003; Alcover 2008). Beyond that case, and Aetokremnos, there is little substantial evidence in the Mediterranean for a close association between the arrival of humans and the extinction of Pleistocene fauna (e.g., on Sardinia, Cherry 1992, p. 31). One exception may be the demise of two mammalian endemics (Megaloceros cazioti; Cyno therium sardus) on early Holocene Corsica and/or Sardinia (Sondaar and van der Geer 2000, pp. 69-70; Costa et al. 2003, p. 6).

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Given this broader Mediterranean picture, the proposed association at Aetokremnos between human cultural remains and the bones of three dwarf elephants and at least 505 pygmy hippos of all ages can only be described as striking, and bound to generate con troversy. Most endemic dwarf species on islands were naive, at least as far as human beings are concerned, because they evolved as they did in an ecological context where there were no large terrestrial mammals, in particular no humans. Such animals?easy to hunt, disadvantaged by interbreeding in small insular populations, and subject to climatic or environmental changes that could have altered their means of survival?would have been highly susceptible to the presence of people newly arrived in their island niche. Although controversy over both the proximate and ultimate causes of the demise of the Mediterranean's mini-megafauna will continue, the worldwide record of faunal extinctions at least makes it plausible that humans were involved. And in the case of Aetokremnos, Cherry (1990, p. 195) maintained that man has here been discovered, as it were, holding a smoking gun'. Yet Cherry also calls for caution before convicting the earliest human visitors to Cyprus of overkill. Even if people were the catalyst in the demise of these and other Mediterranean mini-megafauna, it is still necessary to consider whether such an outcome was:

1. the direct result of overkill by humans; 2. the introduction with humans of new species?domesticated or not?competing with endemic fauna for ecological niches, nourishment, etc.; or 3. the indirect consequence of wider modification of the landscape by both post-glacial climate changes and human interference (agricultural, pastoral).

With respect to the last factor in particular, Roberts (1998, pp. 83-84) makes two important points, arguing against any generalised 'overkill' scenario. First, Late Pleisto cene hunters throughout Eurasia, North America and Australia would have modified at least partly the structure and stability of various ecological niches, thus rendering various local mammals susceptible to environmental stress. Secondly, from the faunal point of view, the deteriorating climate at the end of the last glaciation and during the Younger Dryas event (see further below) would have forced all such animals to compete with humans and other animals for increasingly scarce resources. Indeed, Wasse (2007, p. 56) argues that the presence of humans on Cyprus at or near the time that the endemic Pleistocene fauna became extinct is the result of the same selective pressure, namely the rapid rise of cold, dry conditions throughout the eastern Mediterranean at the onset of the Younger Dryas. Organisms like Phanourios minutus, about the size of a large pig, can take a heavy toll on their habitats. They have limited population densities and are highly susceptible to any kind of environmental change, especially in an island context (Simmons 1999, p. 331). The colder and dryer weather of the Younger Dryas during the 11th millennium cal BC, moreover, may have reduced or eliminated some of the dietary sources in the Akrotiri peninsula upon which Phanourios had come to depend during its long evolution on the island. Indeed, Bromage et al. (2002, pp. 423^25) now attribute the extinction of Cyprus's pygmy hippo to climate change at the transition from the Pleistocene to the Holocene. At the very least, such developments would have made these pygmy hippos more vulnerable to extinction. And even if they did not, a healthy population could have been decimated by small groups of efficient hunters. More recent evidence suggests that these early visitors to Aetokremnos were most likely seafaring fisher-foragers, rather than exclusively hunters (see further below).

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The wider archaeological community remains sceptical about the overkill hypothesis at Aetokremnos (cf. Sondaar and van der Geer 2000). Moreover, even if the data from this site were to be accepted as demonstrating an overlap between humans and extinct mammals, we would still need to consider how the people at Aetokremnos could have caused the loss of Cyprus's entire Pleistocene megafauna. The archaeological sample at Aetokremnos is limited to one, approximately 50 m2 excavated area, and the erratic and poorly known evolution of Pleistocene fauna?along with a suite of possible ecological, climatic and biogeographic constraints?makes it difficult to distinguish the likely (proximate) from the real (ultimate) cause of the proposed extinctions. Although still unpublished, a recently excavated palaeontological site near Ayia Napa on Cyprus's southeast coast is very similar to Aetokremnos in its date as well as its location (a small rock shelter along the coast situated at more or less the same elevation above current sea level). The site is dated tentatively to the Late Pleistocene and, while an exposed layer was packed with the fossilized remains of at least 80 pygmy hippos, human remains were lacking (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/12/071206-AP cyprus-dwarf_2.html). If the humans at Aetokremnos caused the extinction of the hippos on the island, they had to do so over the entire island. If hard comparisons are made between the two sites, then Stratum 4 at Aetokremos would have to be regarded as a natural bone bed just like the one at Ayia Napa, and like others at 32 different sites across the island?19 in caves, 11 at open air sites, two in rock shelters (Hadjisterkotis and Reese 2008). At Aetokremnos, however, not just pygmy hippos and dwarf elephants but other, impoverished fauna (e.g. genet, mouse, great bustard, dove, goose, grebe) were embedded in a human-made context, which makes it harder to deny some cause-and-effect rela tionship. People arrived, and, as the radiocarbon dates indicate, within 1,000 or so years two endemic mini-megafauna became extinct. In other words, even taking into account such factors as climatic and environmental change, the pygmy hippo evidence from elsewhere in Cyprus, or the possibility of competition with introduced species, the people who utilised the site of Aetokremnos may very well have played a role in the overkill of the mini-megafauna. Even Ammerman and Noller (2005, p. 540), who feel that Stratum 4 at Aetokremnos represents a natural bone midden, observe that there is a much better chance that pygmy hippos were hunted by the human beings who contributed to the formation of stratum 2'. The presence of people, some of whom may have been highly specialised hunters, on islands with animals that previously had lacked predators, almost certainly had disastrous results. In the case of Corsica-Sardinia, where there is evidence of some overlap in time between the arrival of people and the extinction of insular Pleistocene fauna, the zooar chaeologist who worked most closely with the data concluded: '...the far-reaching effects of people upon island ecosystems are the ultimate cause of most animal extinctions' (emphasis added?Vigne 1987, p. 167 and fig. 1; also Cherry 1990, pp. 196-197 and fig. 9). By slaughtering such animals, people eradicated what may have been an abundant food resource and so jeopardised their own chances of survival in an island habitat (Schule 1993, p. 406). Early attempts to settle the Mediterranean islands were challenging and often it was only when people brought already cultivated plants and domesticated animals with them that they managed to establish themselves on a more permanent footing. On Cyprus, however, it now seems possible that quite another scenario was unfolding in the Late Epipalaeolithic, one that may have had little to do with the permanent settlement of the island.

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The Wider Late Epipalaeolithic Landscape

It is a fact of human nature that people tend to see what they have an expectation of seeing. People tend not to see things with which they are unfamiliar; things that are not already part of the vocabulary of their visual memory are easily missed. Trevor Watkins 2004, p. 32.

