Environment, Landscape and Society: Diachronic Perspectives on Settlement Patterns in Cyprus
Description: workshop and publication on diachronic landscape analyses in the eastern Mediterranean, organized by the Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute (CAARI) and the Cyprus Institute.
Date: 17-19 February 2017, to be held at CAARI in Nicosia, Cyprus
How did people choose where to live? What environmental, social and economic factors went into the decisions to build a settlement, and why were settlements abandoned? The aim of this workshop is to investigate the changing patterns of human interaction with their physical environment from prehistory into historic periods (into the medieval period). It seeks to clarify the ways in which societies balanced landscape, natural resources, and the needs of social groups, and the impact these relationships had in shaping and reshaping settlement location and layout, economic development, ritual patterns, and was a key factor in establishing territoriality. We invite diachronic approaches to establish how and why communities chose to live in certain places and engage in certain economies at any given time. We aim to compare a range of settlements in their environmental and landscape (and seascape) contexts from Cyprus, test hypotheses about how and why humans chose to settle in particular places and demonstrate how this affected social change. The organizers are especially interested in studies that show explicit relationships between settlement patterns, uses of the landscape and environmental factors.
The diachronic nature of this conference means that papers will be accepted from a wide range of periods, from early prehistory to the medieval period, and we are particularly interested in a broad representation of disciplines.
A 300-word abstract should be sent to:
director@caari.org.cy and evimargaritis@gmail.com
before 1 October 2016 for consideration by the Steering Committee. Abstracts submitted after the deadline may be accepted or rejected at the discretion of the Committee.
Abstracts should include:
- the name and full contact details and affiliation of the contributor
- the title of the proposed paper
- what the proposed paper intends to cover
- an outline of the approach
Individual presentations will be limited to 20 minutes with additional time for questions.
We expect that some travel funding will be available to qualified participants and it is anticipated that the proceedings of this workshop will be published as part of the CAARI Monograph Series.
