Cyprus as a Contact Zone in the 1st Millennium AD

Abstract

Using Cyprus as a case study, the present contribution applies a diachronic perspective to the notion of contact zones as a means to explore some of the implications of this concept for an island. The geographic distribution of ceramic imports to Cyprus during the 1st millennium reveals a fairly consistent pattern through time, which seems to be more or less similar to what has been suggested for earlier periods in the island’s history. This suggests that the points of contact were determined more by geographical proximity and ease of communication than by human factors. The Cypriots themselves seem to have played a less active role on the overseas markets in the 1st millennium AD than before, and it is tentatively proposed that it might have been the island’s loss of control of her mines in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods that led to a decline in the direct involvement of Cypriots in overseas trade.