Akrotiri Aetokremnos remains the only securely dated Late Epipalaeolithic site on Cyprus. It seems quite likely, however, that the contemporary coastal landscape must have included a few further sites. At the time of writing, three new possible candidates have emerged, but it must be emphasized that these sites still lack firm radiocarbon dates. They are (a) Nissi Beach, just west of Ayia Napa on the southeast coast; (b) Aspros on the Akamas peninsula along the west coast; and (c) Alimman, a small satellite of Aspros situated some 200 m to its north. These sites only came to light in 2004, and have since undergone four brief seasons of survey, trial excavations and underwater exploration (Ammerman et al. 2006, 2007, 2008). All three sites are located on aeolianite formations, fossilized sand dunes that may be found all along the shores of the eastern Mediterranean, but less extensively than on Cyprus (Ammerman et al. 2006, p. 5 note several other, unpublished aeolianite sites around the island). When Nissi Beach and the Akamas sites were frequented, sea level was lower by as much as 70 m. Thus these sites would have been situated farther from the shore than they are today (Ammerman et al. 2007, p. 7); at least part of the Aspros site now lies underwater (Ammerman et al. 2008, pp. 49). Nissi Beach and Aspros are both in elevated situations with a good view of the surroundings, including the coastal plain that once stood in front of each site. In general, the landscape is hard and dry, with little vegetation and a limited range of terrestrial resources. Both sites are also adjacent to sandy beaches where a small river or drainage reaches the coast. Thus they could have provided good places for small boats to land, and so would have offered to fishers or foragers suitable temporary campsites during the warmer and less stormy months of the year (Ammerman et al. 2006, pp. 17-18). Simmons and Mandel (2007, p. 480), however, maintain that sharp-edged aeolianites would not have offered suitable places for people to camp. At Nissi Beach, the aeolianite closest to the shoreline does indeed have a rough, irregular surface, but when one reaches the area of the site with the highest artefact density, some 30-40 m from the current coastline, the rock tends to be smoother and more rounded, providing what the excavator believes are places to sit (Ammerman et al. 2008, pp. 12, 16, fig. 7). The same area also has pockets of reddish-brown soil that reach 30-40 cm in depth (Ammerman et al. 2007, p. 5). In profile, these soils have a very thin top layer (the A horizon), below which is a layer up to 40 cm thick (the B horizon). All the chipped stone and ground stone artefacts excavated at Nissi Beach have been recovered at depths of up to 25 cm in these B-horizon soils (Ammerman et al. 2007, p. 6). Although the geological setting of Akamas Aspros in the west of the island differs from that at Nissi Beach, the soil profile is quite similar, with a reddish-brown B horizon some 20 cm thick. During trial excavations at both Nissi Beach and Aspros in 2007 and 2008, these reddish soils gave up chipped stone artefacts, hand stones, bird bones and seashells (Ammerman 2010, p. 82). The soils in both regions have low agricultural or woodland potential, and once people began to live permanently in Cyprus, such a landscape would have had little to offer; this may help to explain why some parts of these early sites have survived so well.

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As already mentioned, McCartney (2006, pp. 11-17) argued that the chipped stone repertoire recovered from initial fieldwork at all these sites is related, and is not dissimilar to the lithic industry found in Stratum 2 at Akrotiri Aetokremnos. There are, of course, differences at all these early sites in the various raw materials used, the technology employed and the relative frequency of tool types. There is, for example, more evidence of blade/bladelet production at Aetokremnos than there is at either Nissi Beach or Aspros, and the grey Lefkara translucent beach pebbles used to produce the flake scrapers at Aeto kremnos are not found at Aspros. Crucially, however, they seem to belong to a broadly homogeneous tradition defined as microlithic and flake-based, although some small blades and bladelets are in evidence (McCartney 2008, pp. 24-26). Excavations at Nissi Beach in 2008, moreover, produced a small chunk of obsidian and new tool types, including three long blades, none of which had occurred in earlier surface survey or excavations. In addition, two marine shells (limpets?Patella caerulea Linnaeus) excavated in 2007 at Nissi Beach have now produced AMS dates that fall in the 8th millennium cal BC (c. 7,750-7,100 cal BC). These dates, of course, are much later than those proposed by the excavator for the surface materials at Nissi Beach and the Akamas sites. They correspond to a Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) date range (i.e. Cypro-MPPNB to Cypro-LPPNB, or EAN 2-3?see Table 1), which accords well with the presence of the three long blades and an obsidian piece. According to Ammerman et al. (2008, p. 15), the materials recently excavated at Nissi Beach?including a small hearth feature?represent a case of 'stratigraphic inversion', in which the sub-surface materials occur in situ and have a younger age than the chipped stone collected from the site's surface. Ammerman maintains that the earlier, surface material was deposited there by the action of one or more tsunamis or storm surges (on Mediterranean Holocene tsunamis, see Pareschi et al. 2007; on Cypriot tsunamis, see Whelan and Kelletat 2002; Noller et al. 2005). This interpretation is strengthened by the presence at Nissi Beach, just south of the excavated area, of several large tsunami blocks (Fig. 4), and further by the countless small pieces of dark-coloured 'beach rock' scattered widely over the surface of the site. The redeposited beach rock, in fact, virtually obscures the hundreds of pieces of chipped stone tools and debris, and thus has helped to preserve it (the Nissi beach site is within a stone's throw of one of Cyprus's most popular tourist beaches). In other words, the excavator maintains that the materials originally collected on the surface at Nissi Beach are not in their primary context but instead derive from an area now submerged in front of the land-based part of the site; they would have been re-deposited on

Fig. 4 View over Nissi Beach with several large tsunami blocks to the south of the excavated area (photograph by Stella Demesticha)

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the site's surface by the action of the sea. We may expect that these sequences and their interpretation will be refined further by future excavations at both Nissi Beach and Akamas Aspros. For now, one of the most important, preliminary conclusions to be derived from all these excavations?Aetokremnos, Nissi Beach, Akamas Aspros?is that for at least two millennia prior to the advent of farming (i.e. 'the Neolithic'), and for some two millennia thereafter, foraging seafarers persisted with a coastal way of life, continually adapting to the sea and exploiting the marine and other resources available along Cyprus's shores. The microlithic, flake-based tradition seen in the chipped stone from Nissi Beach and the Akamas sites differs markedly from the blade-oriented tradition of lithic reduction that typifies sites of the later Cypro-PPNB (EAN). This early technological tradition, based on the production of flakes and small blades/bladelets, is also evident at Aetokremnos and other small sites on the Akrotiri Peninsula, where diminutive flake scrapers were produced using beach pebbles alongside geometries made on higher quality cherts (Simmons 1999, pp. 137-138, figs. 6.3-6.4; 252-253, figs. 10.4-10.5). Similarly, the most common formal tools found at Aspros and Nissi Beach are scrapers and geometries such as truncations and backed pieces (McCartney 2006, pp. 13-14, figs. 8-9). Notable amongst the tools are 'thumbnail' scrapers, very similar to those in the chipped stone assemblage recovered at Aetokremnos (Simmons 1999, pp. 245-246, fig. 10-2). The predominant material worked was Lefkara chert, but the assemblages also include jasper and chalcedony. The people who visited Aspros used a wider variety of materials, including other variants of chert available in the riverbed. During underwater survey carried out at Aspros during the summer of 2007, at depths of 6-15 m below current sea level and at distances of 50-200 m off the present-day coastline, divers recovered 40 pieces of chipped stone (including ten tools, predominantly made on flakes) and two likely ground stone tools (Ammerman et al. 2008, pp. 18-19, table 3). In terms of the broader Epipalaeolithic landscape, the artefactual if not spatial distribution of Aspros can now be seen as extending some 300 m, from the east end of the lithic scatter on land to the area off the coast to the west, where chipped stone tools were found. Nissi Beach also could have been more extensive than today, since it is possible that most artefacts found there came from submerged areas in front of the site (limited underwater reconnaissance in this area during July 2009, however, failed to produce any chipped stone artefacts). In this context, it should be remembered that the site of Aetokremnos amounts to 50 m2 and produced a total of 128 formal tools; current counts for tools at Nissi Beach (316) and Akamas Aspros (288) are much greater (Ammerman et al. 2008, pp. 25-26, table 7). I would suggest that these functionally limited, coastal lithic assemblages are at least consonant with the notion of temporary campsites periodically visited by Late Epi palaeolithic fisher-foragers over a substantial period of time.

