An Environmental History of ancient Cyprus: landscapes, plants and animals through time

Session chairs: Dr Evi Margaritis, Dr Angelos Hadjikoumis and Prof Paul Halstead

People and environments, variably anthropogenic or natural, are in a constant state of interaction and re-negotiation. Their interactions normally cause changes that are archaeologically detectable. The corpus of work on relevant proxies such as plant and animal remains, soils and landscapes, climate and other environmental attributes from ancient Cyprus is growing fast. This session aims to bring together archaeobotanical (macro, micro and wood), zooarchaeological, geoarchaeological, landscape, stable isotope and ethnographic studies in order to reconstruct the environmental, agricultural and economic history of Cyprus through time. It thus invites new contributions of any chronological period to that corpus and, at the same time, encourages broader and more synthetic approaches that encompass several lines of evidence.