Models of Local Exchange in Late Bronze Age Cyprus

Abstract

During the Late Bronze Age in Cyprus, town centers and smaller sites with specialized productive and political-religious functions arose in the context of intensified copper exploitation and increasing long distance trade. This article explores the problem of how those sites were integrated in terms of settlement hierarchies and local exchange networks. Models of islandwide political hierarchy and market-based exchange are problematic. Alternative models of regional polities organized along the lines of wealth and staple finance (cf., D'Altroy and Earle 1985) are proposed, and the test implications by which those constructs may be evaluated in future archaeological research are specified.