Inland Late Epipalaeolithic

The goal of another new field project, Elaborating Early Neolithic Cyprus (EENC), is to move beyond the coastal or near-coastal Late Epipalaeolithic sites in order to examine the island's wider landscape. This project is conducting survey?and excavations at Ayia VarvaraAsprokremmos (McCartney et al. 2007, pp. 30-36,2008; Manning et al. 2010)?in landscapes rather different from those that would have suited early farming. Along the interface between the Pillow Lavas and the Lefkara Formation in the northeastern Troodos, there are abundant high-quality chert sources (for example, at Alambra Koundourka and Spileos), basal rocks for use as grinding tools, good water resources, and access to a broad spectrum of lowland-upland fauna and flora suitable for hunting and foraging (McCartney

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et al. 2006, 2007). At sites such as Agrokipia Paleokamina, on a drainage of the Akaki River in the northern Troodos (Given and Knapp 2003, pp. 183-186), Politiko Keldidhoni at the interface between the Troodos forest and the Tamasos plain (Given and Knapp 2003, pp. 182-183), and Ayia Varvara Asprokremmos on the Yialis River in the northeastern Troodos (McCartney 2005, pp. 6-7, 2007a; McCartney et al. 2006, pp. 51-54; McCartney et al. 2007) (see Fig. 1 for site locations), the EENC project has identified distinctive chipped stone industries: (1) flake-based assemblages?like that at Paleokamina or Pera Chorio Moutti?showing parallels with the coastal, Late Epipalaeolithic sites, and (2) blade-based assemblages?like that at Asprokremmos and Alambra Koundourka?(Mc Cartney et al. 2006, p. 58), which are Neolithic traditions but with a core technology and tool types quite different from those of the later, Cypro-PPNB (EAN) sites (McCartney et al. 2007, p. 29). (Figure 5). On the one hand, and in addition to new diagnostic types, aspects of the chipped stone technology and tool types identified by the EENC project from the so-called flake-based assemblages reveal similarities with those used at Aetokremnos, Nissi Beach and Akamas Aspros. In particular, sites such as Paleokamina and Asprokremmos, as well as Pera Chorio Moutti and Alambra Koundourka, show evidence of a microlithic chipped stone industry focused on the manufacture of diminutive scrapers and geometries dominated by double truncations. On the one hand, these elements of the lithic industry are thus broadly rem iniscent of Aetokremnos' chipped stone assemblage (McCartney et al. 2006). On the other hand, these inland assemblages also include new elements?well-made drills and a clear dominance of double truncation?suggesting that they are more evolved than their coastal counterparts. Moreover, the production of prismatic blades at Asprokremmos, Koundourka and Keldidhoni is distinct from the above. Furthermore, a suite of blade-based tool types? including arrowheads, burins, scrapers, notches, glossed segments and retouched pieces? in these assemblages clearly belong to Neolithic traditions (McCartney et al. 2006, 2007, pp. 33-35, 37 fig. 4). Interestingly, the presence of a few microliths and specific features of the blade core technology at Asprokremmos can be seen in the Period 5 tool industry at Kalavasos Tenta. Such features may hint at a local continuity of tool manufacture between the Cypro-PPNA and Cypro-PPNB periods (McCartney and Todd 2005; McCartney 2003, 2007a). McCartney also emphasizes that these traits of Tenta period 5 (Cypro-E/MPPNB, or EAN 1-2) are more in keeping with the assemblage at Aetokremnos, in contrast with other Cypro-PPNB (EAN) assemblages. Moreover, it must be borne in mind that all these comparisons are of the broadest level and form a generalised pattern that also exists in mainland Levantine assemblages. Thus, whilst this clearly evolved Tenta industry does not equate to that of Late Epipalaeolithic Aetokremnos, the persistence of such traits into the Cypro-E/MPPNB (EAN 1-2) may imply some level of cultural continuity from the Late Epipalaeolithic into the Neolithic era on the island. Other differences between the Asprokremmos and Tenta period 5 assemblages, however, suggest that this may not be a simple linear process. It is precisely the extent of such continuity that the EENC is investigating. Thus a definitive answer to this question cannot be given on the basis of current levels of understanding and must remain a focus of ongoing research (McCartney et al. 2007, 2008). Obsidian, an imported material that increasingly appears to be a time-marker for the Cypro-EPPNB (EAN 1) period, is nearly absent at both Tenta period 5 (one example) and Asprokremmos (one obsidian chip). The latter site is most distinctive for its arrowheads, and the essentially blade-based technology seen there is similar to those known from PPNA

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Fig. 5 Distinctive chipped stone industries identified by EENC Project (drawing by Carole McCartney): (1) flake-based assemblages (Pera Chorio Moutti; Agrokipia Palaeokamina) showing some parallels with the coastal, Late Epipalaeolithic sites, and (2) blade-based assemblages (Ayia Vavara Asprokremmos). a Pera Chorio Moutti?thumbnail scraper, b Pera Chorio Moutti?double truncation, c Agrokipia Palaeokamina? thumbnail scraper, d Agrokipia Palaeokamina?double truncation, e Agrokipia Palaeokamina?perforator, f Ayia Vavara Asprokremmos?burin, g Ayia Vavara Asprokremmos?projectile point, h Ayia Vavara Asprokremmos?perforator, i Ayia Vavara Asprokremmos?notched blade, j Ayia Vavara Asprokremmos? glossed element, k Ayia Vavara Asprokremmos?backed blade assemblages in the northern Levant and southeastern Anatolia (McCartney et al. 2007, 2008), and at the same time distinct from those of the later Cypro-EPPNB (EAN 1) on Cyprus.

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In practice, the distinction between flake-based and blade-based assemblages is an oversimplification (C. J. McCartney, personal communication, September 2008). The manufacture of tools on flakes from discoidal cores or using the so-called 'side'-blow blank segmentation technique, the production of small blades for tools from well-prepared unidirectional cores, and the presence of microlithic tools, are all features shared amongst both flake-based and blade-based lithic assemblages. It is the degree to which each trait is found that suggests change over time within dated perimeters bounded by the finds from Aetokremnos and Tenta period 5. These features of the Cypro-E/MPPNB (EAN 1-2) lithic assemblages may have some 'heritage' in the Late Epipalaeolithic, although the assem blage from Asprokremmos in particular has clear parallels with late PPNA?early PPNB industries, especially in the northern Levant (Simmons 2000, p. 12; McCartney 2005, pp. 14-15, 2007; McCartney et al. 2006, pp. 51-54, figs. 67). Although it remains unclear just how closely related the lithic assemblages found in the interior of the island may be to their possible coastal counterparts, overall this evidence points to an early Neolithic landscape of inland sites situated adjacent to riverine corridors (McCartney et al. 2006, p. 51). McCartney (2005, pp. 15-16, 2007) has suggested that the chipped stone assemblages from Paleokamina and Kelaidhoni might represent temporary activity sites used by foragers, while the more substantial material at Asprokremmos could indicate a semi-permanent camp (McCartney et al. 2007). She also emphasizes the clear distinction between lithic production practices at these sites and the chaine operatoire that characterised blade tool manufacture and use at the later, Cypro-EPPNB (EAN 1) sites of Parekklesia Shillourokambos (naviform) and Kissonerga Mylouthkia (bidirectional navi form-related blade core reduction). Such differences might be explained in terms of either the spatial (coastal vs. inland) or the temporal setting, although the complexity of dating deflated surface scatters makes it difficult to establish an absolute chronological sequence here, just as it does with the early coastal sites. If the differences prove to be chronological, sites such as Asprokremmos, in particular, would fall within a Cypriot time frame equivalent to the Levantine PPNA, and would thus be later?by up to 1,000 years?than Aetokremnos (and possibly Nissi Beach and the Akamas sites), but antecedent to the Cypro-EPPNB (EAN 1) sites. New radiocarbon dates from Asprokremmos have now confirmed that the differences in the chipped stone reper toire noted above are in fact temporal in nature. Charcoal samples excavated at Aspro kremmos have produced six radiocarbon dates, from the late 10th to mid-9th millennia cal BC (overall range of ages at 2o, 95.4% confidence: 9,141-8,569 cal BC) (Manning et al. 2010; see Table 1). These dates confirm a very early Neolithic phase contemporaneous with the late PPNA or early PPNB of the Levant, and speak directly to a previously unattested human presence on the island, after Aetokremnos but before Mylouthkia and Shillourokambos. How can we understand these new sites, the materials found in them, and the dates they signal? In my view, that is only possible if we step back and consider broader issues related to early fishers and foragers, how they adapted to the changing coastal configurations of the time, and the climatic conditions that set the backdrop to all these changes.

