• 1 Sabatini, Lo Schiavo 2020. Aegean and Egypt: Moran 1992, pp. 107-109, Amarna Letter EA 35. France a (...)
• 2 Moran 1992.
• 3 Pottery and bronze objects: Popham, Sackett, Themelis 1979; Popham, Calligas, Sackett 1993; Kourou (...)

1Evidence of pre-Cypro-Archaic period commerce and networks is not only about the trade in metals. Recipients of copper during the Bronze Age included Egypt, the Aegean, Crete, and as far west as Sardinia, France, and Corsica.1 The 14th-century Amarna letters (33-40) describe a delivery of copper, timber, donkey hides, ivory and ship beams to the Egyptian ruler from Alashiya, believed to be located in Cyprus.2 Other early exports include juglets probably containing aromatic oils distributed in the eastern Mediterranean from the Late Bronze Age and down to the Early Iron Age, and bronze craters, amphorae and Late Bronze Age Cypriot pottery found in Crete, Sicily, the Aegean, Lefkandi, the Levant and Rhodes.3 However, archaeological evidence and other primary indications of copper exports are lacking in the Cypro-Archaic period and later. Some evidence available is considered below.

• 4 Tin: Forbes 1964-1972, vol. 9 , pp. 134-186; Bresson 2016, pp. 352-353; Kiderlen et al. 2016.
• 5 Berger et al. 2019, pp. 36-38; Gilboa 2022.
• 6 Sherratt, Sherratt 1993; Sherratt 1994.
• 7 Karageorghis, Kanta 2014; Mehofer, Jung 2017; Kourou 2012a, pp. 216-218.

2With its geographical location near the Levant, Cyprus becomes a hub and perhaps an intermediary role for commerce. It has been proposed that Cyprus played a role in connecting Aegean and western Mediterranean demand for sources for metals further east, with tin supplies originating from Luristan, in the Zagros mountains, northern Iraq, and from southeastern Turkey.4 Based on this hypothesis, tin was supplied to the Levant and the Aegean up to ca 1400 BCE, and Gilboa believes it was shipped from Levantine ports to Cyprus and further west.5 Iron smelting and the use of this metal first appear in Cyprus as early as the twelfth century BCE.6 There is broader evidence for eastern Mediterranean/Cypriot ‘influences’ in Sardinian and Aegean material culture. Indications include Cypriot pottery finds in Sicily and Sardinia with Nuragic pottery in Cypriot contexts, lead isotope analysis of 12th-century Cypriot copper in bronze objects in the Aegean context and a Cypriot/Phoenician trading network with Lefkandi in the 10th and 9th centuries.7 Despite the lack of material evidence, and widely accepted evidence for large-scale social, economic and political upheaval at the end of the Bronze Age, these Bronze Age Mediterrean-wide export and import markets, particularly founded on metal networks, continued into the first millennium BCE and beyond but changing and evolving as illustrated below (fig. 5). As regards Cypriot economic centrality, particularly as a trading hub, the evidence below suggests however, that Cyprus was outperformed by other more geographically central locations like Delos, Rhodes, and Athens, a factor of the increasing importance of the market economy of the Aegean and its political centrality (fig. 4).

• 8 Depalmas, Fundoni 2015, pp. 158-160.
• 9 Kasseri 2012; Pratt 2021, p. 288.
• 10 Kearns 2022, p. 49.
• 11 Samians: see Herodotus, The Histories, 4.152; Aeginetans: see Hesiod fr. 205 Merkelbach; Houby-Niel (...)

