Watery Entanglements in the Cypriot Hinterland

Louise Steel
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Louise Steel: Faculty of Humanities and Performing Arts, University of Wales Trinity Saint David, Lampeter SA48 7ED, Ceredigion, Wales, UK

Land, 2018, vol. 7, issue 3, 1-16

Abstract: This paper examines how water shaped people’s interaction with the landscape in Cyprus during the Bronze Age. The theoretical approach is drawn from the new materialisms, effectively a ‘turn to matter’, which emphasises the very materiality of the world and challenges the privileged position of human agents over the rest of the environment. The paper specifically moves away from more traditional approaches to landscape archaeology, such as central place theory and more recently network theory, which serve to separate and distance people from the physical world they live in, and indeed are a part of; instead, it focuses on an approach that embeds humans, and the social/material worlds they create, as part of the environment, exploring human interactions within the landscape as assemblages, or entanglements of matter. It specifically emphasises the materiality and agency of water and how this shaped people’s engagement with, and movement through, their landscape. The aim is to encourage archaeologists to engage with the materiality of things, to better understand how people and other matter co-create the material (including social) world.

Keywords: Cyprus; Bronze Age; water; materiality; new materialisms; entanglements; assemblages; networks; central place theory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jlands:v:7:y:2018:i:3:p:104-:d:167835

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