Coastal Adaptations, Seafaring and Climatic Episodes

Habitat by the waterside is the most general term proposed for the primitive ecology of mankind, be it along stream, lake, or seashore. Sauer 1962, pp. 42-43

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Stereotypes of prehistoric hunter-gatherers and farmers have obscured the persistent and widespread role that coastlines?mainland or insular?have played as zones of attraction for human dispersals, exploiting marine resources, social contacts and population growth (Bailey 2004; Bailey and Milner 2002-2003, p. 129; Bailey and Parkington 1988; Westley and Dix 2006). Moreover, the proliferation of terms relevant to such social groups? hunter, gatherer, fisher, forager?suggests that the variety of marine or aquatic resources and the role they played in prehistoric economies are still poorly understood by archae ologists and ethnographers alike (Palsson 1988). For example, the term 'complex hunter gatherers' is often applied to societies where abundant marine resources facilitated semi sedentary populations, the storage of food and even social hierarchies (e.g., Ames and Maschner 1998), but this does not mean that other groups of hunter-gatherers only resorted to aquatic resources in times of scarcity, stress or population growth. Moreover, a foraging lifestyle involved a range of locally available components?wild cereals in some areas; fish, shellfish or avifauna in others?within a spectrum of hunted, gathered or fished resources (Sherratt 2007, p. 6). Although the material markers of fisher-foragers?such as fish-hooks, harpoons and boats?are seldom seen in the pre-Holocene archaeological record, in this case the absence of evidence almost certainly reflects the fact that late glacial shorelines are tens if not hundreds of metres beyond present-day coasts (Bailey 2004, pp. 43-44; Bailey and Milner 2002-2003, pp. 132-135; Lambeck and Chappell 2001), a point to which I return below. Moreover, if we were to accept at face value the evidence from stable isotope analysis of human bone, large skeletal samples of Mesolithic and Neolithic populations from Britain and northwest Europe indicate a marine-dominated diet for the former and a terrestrial based diet for the latter (e.g., Richards and Hedges 1999a, b; Schulting and Richards 2002; Bailey and Milner 2002, pp. 136-141). In the eastern Mediterranean, however, with its (presumed) meagre marine resources, the lack of evidence for intensive marine exploita tion may come as no surprise. The Natufian culture, for example, seems never to have been reliant on coastal resources (Campana and Crabtree 1990; Boyd 2002). As we shall see, however, other reasons may lie behind the paucity of evidence for coastal exploitation along the Levantine seaboard. Early seafaring fishers and foragers in the Mediterranean must have set out to acquire knowledge of coastal areas and to exploit the resources available there. The advent of, or increase in, seafaring capabilities enabled previously land-bound hunters and gatherers to exploit coastal and marine resources more expeditiously, and while doing so to make use of certain hospitable, coastal sites?whether on the mainland or on islands. Broodbank (2006, p. 208) describes this change in attitude to the sea in epoch-making terms: '... this shift constitutes the origin point of the seaborne networks that gradually started to criss cross sub-basins and archipelagos, thus by degrees bringing trans-Mediterranean societies into being'. Gamble (2003, pp. 232-233) believes that seafaring provided an attractive option for exploration and subsistence long before this, and did not necessarily represent a way of life borne out of 'crisis' (Broodbank's position). With respect to Cyprus, Le Brun (2001, pp. 116-117) emphasizes that in order to reach Cyprus, some people had to have mastered the craft of building boats, gained a practical knowledge of waves and currents, and nourished a long-term intimacy with marine exploration and the sea itself. The excavations at Aetokremnos produced over 70,000 marine invertebrates, including crabs, sea urchins, limpets and topshell. Limited excavations at both Nissi Beach and Akamas Aspros have also produced seashells, and there is little doubt that fish, shellfish and various avifauna (dove, goose, grebe, shag and teal at Aetokremnos) were also valued by these coastal dwellers of the Late Epipalaeolithic. Ammerman et al. (2008, pp. 28-29,

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This content downloaded from 128.148.252.35 on Sat, 12 Mar 2016 20:28:46 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 102 J World Prehist (2010) 23:79-120 fig. 10) maintain that the salt which forms in small basins in the aeolianite at Aspros may also have been targeted by mainland-based seafaring foragers; such ready sources of salt could have played some role, they suggest, in taming and managing early domesticates such as sheep, goats and cattle. Although concerned primarily with the Neolithic period and the maritime transport (boats propelled by wind and sail) of five ungulate and three carnivore animal species from the mainland to Cyprus, Vigne and Cucchi (2005, p. 188) feel that people were not only capable of reaching the island during the Late Epipalaeolithic (contemporary with the end of the Natufian period in the Levant), but that climatic conditions favourable to navigation would have facilitated their journey. Just what were these climatic conditions? In general, Horowitz (1998) suggests that, during the early Holocene, the combination of a 'stratified' Mediterranean Sea, higher precipitation with some summer rains, and the lack of thunderstorms resulted in a calmer sea that made sailing and navigation consid erably easier than it was during earlier (and later) periods (see further below). More specifically, in order to acquire a fuller understanding of the possible reasons that brought seafaring fisher-foragers to Cyprus at this time, and to gain a better picture of Late Epi palaeolithic land- and seascapes, it is instructive to consider both within the context of the Younger Dryas climatic episode. The Late Glacial Maximum (LGM, c. 25,000-18,000 cal BP), when continental ice sheets reached their maximum extent, and the cold, dry Younger Dryas event (c. 10,800 9,600 cal BC) are widely seen as representing the most profound environmental shifts of the Late and Terminal Pleistocene (Wasse 2007, pp. 45-46; Rosen 2007, p. 45; Stutz et al. 2009). Watkins (2008, pp. 148-149) has criticised the 'melodramatic' manner in which most archaeologists have attempted to model the impact of the Younger Dryas phenom enon, whilst Meltzer and Holliday (2010) questioned its impact on Paleoindian groups living in Late Glacial North America. Yet it is difficult to deny its impact in the Medi terranean and the Levant (e.g., Moore and Hillman 1992; Bottema 1995; Weiss 2000; cf Abbo et al. 2010). The Younger Dryas has also been identified in pollen diagrams from Europe, Asia and the Americas (Cronin 1999, p. 205), and in marine and ice cores from several places round the world (Roberts 1998, pp. 72-76). Despite earlier concerns about poorly dated pollen evidence in the Levant (Baruch and Bottema 1991), palynological records for the Aegean and the Near East generally embed good evidence for the Younger Dryas (Bottema 1995; Sanlaville 1997, pp. 250-254; Geraga et al. 2005). Using a combination of oxygen-isotope stratigraphy, radiocarbon dating and palynology, Rossignol-Strick (1995) showed that in marine cores taken from both the Mediterranean and Arabian Seas, the Younger Dryas was marked everywhere by arid conditions, areas with less than 100 mm mean annual rainfall, and an increase in plants (Chenopodiaceae) associated with saline soils (see also Rosen 2007, pp. 46-61). In the northern Levant, for example, where we can expect conditions to have mirrored those taking place on Cyprus, forests were replaced by dry, steppe-like vegetation (Wasse 2007, p. 45; Rosen 2007, p. 69). By contrast, during the preceding (B0lling-Aller0d) and suc ceeding (early Holocene) periods, the climate was warmer and wetter; the early Holo cene?to judge by high abundances of oak and Pistacia?was very wet with mild winters (Rossignol-Strick 1999). While there is some disagreement amongst marine and terrestrial palaeoclimatic records over the severity of the Younger Dryas, Robinson et al. (2006, pp. 1535-1537, and fig. 15C) maintain that multiple datasets point to a comparatively cold and extremely arid period, perhaps the most arid of the Late Pleistocene. Roberts (1998, p. 76) notes that ecologically sensitive areas near climatic limits, like the limits of tree growth in the