3Cypriot trading connections from the Late Bronze Age to the Iron Age include western Mediterranean nodes such as France, Corsica, Sicily and Sardinia and more local connections in the Levant, Egypt, and Rhodes, but also Aegean mainland locations like Mycenae and Lefkandi on Euboea. Later, the direction of Phoenician trade from at least the 10th century and perhaps accelerated by Assyrian political pressure, was the use of a Mediterranean-wide network of strategic nodes, which included Cyprus and was evident in Cypriot and Phoenician active polities in their apparent influence over commercial connections between Sardinia and Iberia.8 They exported wine in bulk along the route to Spain, stopping at Cyprus, Egypt, Malta, Crete, and Carthage.9 A network from the north to the southeast is also indicated by the movement of Euboean Geometric ‘bird’ skyphoi from the Aegean to Cyprus and onto the Levant.10 If not the Aeginetans and Samians, also known for their skill as seafarers, the Phoenicians likely brought Greek ‘SOS’ amphoras and products to Iberia in the early Archaic period.11

• 12 Monfreda, Ramankutty, Foley 2008; Ponti et al. 2013, p. 127, fig. 5.
• 13 Salamis Tomb: Knapp, Demesticha 2017, pp. 131-132; Orsingher 2022, p. 313.
• 14 Hadjisavvas, Chaniotis 2012, p. 160.
• 15 Novák et al. 2017, pp. 178-180; Demesticha 2022, p. 428; Christophilopoulou 2022, pp. 278-279.
• 16 Matta, Vandkilde 2023.

4Cultivation maps indicate Cyprus’ suitability for oil cultivation, particularly in the southeast.12 A Cypro-syllabic inscription from a late 7th-century BCE tomb is translated as “olive oil” painted on the shoulder of a basket-handled type amphora, confirming the involvement of southeastern Cyprus in oil production.13 Scientific analysis of amphorae interiors from findspots at Panagia Ematousa (south-east Cyprus) and Aradippou (north of Larnaca) indicates they contained wine. However, it can be confidently asserted that the basket-handled amphorae contained oil from the 7th to the 3rd centuries BCE.14 Due to a lack of evidence for Cypriot amphorae in the wider Aegean, Cypriot market reach appears for the most part within the island’s regional sphere of interaction, being East Greek coastal sites, Cilicia, Levant and Egypt (fig. 5).15 This is an interesting market shift compared to the formerly vast and distant Bronze Age metal networks discussed above, which extended as far west as France.16

• 17 Schreiber 2003.
• 18 Kourou et al. 2002; Salmon 2022, pp. 401-402; Tuna et al. 2022.
• 19 Tuna et al. 2022, p. 418.
• 20 Gjerstad, Calvet 1977; Sørenson 1997, pp. 290-291.

5However, Cyprus did extend contact to the Aegean with the supply of limestone and ceramics, and knowledge transfer on the style and production of ‘spaghetti’ wares. Examples include the exchange of thin-walled, Cypriot Black-on-Red ware distributed to coastal sites throughout the eastern Mediterranean from the 10th to the 7th century BCE. The decoration of this ware appears to be influenced by Philistine and Phoenician cultures.17 Locally produced statuettes, a majority of which are of a lion or falcon and function as votive offerings, found at Knidia, Lindos, and Chios have been identified as being from limestone quarried from Tremetousia and within the Pachna formation in Cyprus.18 The stylistic and iconographic representations in these statuettes suggest their production outside Cyprus, perhaps by travelling Cypriot craftsmen bringing their own materials.19 This directional trend of export trade was reciprocated by East Greek pottery found in Cyprus.20

• 21 Bresson 2016, p. 404.
• 22 Eriksson 2011, pp. 85-87; Papantoniou 2013, p. 177; Karnava 2022.
• 23 Papantoniou 2011.
• 24 Clairmont 1955; Clairmont 1956; de Vries 1977. Cyprus: Gjerstad 1948, pp. 269-281.
• 25 Marr 1971, p. 333.
• 26 Novák et al. 2017, pp. 178-180; Christophilopoulou 2022, pp. 278-279.
• 27 Demesticha 2009, p. 390.

