Dr Susan Sherratt

Event details

Lecture title: "No man’s land or the centre of the world? Coming to terms with ancient Cyprus"

Date: 27 October 2006, 5.15pm

Lecture abstract

Throughout its history Cyprus has played a succession of very important roles in the Mediterranean , from the time of the earliest Neolithic settlers in the 9th millennium BC right down to the present. This has been as a result variously of the location and geography of the island, its natural resources and the talents and accomplishments of its inhabitants.

Despite this, the study of prehistoric and early historical Cyprus has tended to fall into something of an organisational black hole, particularly in European and American academic circles, where it has been claimed, and at the same time often marginalised, by both Classics and the Ancient Near East. In the past, this has led to some unfortunate effects on attitudes to Cypriot prehistory and early history and on views of the island's role in early Mediterranean networks.

The lecture attempts to redress this imbalance. It looks briefly at the historical geography of Cyprus in relation to some aspects of its past, and goes on to consider the development of its central economic and strategic role in Mediterranean networks, particularly in the 2nd and early 1st millennia BC.

Dr Susan Sherratt is from the Department of Archaeology at the University of Sheffield.