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northern Levant or Cyprus, would have been susceptible to even relatively minor tem perature changes or moisture variations. Willcox et al. (2009), for example, show how rye, a cold-tolerant plant, extended its range into northern Syria during the colder conditions of the Younger Dryas, while heat-resistant barley remained in warmer regions to the south of the Euphrates River, only advancing north as temperatures increased at the end of the Dryas episode. Such conditions are argued to have led to (1) droughts and a reduction or severe changes in the plant and animal resources upon which Late Epipalaeolithic people depended (Rosen 2007, pp. 104-105), and to (2) population dispersals as well as increased mobility amongst those people affected (Goring-Morris and Belfer-Cohen 1997; Bar-Yosef 2001, p. 140; Rosen 2007, p. 174). In a variation on this theme, Manning et al. (2010, fig. 3) observe that the (PPNA) radiocarbon data from Ayia Varvara Asprokremmos lie on one plateau (c. 9,000 cal BC) in the 14C calibration curve whilst those from the later, Cypro-EPPNB (EAN 1) period cluster around another plateau (c. 8,000 cal BC). If one then takes the single 14C date on charcoal from Akrotiri Aetokremnos (Stratum 2A)?with a small measurement error, and derived using the most recent radiocarbon calibration dataset (Reimer et al. 2004; Simmons and Mandel 2007, p. 479)?it appears that this date also lies on a plateau (c. 10,000 cal BC) on the 14C calibration curve. Because these plateaux represent periods of reduced production of 14C, Manning argues that they point to warmer and likely wetter intervals, and that Cyprus thus may have been more attractive to early human populations during these intervals. In this scenario, the earliest human presence on Cyprus (i.e., at Aetokremnos) corresponds to the time at the end of the cool and arid Younger Dryas climate episode. With the following, warmer and wetter climatic regime came a time of greater potential for both agricultural pursuits and hunting activities, perhaps rendering the Cypriot environment more attractive and sustainable to increasingly permanent human populations (during the Cypro-PPNA and Cypro-EPPNB [EAN 1] periods). Taken together, then, Manning et al. (2010) suggest that the radiocarbon data and the climatic inferences derived from them may help to explain why the early human exploitation of Cyprus, initiated in the more challenging times of the Younger Dryas (that is, during the Late Epipalaeolithic), would have developed into more permanent occupa tion during the warmer periods that followed. Ammerman (2010, p. 88) paints a rather more complex picture, and suggests that the Younger Dryas episode in the eastern Mediterranean may have prompted two different adaptations: (1) intensification of available floral and faunal resources, the pathway leading to agriculture (but cf. Abbo et al. 2010) and, in contrast, (2) 'extensification', the pathway leading to seafaring. At this time, however, we do not know whether increased seafaring predated the Younger Dryas, or whether the halt in rising sea levels associated with this event (Lambeck and Chappell 2001) served to motivate these new fishers and foragers even further. Before the Neolithic, however, there is no evidence for the means of transport nor are there any other proxy measures (e.g. remains of domesticated animals and culti vated plants, obsidian) with which one might estimate the size of the boats or the number of journeys involved (Vigne and Cucchi 2005). Nonetheless, I would venture that the people who came to Aetokremnos or other coastal (and perhaps inland) sites could have left material traces during periodic visits, probably at times of the year favourable to sailing. Early seafaring and coastal adaptations by fisher-foragers may have benefitted from cli matic conditions buffered by the oscillations of the Younger Dryas; these conditions would have provided subsistence and other advantages enabling them to adapt more readily to a changing world than the intensive cultivation of cereals and the domestication of animals would have done.

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Despite the impact that the excavations at Aetokremnos have had on the archaeology of Cyprus, it may not have been the only focus of insular living in the 11th millennium cal BC (Simmons 1999, p. 322). Instead Aetokremnos may reflect?like Akamas Aspros and Nissi Beach in different ways and at different times?several episodic visits over at least a few centuries if not a millennium. Based on the new radiocarbon data from Ayia Varvara Asprokremmos (Manning et al. 2010), but awaiting a more comprehensive understanding of the site's material sequences, we can at least postulate that inland sites like Agrokipia Paleokamina, Politiko Keldidhoni, Pera Chorio Moutti and Alambra Spileos belonged to a time period almost 1,000 years after Aetokremnos, equivalent to the PPNA period in the Levant; they may well represent the first solid evidence for a more permanent occupation sequence on Cyprus. In sum, along with 11th millennium cal BC evidence of Melian obsidian from Lithic Phase VI at Franchthi cave in the Argolid (Perles 1987, pp. 142-145; Renfrew and Aspinall 1990), the remains from Aetokremnos and the new sites at Akamas and Nissi Beach (whether Late Epipalaeolithic, or Cypro-PPNB [EAN], or both in date) represent repeated, return maritime undertakings and coastal explorations, probably carried out on a seasonal basis, to exploit resources as varied as obsidian (at Franchthi only), salt (for dietary purposes, preservation, animal management), shellfish, fish and avifauna. These examples conform closely to what Sherratt (2007, pp. 4-6) termed the 'forager climax', with its networks of contact and interaction extending from the Aegean through the Anatolian plateau to the hilly flanks of the Fertile Crescent. They also formed part of what Barker (2005, pp. 47-49, fig. 3.2) views as 'foraging seascapes', where (for him, early Holocene) fishers and foragers well aware of Mediterranean winds, tides and currents began to make purposeful sea ventures. The upshot of all this was well summarised by Broodbank (2006, p. 210):

In different ways both the attested exploits [mainland to Cyprus and back; Argolid to Melos and back] therefore represent risky, dangerous journeys, requiring greater skill at manoeuvring craft in different conditions and over a longer duration, predictive and navigational knowledge of currents and winds, and more extensive mental maps of land- and seamarks. ... Put another way, it represents a change in attitude towards the sea, from simply a local provider of resources to a vector for travel.

The fact that many of these new maritime undertakings took place during the Younger Dryas episode, with its cooler, arid conditions and more stable sea level, suggests that Late Epipalaelothic semi-sedentary hunters and foragers had diversified their food base and expanded their spatial horizons in a time of new, somewhat sudden pressures on the mineral, faunal and floral resources to which they had become accustomed, or on which they relied. Evidence from the Levantine mainland for a return (by some semi-sedentary people) to a more mobile way of life to procure diminishing resources during the Late Natufian period may point to at least one source area for these new maritime ventures (Broodbank 2006, p. 211). Some have suggested, however, that the origin of the fisher foragers at Aetokremnos might be sought in and around Okuzini Cave in Anatolia's Antalya province (14,500-11,000 BC), because of similarities in chipped stone assem blages (backed bladelets, microliths, thumbnail scrapers) (Bar-Yosef 2001, pp. 136-137, fig. 3; see also Simmons 1999, p. 320). Comprehensive analysis of multiple chipped stone assemblages, however, suggests that the origin of the visitors to Late Epipalaeolithic Cyprus cannot be traced to any source area on the mainland, and nor should it be linked to a single 'colonisation' event (McCartney et al. 2007, pp. 27, 29). Instead of thinking about links with one mainland region, this very

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This content downloaded from 128.148.252.35 on Sat, 12 Mar 2016 20:28:46 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions J World Prehist (2010) 23:79-120 105 early evidence from Cyprus more likely represents a mix of traits assimilated by a mobile population whose way of life was based at least in part on seafaring (Ammerman et al. 2008, p. 27). In any case, it is impossible to provide definitive answers at this stage, when we have barely formulated the questions. The Late Epipalaeolithic in the eastern Mediterranean was an era that stood in stark contrast with what preceded it: the climate became colder and dryer, certain plant resources disappeared, some animal populations declined or became extinct, and some human populations became much more mobile. Along with all these changes, the social dynamics of Late Epipalaeolithic peoples must have accelerated and become transformed. Those who came to Akrotiri Aetokremnos, whether on a permanent or periodic basis, may well have encountered the last remnants of some endemic mini-megafauna, or else exploited their bones for fuel. Those who may have come on seasonal visits to Nissi Beach or the Akamas peninsula supplemented their diets with salt and by fishing or exploiting other marine resources (e.g., sea turtles and their eggs, seaweed), and perhaps by hunting birds, practices also echoed in the avifauna and marine invertebrates found in Stratum 2 at Aetokremnos (Simmons 1999, pp. 170-191, 322-323; Ammerman et al. 2006, p. 18). However one views the origins of these early visitors to the island of Cyprus, the material and climatic evidence associated with their maritime ventures indicates a period of stress and unprec edented demand upon a dwindling set of resources. In turn, by the onset of the Early Aceramic Neolithic, the earliest and still-growing evidence for seafaring, foraging and early farming in the eastern Mediterranean suggests that the perceived risks of insular living, including?on Cyprus?a restricted and unbalanced terrestrial food base and uncertain pelagic resources, must have outweighed the benefits of remaining where they were.