6The growth of Athens in political power and population from the 6th to the 5th century BCE created a superconsumer at the centre of the Greek world who also imposed prohibitions on food exports to reduce shortages.21 The expectation would be increased Athenian trading relations with Cyprus to mirror the connections resulting in the perceived ‘Hellenisation’ of Cyprus elites, a factor of Attica’s cultural influence in Cyprus, including language, artistic style and iconography.22 Although Cypriot complete participation in this proposed homogeneous Hellenistic world can be challenged by locally based regional studies of cultural identity.23 From the 6th to 4th century BCE, the most influential ceramics were the Attica Black glazed and Red figure types exported from Athens throughout the Mediterranean, including Cyprus, Palestine, Anatolia, Syria and Egypt.24 Thanks to Andocides (2.2) in the 5th century BCE and Demosthenes (Against Dionysodorus, 56.7-11) a century later, we learn that Egypt supplied grain to Cyprus and was also a stopover from the Cypro-Classical period for grain destined for Athens.25 Cyprus continues to supply olive oil to Egypt and Cilicia, or knowledge transfer, to produce basket-handled amphorae.26 East-Greek relations continue mainly with Chian wine amphorae and perhaps with Samos and Mende, with a few samples of amphorae, all evidenced by the Mazotos shipwreck, which foundered off the south coast of Cyprus.27

• 28 Michaelides 2009, p. 98.
• 29 Kassianidou 2011.
• 30 Kassianidou 2012; Masson-Berghoff et al. 2018; Masson-Berghoff, Pernicka 2019, p. 62.
• 31 Isager, Hansen 1975, pp. 29-31; Amemiya 2007, p. 83.
• 32 Terpstra 2019; Lund 2022.

7The question of copper exports still hangs in the air unless we believe Pliny (Natural History, 34.20, 22, 24, 34), which suggests copper export to Athens up to the Hellenistic period. Pliny describes in detail the uses and benefits of Cyprus copper and the making of metal cakes at the Cyprus furnaces. He also praises the medicinal benefits of the resulting ash. A sulphide of copper and iron is called misy, which Aristotle (Fr. VI.Ph. 266) also describes as being used as a medicine.28 It is possible, then, that some level of copper exports to the Aegean continued in the Classical and Hellenistic periods. Mining activity continued in Cyprus, supported by evidence up to the late Roman period, including the dating of slag heaps at Skouriotissa and near Xyliatos, and evident in Roman coinage.29 An inscription describes its use at Eleusis, as does isotope analysis of an arrowhead at Naucratis in Egypt. Other copper sources are also evident here, particularly from Faynan in Anatolia.30 Strabo (Geography, 14.6.5), among other things, mentions copper in the late Hellenistic period, telling us that “in fertility, Cyprus is not inferior to any one of the islands, for it produces both good wine and good oil, and also a sufficient supply of grain for its own use and possesses extensive copper mines at Tamassos”. Scholarship generally acknowledges the likelihood of copper exports to Athens, and inscriptions confirm the continuing grain route to Athens.31 Although not as dominant as Delian and Rhodian traders, Cyprus and Cypro-Phoenician traders did have a presence in Piraeus and Athens in the 4th to 2nd centuries BCE.32

• 33 Finkielsztejn 2013; Egypt, Levant and Cilicia: Lund 2022.
• 34 Hein et al. 2021. Thasos: Lawall 2011; Lawall, Tzochev 2020, fig 133.
• 35 Curtis 1991; Tezgör, Inaishvili 2010; Reynolds 2013, p. 102; Filis 2022, pp. 39, 44; Hein et al. 20 (...)
• 36 Bresson 2016, p. 375; Ackermann 2017, pp. 71-72; Dimitrova 2022, p. 442.
• 37 Mørkholm 1975, p. 8.