The Transition to the Early Aceramic Neolithic (Cypro-PPNA/PPNB)

Over 40 years ago, Binford (1968) argued that the archaeological remains of the post Pleistocene era are widely characterised by the appearance of small, highly specialized chipped stone implements that occur frequently on later sites in coastal and riverine regions where aquatic resources were systematically exploited. Within the eastern Mediterranean, we can see both a validation of and some variation within this model. Practices associated with seafaring?developed initially as a mobile, diversification response by complex fishers, foragers and hunters during the Late Epipalaeolithic?became more established in the early Neolithic. Such practices enabled closer communications and more developed connections between the various sub-basins of the Mediterranean (Broodbank 2006, p. 217), a phenomenon repeated in the webs of communication that characterised the early Holocene 'forager complex' in the Levantine Corridor and the 'hilly flanks' region around the upper courses of the Balikh and Khabur rivers (Sherratt 2007, pp. 4-5). On Cyprus, given all the new discoveries related to seafaring fishers and foragers during the Late Epipalaeolithic, it is clear that the basic contours and orientations of the Aceramic Neolithic?as they were once known?must now be redrawn entirely. At the same time, the place of Cyprus within the emerging agropastoral economies of the Levant and Ana tolia must be re-evaluated carefully (Kuijt 2004; Simmons 2004b). The 'climatic forcing mechanism' of the Younger Dryas (c. 10,800-9,600 cal BC) was likely but one part of an intricate 'conjunction of conditions' (Sherratt 2007, p. 7) that pushed complex foragers and hunters in the Levant and western Asia into an increasing preoccupation with and dependence on cultivating and storing plant food resources (see also Garrard 1999;

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Watkins 2008; Zeder 2009, pp. 45^8). This climatic shift resulted in droughts, the environmental deterioration of woodlands and steppe (not least in the so-called 'Levantine Corridor'), and a reduction in food resources (Bottema 1995, p. 890; Bar-Yosef 2001, p. 140; Rosen 2007, pp. 104-105). The social responses?movement and migration, changing lifeways, adjusting to new plant and animal regimes?would have been very real and strongly felt, however intangible they may be in the material record. The practical responses were twofold: (1) some people became more mobile, whether on land or at sea, and dispersed or migrated to previously unsettled areas (like Cyprus) or to regions that may have been less affected by the cooler, drier climate (like the Medi terranean coastal plain); (2) other people, reacting to stress on their food supply (Goring Morris and Belfer-Cohen 1997), or else just optimising their resource options (McCorriston and Hole 1991), began to cultivate cereals more systematically. Both factors are important if we wish to gain a fuller understanding of the Cypro-PPNB (EAN) period on Cyprus. The early Holocene era (c. 11,500-7,000 cal BP), during which a Neolithic way of life culminated throughout the eastern Mediterranean and western Asia, was the wettest phase those regions experienced during the last 25,000 years (Robinson et al. 2006, pp. 1535 1536, fig. 15d). The extensive coastal landscapes that had been so attractive to human settlement throughout earlier eras of lowered sea levels were inundated between about 16,000 and 6,000 years ago. By the end of the early Holocene (some 7,000 years ago), over 600 km of the eastern Mediterranean coastal plain, from the Gulf of Alexandretta in the north to the Sinai peninsula in the south, had lost a stretch of land ranging from 2 to 40 km wide, varying from region to region. This coastal inundation affected complex hunters, fisher-foragers and would-be farmers alike, reducing their territories and subsis tence bases, destroying their habitats, and limiting their access to marine resources (Bar Yosef 2001, p. 133; Stewart and Morhange 2009, pp. 401-402). It is within this climatic and environmental context that we must consider the origins, motivations and movements of the people who came to the island of Cyprus, whether on periodic visits or in order to settle permanently. The attempt to assess their origins is complicated by several factors. One is that on the Syrian coast nearest to Cyprus, agriculturalists are currently first attested only at Ras Shamra VC, in the latest PPNB levels (de Contenson 1992, pp. 197-199; Cauvin 2000, pp. 154-155, 161), some 1,000 years after the earliest agricultural communities appeared on Cyprus. One possible exception, albeit somewhat inland, is the site of Tell Ain el Kerkh in the Rouj basin of northwest Syria (Tsuneki et al. 2006; Arimura 2007). The closest eco nomic and material parallels?plant-animal subsistence package, human skull treatment, chipped stone technologies, grooved stones, figurines, polished stone maceheads, engraved pebbles?for the earliest Cypriot Neolithic culture would appear to come from various (PPNA, PPNB) sites in the Levantine Corridor, some 200 km inland from the eastern Mediterranean coast (illustrations and references in Peltenburg et al. 2001a, p. 38 fig. 2,58; see also Stordeur 2003; Peltenburg 2004a, pp. 3-4). It has also been suggested (Peltenburg et al. 2001a, b, pp. 41-42, fig. 4) that there are close structural similarities between some buildings at Kalavasos Tenta and those from Jerf el-Ahmar in Syria and Gobekli Tepe in Anatolia (Beile-Bohn et al. 1998, p. 48, fig. 20; Stordeur 2003, pp. 355-360). Close similarities also exist in the chaines operatoires of lithic manufacture seen at several Cypriot sites and at various PPNB sites in the Levantine corridor, both in the south (e.g., Aswad, Ramad, Ghoraife) and the north (e.g., Dja'ade, el Mughara, Mureybet, Assouad) as well as in eastern Anatolia (e.g. Cafer Hoyiik, Demirkoy Hoyuk) (McCarthy, in Peltenburg et al. 2001a, pp. 49-53, fig. 9).

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Other Anatolian imports (obsidian), or material parallels (chipped stone), on the earliest Cypriot sites have been cited (Cauvin 1991; Bar-Yosef 2003, pp. 76-77), but the only Anatolian sites (beyond those in the distant southeast) contemporary with the Cypro EPPNB (EAN 1) on Cyprus (c. 8,500-8,000 cal BC) are on the central plateau (Ozdogan 2004; Baird 2005). All other currently known sites are either too early or too late to be of relevance. In Antalya province along the southern coast of Anatolia, for example, the Late Pleistocene foraging communities that occupied caves at Beldibi or Okuzini (e.g. Otte et al. 1995; Yalcinkaya et al. 1995; Sherratt 2007, p. 11) are much too early, although Bar-Yosef (2001, p. 137) regards Okuzini as a possible origin for the fisher-foragers who came to Akrotiri Aetokremnos. The best-known sites on the Cilican plain (e.g. Mersin), in a staging ground where people might have set off to Cyprus, were only occupied some 1,000 years later, c. 7,000 cal BC at Yumuktepe for example (Caneva 1999, pp. 108-110, 112; cf. Peltenburg 2004b, p. xvii, for possible earlier sites), much the same case as for the northern Levantine coast. Leaving aside these earlier and later coastal sites, it seems unlikely that people who lived so far inland, whether in the Levantine Corridor or on the central Anatolian plateau, would have had the requisite maritime expertise or boat technology to reach an island target and establish permanent bases there. Given this conundrum, we may speculate? extrapolating from the slightly later, PPNC evidence at the submerged coastal site of Atlit Yam in Israel (Galili et al. 2002, 2004)?that some indigenous, late PPNA or early PPNB agriculturalists did live along the Levantine or Cilician costal plains, had undertaken overseas forays, and thus were aware of the potential that Cyprus offered for permanent settlement. But why do we find no evidence for coastal agropastoralists before about 7,000 cal BC? Following the Late Glacial Maximum, when the Mediterranean Sea fell to some 120 m lower than present-day levels, the most notable rise occurred between about 17,000 and 11,000 BP (Shackleton et al. 1984; Gomez and Pease 1992, p. 1; Lambeck and Purcell 2005, pp. 1985-1987, fig. 14). At one point, around 14.6 ka BP, sea level is estimated to have risen by around 20 m in less than 500 years (about 4 cm per year?Clark et al. 2002; Weaver et al. 2003), which would have utterly transformed the spatial and environmental context of any human being living on or exploiting the resources of the coast (Stewart and Morhange 2009, p. 402). By the 11th millennium BC, sea level had risen to about 40-50 m below its present level (Lambeck and Chappell 2001, p. 683; Broodbank 2006, p. 209); by the 8th millennium BC it had risen even further, to a level only 7 m lower than present (Cherry 1990, pp. 192-193). Not until some 6-7,000 years ago did the sea reach its modern levels (van Andel 1989, p. 736; Lambeck and Chappell 2001, p. 683; Pirazzoli 2005, pp. 1996-1999). Most shorelines that existed before that time are thus now submerged, and any prehistoric sites, activity areas or maritime features that may have been situated on them are now lost to view (Flemming 1998); some are several kilometres from present-day shorelines (Bailey and Milner 2002, pp. 132-133). During Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN) times along the eastern Mediterranean littoral, therefore, the shoreline would have been at least 15-25 m lower than it is at present. As the climate became warmer and wetter, the coastal plains would have been rich and fertile, providing unique habitats for relatively dense foraging groups (Sherratt 2007, pp. 4-5). If any of these people were living permanently or even periodically in settlements along an increasingly diminishing Levantine coastal plain, they would have suffered acute social and environmental stress and, in the end, would have lost not just their land and homes but their very means of subsistence. The disappearance of these broad, level, well-watered coastal plains and the resources?marine, plant and animal?available there must have had

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major social repercussions. As a consequence, the pull of an uninhabited place like Cyprus, perhaps well known (through earlier visits) to any coastal dwellers from the Cilician Plain to the cliffs of Carmel, would have been strong. In other words, although ecosystemic stress may have served as the catalyst for a purposive settlement of Cyprus, the incentive of coastal dwellers to travel to the island already existed, as witnessed by the remains at Aetokremmos and perhaps by those at Nissi Beach and Akamas Aspros, even if such earlier visits attest to seafaring fisher-foragers, not agro-pastoralists. Whereas the new work by Ammerman et al. (2007, 2008) has gone some way towards demonstrating the existence of sites on the submerged coastal plain of Cyprus during the 8th millennium cal BC (if not earlier), the only material evidence currently available for such sites along the coasts of southern Anatolia or the Levant is either too early or too late to be of relevance. Peltenburg (2004b, p. xvii) pointed out that the faunal assemblage from the Upper Palaeolithic Ucagizli Cave site on the northernmost Levantine coast (Giilec et al. 2000), opposite Cyprus's Karpass Peninsula in present-day Turkey, shows intensive exploitation of deer (as is the case on Cypro-PPNB [EAN] Cyprus), as well as the use of goat, cattle and pig, all species introduced much later to Cyprus. Although not a submerged site, and dated far too early (c. 41,000 BP) to be pertinent here, the remains of U^agizh? like those of the Mesolithic cave sites in Antalya province (noted above)?reveal the kind of habitat exploited by Late Epipalaeolithic, coastal-dwelling fisher-foragers. Despite Uc^agizli's current physical location, perched on a steep slope some 18 m above the low lying coastal plain (Kuhn et al. 1999, p. 509), the site might well be a forerunner of those Late Pleistocene-Early Holocene coastal sites still so scarce in the archaeological record. The situation along the southern Levantine coast becomes clearer because of the underwater site at Atlit-Yam, opposite Mount Carmel (Galili and Nir 1993; Galili et al. 2002). Dated to the final PPNB (= PPNC, late 8th-early 7th millennium cal BC), this site is situated today some 200-400 m offshore, at a depth of 8-12 metres. It extends over an area of some 40,000 m2, and contains everything from human skeletons, floral and faunal remains (wild and domestic ovicaprids, pig, cattle and dog) and marine fish, to structural foundations and stone-built water wells (Fig. 6). The excavators characterised Atlit-Yam as an archetypal Mediterranean Fishing Village (MFV), where the inhabitants survived through not just agropastoral practices but also the intensive exploitation of marine resources. Galili et al. (2002), pp. 187-190, 2004, pp. 94-97) make two contentious points in discussing the wider ramifications of the MFV. First, they argue that this phenomenon emerged as a response to 'environmental degradation' (deforestation, overgrazing) only during the later Levantine PPNB (c. 7,000 cal BC or later). Secondly, they maintain that the earlier Cypriot sites (Cypro-EPPNB [EAN 1]) are not true MFVs as they show little evidence for the exploitation of marine resources (cf. McCartney 2007b, p. 88). With respect to the first point, because the authors are sceptical about the existence of earlier Levantine coastal sites that would also be submerged today, they downplay any likelihood of a similar human response to the environmental upheavals wrought by rising sea levels during earlier, Late Epipalaeolithic or PPN times. With respect to the second point, they could not have known that archaeological fieldwork would soon uncover submerged sites on the coastal plain of Cyprus, that is, Akamas Aspros and possibly Nissi Beach, both of which were exploited by fisher-foragers who relied heavily on fish, shellfish, avifauna and similar marine resources. Their argument that intensive land and underwater survey had previously failed to recover any submerged sites on the Levantine coast pertains mainly to the southern Levant (modem-day Israel), as virtually no coastal or underwater surveys targeted specifically on early prehistoric sites have (yet) been undertaken elsewhere.

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Fig. 6 Atlit-Yam: underwater site (final PPNB [= PPNC1), showing distribution of installations and features (courtesy of Ehud Galili; published in Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 15 [2002] 176 fig. 6)

Moreover, some PPN coastal sites in Lebanon (Tell aux Scies, Dik el-Mahdi) may well fit the MFV model (Cauvin 1968, pp. 219-229; Peltenburg 2004b, p. xvii). What Galili and his colleagues have defined as the MFV in fact requires more than one set of temporal and spatial parameters. Such sites will have emerged, developed and changed at different times, for different reasons (McCartney 2007b, pp. 88-89, raises similar concerns regarding their limited view of the MFV). Above all, their definition is overly restricted: 'environmental degradation* cannot be confined to the actions of agro pastoralists alone. Most likely the MFV already existed during the environmental and social crises associated with rising sea levels in the Late Pleistocene or Early Holocene, at well-situated, fertile, harbour-like locations along the east Mediterranean coast?anywhere from Cilicia in the north to the Bay of Acco in the south. We might expect, therefore, that any Late Epipalaeolithic or early Neolithic Mediterranean fishing villages located along these coasts will only be found today?like Atlit-Yam?on submerged coastal plains, at various depths under the sea, and at different lengths from the current shoreline of the eastern Mediterranean (similarly, Rollefson 2004). Increasingly, therefore, it is apparent that the full story of the earliest Neolithic in the Mediterranean remains to be told, and that these submerged coastal sites will be central to its telling. With respect to Cyprus, Simmons (1999, pp. 321-322) suggested a decade ago that '...those responsible for Aetokremnos were a conservative group of early Levantine Neolithic peoples' who rejected a farming way of life in order to pursue their customary hunter-gatherer lifestyle in a new, insular setting. It is now clear that Aetokremnos?and perhaps Nissi Beach and Akamas Aspros?were Late Epipalaeolithic sites frequented by fisher-foragers, not hunter-gatherers per sey people who were moving away from what is typically regarded as a Neolithic (i.e. farming) way of life, or who at least regarded