8Cypriot Βlack Gloss and Colour-coated wares, dated from the end of the 4th to mid-2nd century BCE, appeared in the Levant coastal area and Egypt, the same destinations as the amphorae with Cypriot stamps, suggesting the ceramics accompanied the bulkier trade goods of olive oil and wine.33 Regarding Cypriot imports, other than the usual eastern coastal areas and islands, including wine from Chios and Rhodes, there is also evidence of wine supply from Corinth, the Adriatic, and Thasos.34 Although scientific analysis (energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence/neutron activation analysis–NAA) on amphorae at Paphos confirms locally produced types evident, it indicates a dominance of imported wines, particularly later, and fish products from Sinope and Sicily.35 In the Hellenistic period, ceramic imports included Pergamon ceramics and Palestinian cups.36 Ptolemaic coins, too, were minted at Salamis, Citium and Paphos.37

• 38 Lawall, Lund 2013, p. 7.

9The evidence reinforces the zone of Cyprus’ commercial activity as mainly in the coastal Asia Minor, northern Aegean, and southern-eastern Mediterranean regions, later extending into the central Aegean. It acts as a hub between the Aegean, western Mediterranean, and the Near East, as represented in the corpus of amphorae and evidence of grain shipments from Egypt.38 The incorporation of these exchanges into economic exchange networks of the Aegean and wider Mediterranean using SNA will illustrate the centrality and the trading communities to which Cyprus belonged and evolved diachronically from the Cypro-Archaic period to the Hellenistic period, driven by economic and political events.

• 39 Freeman 2004, p. 16; Jackson 2008. For SNA in archaeology: Brughmans, Peeples 2017; Brughmans, Peep (...)
• 40 For discussion on data veracity and completeness in SNA: Grant, forthcoming. The full dataset used (...)

10Since the early 20th century SNA, developed initially for the social sciences, has been used to measure network dynamics, including disease contagion, market structures and cultural diffusion, and has been actively used in archaeology this century.39 Using SNA, a network of economic exchange is constructed based on primary sources, including archaeology and ancient written sources, as reported in ongoing scholarship. The data sample of Cypriot trading discussed above and included in the networks below (figs. 2-5) is a subset of a wider eastern and central Mediterranean network with over 760 links connecting over 90 nodes (locations) of origin and destination covering the Cypro-Archaic, Cypro-Classical and Hellenistic periods. The network accuracy, therefore, depends on the availability of evidence and the accuracy of the archaeological record and other primary sources. The main objective, using a purposive sampling approach applied to target sites, artefact typologies and ancient written sources, is to identify evidence of a commercial link. The robustness of the network can be assessed through qualitative and quantitative tests, statistical sampling methods, and by reviewing its plausibility in light of the historical context and other network studies.40 The categories of exchange considered to produce links are grain, olive oil, wine, seafood, marble and timber, metals, ceramics, and trafficking of enslaved persons, which are colour-coded in the networks as in fig. 1.

• 41 Demesticha 2022, p. 428.
• 42 Lemos 2002, pp. 228-229; Orsingher 2022, pp. 309-311; Bourogiannis 2022, pp. 367-387.
• 43 Bekker-Nielsen 2000, p. 201.
• 44 Demosthenes, Against Dionysodorus, 56.9.1: Casson 1971, p. 183.

12Export strength based on a ranking compared to other nodes is illustrated by the size of the node (fig. 2). What is evident in these graphs is that Cyprus ranks strongly as an exporter in the Archaic period, which might indicate the retention of some export networks developed from metal distribution and the islands’ role in connecting east and west discussed above. These exports were mainly in their southeast zone and coastal Asia Minor. Cypriot traders appear to have decided not to carry their olive oils with them to the Aegean.41 It may be a case of a sufficient market for surpluses in local regions (the Levant, Egypt, Cilicia and Rhodes) without necessitating a long-distance navigation against northerly winds to Attica, which had ample supplies of oil. This commercial export centrality faded in the Classical period mainly because of a lack of evidence of exports to eastern Greek coastal areas and the Levant; however, there were metal and grain exports to Athens, a node with a rapidly rising population and consumption, and some continuing finds of basket-handled amphorae abroad. There was a relative recovery of Cypriot commercial strength as an exporter in the Hellenistic period. Based on the bulk of finds dating from the 3rd and the 2nd centuries BCE, Cypriot Black Gloss and Colour-coated fine wares were exported to the Levant coastal areas and Egypt.42 This is perhaps not as strong a recovery in economic ranking as expected, considering continued ‘Hellenisation’ a factor of political expansion, economic integration and developments by Ptolemy I Soter, like Nea Paphos.43 This is likely a factor in the expansion of overall trade in the Hellenistic period, with the export strength of nodes like Rhodes, Cyrene, Thasos, Delos, and Black Sea locations putting pressure on Cyprus’ export centrality ranking in the Mediterranean as these nodes were highly active. However, there is still improvement or at least ‘holding its own’ despite a strong field, indicating a recovery in exports, partially due to its distribution role, necessitated by navigation concerns with transit through or near Cyprus and onto Rhodes.44