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cereals?wild or cultivated?as only one component within a resource spectrum of hunted and gathered foods that supported a primarily foraging lifestyle (Sherratt 2007, p. 6). Equally important is the fact that none of these Late Epipalaeolithic sites shows any strong material affinities with the best-published sites of the Cypro-PPNA/B periods. Various factors, from invisibility beneath the sea to the ephemeral nature of the sites themselves, thus far has made it impossible to demonstrate the existence of any Levantine PPN Mediterranean fishing village that might have served as a jumping-off point for the earliest agropastoral settlers of Cyprus (Peltenburg et al. 2001a, p. 59; Peltenburg et al. 2003, p. 97). However, the multiple material components that the earliest settled villages on Cyprus shared with various sites in the PPNA-PPNB Levant?themselves demon strating great variability in everything from chipped stone manufacture to mortuary tra ditions (McCartney 2004, pp. 104-105; Watkins 2008)?indicate that the new, permanent settlers of Cyprus most likely came from the Levantine coast, which on present evidence could include anywhere from the Gulf of Iskenderun to the Bay of Acco (Broodbank 2006, p. 216; Sherratt 2007, p. 11). Whatever their origins within this wider arena, they represent one of the earliest successful overseas migrations of farmers in the Mediterranean world, bringing with them both domesticated and wild fauna as well as seed crops?no mean feat. The case for such a migration, or migrations, has been made convincingly (Peltenburg et al. 2001a, pp. 55-60; Peltenburg 2004a, pp. 4-5; Sherratt 2007, p. 11), if not to everyone's satisfaction (e.g., Watkins 2004, 2008, p. 146). The processual legacy that rejected migration and diffusionism as hallmarks of cultural history has itself been rejected by a new generation of archaeologists emboldened by postmodernist and postcolonial thinking and critical of most ideas associated with the global and imperial. In this context, migrations are understood '... as a behavior that is typically performed by defined sub groups (often kin-recruited) with specific goals, targeted on known destinations and likely to use familiar routes' (Anthony 1990, pp. 895-896). There is no denying the historic or prehistoric reality of migration, a social phenomenon tied up with mobility, subsistence, exploitation and exchange. On Cyprus, we find in the main Cypro-EPPNB (EAN 1) sites the co-existence of the 'founder crops' and managed or early-domesticated animals at a date equivalent to or even earlier than that at which they appear throughout southeastern Anatolia and the Levantine Corridor (Legge 1996; Peters et al. 1999, 2005; Vigne et al. 2003, pp. 250-252). Once again this means that we must re-evaluate long-standing assumptions about the primacy of the Levant in matters of mobility and subsistence, as well as the nature, extent and rele vance of exploitation and/or exchange in PPN 'interaction spheres' (Bar-Yosef and Belfer Cohen 1989; cf. Kuijt 2004; Sherratt 2007; Watkins 2008), all of which have long coloured how we view the earliest Neolithic. Indeed, Zeder (2009, p. 45) maintains that the Neo lithic 'revolution' in the Near East took more than 10,000 years to be fully realized, and that its chief components were 'rolled out' in different ways and at different times throughout a vast area extending from the Zagros in the east to the Aegean area (and Cyprus) in the west. Broodbank (2006, p. 216) observed that the earliest settlement of Cyprus most likely reflects a fusion of two, perhaps competing, ideologies: (1) the ethos of seafaring fisher foragers whom we now know continued to exploit Cyprus's coast during PPNB times (at least at Nissi Beach?Ammerman et al. 2008, p. 15); and (2) the 'expansionist' and exploratory outlook of stressed coastal dwellers (whether complex foragers or agropas toralists), in search of new lands to settle, new places to live. In other words, the earliest known permanent settlement of Cyprus during Cypro-EPPNB (EAN 1), if not in Cypro PPNA, was not part of some inevitable maritime expansion into the Mediterranean, but

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This content downloaded from 128.148.252.35 on Sat, 12 Mar 2016 20:28:46 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions J World Prehist (2010) 23:79-120 111 was conditioned initially by challenging local circumstances and propelled by people whose demographic situation, combined with a working knowledge of the sea, led them to explore, migrate and eventually to exploit the unknown. Broodbank (2006, p. 217) suggests that seafaring may have emerged initially as a response by foragers, fishers or hunter gatherers to various climatic or social crises, including subsistence needs. Gamble (2003, pp. 232-233), by contrast, believes that much earlier voyaging and coastal or island exploration was a purposive and attractive option, a 'heroic tradition' driven by the ide ology of discovery and subsistence (or to acquire high-value items), rather than part of a way of life borne out of crises. Whatever the case may have been in the Late Epipalae olithic, seafaring now facilitated human movement throughout the eastern Mediterranean and beyond. At the same time, it also played a crucial role in transporting the people, plants and animals involved in agricultural origins.

Overview

The pace of change in the study of the Late Epipalaeolithic (or 'Mesolithic') throughout the Mediterranean is such that all discussion, and all current interpretations, must remain open-ended. On Cyprus, at the time of writing, it is still tenuous to argue (Peltenburg 2004a, pp. 4-5; Watkins 2004; McCartney 2005, p. 16,2007) that some form of continuous occupation occurred between the Late Epipalaeolithic 'Akrotiri phase', now clearly dated to the 11th millennium cal BC, and the earliest Aceramic Neolithic, which began in the late-10th to mid-9th millennia cal BC. Perhaps we should decouple the issue of Cyprus's permanent settlement during the Cypro-PPNA or Cypro-PPNB (EAN) from the question of the earlier seafaring visits to the island's coasts and the likelihood of semi-permanent camps inland. As Ammerman (2010, p. 89) has observed with respect to seafarers and the coastal way of life they pursued: '...we are now beginning to realize that the early foragers who were making seasonal trips to Cyprus were not heading toward the Neolithic but away from it (in terms of their life style and interests)' (see Simmons 1999, pp. 321-322 for a similar scenario, but one based on hunter-gatherers rather than fisher-foragers). Ongoing excavation and survey work alike have revealed that during the Early Ace ramic Neolithic new, now permanent settlers reached Cyprus over 10,000 years ago, bearing cultivated (if not domesticated) cereals and herded ('managed') animals from the Levantine ('Syro-Cilician') mainland. Because some recently explored sites in and around the northern and eastern foothills of the Troodos?Asprokremmos, and perhaps also Pal aeokamina and Kelaidhoni?belong to a time frame equivalent to the Levantine PPNA, they must also be included in discussions of the island's earliest permanent settlement. At the same time, it now seems likely that a coastal, non-farming way of life continued to flourish, something heretofore unimagined in the Neolithic of Cyprus. The identification of all these sites and their attribution to the earliest phase of the Neolithic is a phenomenon of the twenty-first century. This trajectory of research marks out Cyprus as a key island context for understanding the emergence of farming and sedentary living, the continuation of seafaring, and all the associated social transformations, within an eastern Mediterranean core zone. The Aceramic Neolithic as a whole (c. 9,000-c. 5,500 cal BC) was a time when a uniquely Cypriot culture crystallised and, after an extensive period of insular development, became increasingly isolated, for diverse reasons, from the mainland. The permanent settlement of Cyprus may have been sparked initially by climatic and environmental stress, as well as by social factors related to mobility, insularity and establishing a distinctive, new

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identity. In the end, however, people succeeded in settling the island because of human design and adaptability. To what extent the nature of insularity, the role of distance, the dictates of adjusting to a new climatic and ecological regime, or basic social choices prolonged this period of settlement and adaptation are issues that can be investigated empirically, now that the essential groundwork has been laid systematically.

Acknowledgments Over the past decade, archaeologists working on Cyprus have produced an extraor dinary amount of new and unprecedented information?based on new fieldwork and new research on individual classes of material?related to the earliest prehistory of the island. The complexity and breadth of materials and ideas I have attempted to summarise in this paper presented real challenges to me, not least because all these issues lie (or have lain) well beyond my own area of expertise. I am therefore deeply indebted to the following individuals, listed in alphabetical order, for their comments on earlier drafts of various sections, and/or for providing unpublished papers, lectures and very timely discussions related to this research. I relied heavily on their comments and criticisms, but the opinions expressed and the inter pretations argued here remain my own responsibility, not theirs. Albeit Ammerman (Colgate University); Paul Croft (Lemba Archaeological Project, Cyprus); Paula Louise Jones (Independent Scholar); Carole McCartney (Lemba Archaeological Research Centre); Sturt Manning (Cornell University); Edgar Pelten burg (School of History, Classics and Archaeology, Edinburgh University); Alan Simmons (University of Nevada, Las Vegas). I am also grateful for discussions and comments received following presentations of several earlier versions of this paper given in workshops, seminars or lectures at the following institutions: University College London, Cornell University (Mediterranean Colloquium, Dept. of Classics), 2008 Annual ASOR Meeting (Boston), University of California, Berkeley (Depts. of Anthropology, Near Eastern Studies, Group in Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology), University of Glasgow (Dept. of Archaeology), and the Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute, Nicosia. The perspectives provided by everyone from palaeontologists to classical archaeologists have, I hope, helped to sharpen the points I tried to make in this study.

References

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