• 45 Möller 2000; Krämer 2016.
• 46 Gjerstad 1948, pp. 269-281; Whitley 2001, pp. 177-178; Karnava 2022.
• 47 Hein et al. 2021.
• 48 Curtis 1991; Garlan 2007, p. 145; Boer 2013.

13Relative to other nodes, Cyprus (fig. 3) is an average importer/consumer in the Archaic period, with imports from the Levant and Asia Minor coastal areas reciprocating for exports to these regions. This Ionian/easterly route for reciprocal trade evolved with Amasis II’s encouragement to come to Naukratis and establish commercial links and sanctuaries.45 Herodotus, (Histories, 2.178) and Diodorus, (Library, 1.68-69), describe the close ties between Egypt and the Ionians, including Chios, Teos, Phocaea, Clazomenae, Rhodes, Knidos, Halicarnassus, creating a maritime economic highway with Cyprus en route. Also, Athenian pottery assemblages were found at Kition, Marion, Amathus and Salamis.46 Like all nodes, Cyprus’ importer ranking weakened relatively in the Classical period because of Athens’ high consumption and because of minimal evidence of imports other than from the southeastern Mediterranean and coastal Asia Minor, grain from Egypt for Athens in return for ceramics, with no evidence included of imports from the Levant. The latter might be surprising given the presence of Phoenicians at Kition and other locations in the 5th to 3rd centuries BCE, as evidenced by inscriptions. The Phoenicians involved themselves in the political and religious sphere, including the promotion of Cypriot cults and promoting local Cypriot identities. The opening up of markets for Cyprus in the Mediterranean during the Hellenistic period is evidenced by a broad geographic (but still mainly eastern) range of sources of wine imports from the Adriatic, Corinth, Thasos, Chios, Ephesus, Kos, Rhodes and Samos.47 Other imports are also mostly eastern, with the notable exception of fish products from Sinope on the Black Sea.48 Despite Cyprus already having earlier eastern Mediterranean connections from the Archaic period, the rank improvement can be said to be the fingerprint of Ptolemaic and Roman influence, with more distant node connections and the general opening up of import opportunities in this period.

• 49 Papantoniou 2013.
• 50 Amemiya 2007, p. 83; Radner 2010; Raaflaub, van Wees 2009, p. 353.
• 51 Iacovou 2007, p. 464.
• 52 Diodorus 20.21.2-3; Papantoniou 2013.

14As well as the island’s abundant productivity, including as a producer of copper, wine and oil in basket-handled and Kouriote amphoras, limestone and Black-on-Red pottery were exported throughout the Aegean. Cyprus was an important east-west hub and exporter, as mentioned above in the overview, and is particularly evident from the SNA in the Archaic period (fig. 4). Betweenness ranks a node relative to other nodes in the network, indicated by node size, based on the volume of trade passing through a region from imports and exports. From the Classical period, despite the increasing cultural connectivity with the Aegean, the islands’ ranking as a trading hub diminishes with the reduction in Phoenician activity in exporting westwards. As this is a comparative ranking with other network nodes, its reduced performance is also reflective of the growth in the powerful Aegean trading centres. When Athens expanded its political and economic control of networks of the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean, Cyprus sought to attach to these networks, evident in material culture, including coins and the depiction of Greek deities and heroes, architecture and the use of Greek names.49 The SNA reflects some economic evidence of these connections in Egyptian grain and copper links, which, as Amemiya suggests, expands Cypriot political geography in providing a vital grain hub to the Aegean and later further west to Rome.50 This is also reflected below in the widening of Cyprus’ commercial community moving towards the Aegean from the Classical Period (fig. 5). However, it does little for the island’s commercial centrality as a hub and is more a factor of the expansion of the Aegean and Black Sea trading zones with less comparative activity in the southeast Mediterrean. as well as Aegean trading activity, the geographically central nodes strengthened in this region provided stepping stones for traders like Rhodes, Delos, Chios and Lemnos. Cyprus is not helped by the island’s position on the geographic periphery of this network and perhaps its meteorological location downwind, requiring a sail against prevailing winds to reach the Aegean. As Iacovou observes, Cyprus became a colonial state under Ptolemy I in the Hellenistic period.51 Despite the creation of strong political ties with Alexandria with the appointment of strategia replacing the kingdoms,52 Cyprus appears to struggle for centrality, with the more central trading centres of Rhodes and Delos becoming the focus of Ptolemaic and Roman control, enabling access to a wider Mediterranean. This factor is reflected in all the Hellenistic centrality rankings (figs. 2-4).

• 53 Grant, forthcoming.
• 54 Counts, Iacovou 2013.

16The graphs above are derived from Aegean-wide and southern Mediterranean networks with 90 nodes and over 760 links, of which about 8% directly relate to Cyprus and with veracity reviewed by statistical methods and comparison with historical context.53 This pilot study illustrates that with the exception of grain and copper, Cypriot trade seems somewhat confined in the Cypro-Archaic period to the northern Aegean, eastern Mediterranean, the Levant, Asia Minor coastal areas and Egypt and extending into the central Aegean in the Cypro-Classical and Hellenistic periods. This may reflect what Counts and Iacovou describe as Iron Age “domination narratives” in that these regions exerted socio-political and cultural influences under the Neo-Assyrian empire, the Achaemenid empire and later under Ptolemy.54 In addition, as discussed above, a process of ‘Hellenisation’ evident in material culture and textual sources can be synchronised with limited evidence of trade with Attica of grain, metals and ceramics and reflected its extended community into the Aegean (fig. 5). Low betweenness centrality might easily be explained away as a factor of geography or navigation. However, what of the strong commercial centrality in the early Archaic period measured above by exports, imports and betweenness, already acting as an east-west hub and as a former metal exporter with wide Mediterranean reach? As well as the “domination narrative” and without the Phoenicians using Cyprus as a transit point and as a redistributor, geography may be a factor in proximity to economic growth in the central Aegean, northern Aegean and western Mediterranean, with more active nodes evolving like Athens, the Black Sea area, and Delos. Corinth, too, is seen to suffer the same fate since the Archaic period (fig. 4). Proximity to an ascendant power is seen to improve fortunes in the Hellenistic period if measured by exports and imports, but not necessarily in its centrality as a trading hub, with the Ptolemies relying on better geographically placed Rhodes and Delos. Although Cyprus is politically, economically and as a transit point connected to Alexandria, which necessitated the construction of a more direct and accessible harbour at Nea Paphos, the ranking strength of this hub is limited relative to other Aegean nodes and also not as strong as when it was an east-to-west hub for the Levant in the Cypro-Archaic period and earlier. The next step in this study is to recast the above commercial links into navigation routes to see if other locations currently not included or have low centrality were important navigation waypoints. This process may strengthen Cypriot commercial/navigation centrality or explain why the island struggles to attain centrality due to its geographic position and meteorological reasons.