Mediterranean Archaeology and Ethnicity 39(Emberling 1997: 313). And we certainly cannot assume that differences in various
types of material culture, or the “boundaries” of their distribution, mark out distinctive
ethnolinguistic groups (Terrell 2010). From the earliest stages of the Neolithic onward,
the passage of people and things throughout the Mediterranean is well documented and
richly represented in its materiality. Yet, as this volume clearly demonstrates, ethnicities
in the ancient Mediterranean remain a source of contention, despite several admirable
works already published (e.g., Hall 1997, 2002; Malkin 1998, 2001; Forbes 2008;
Yasur-Landau 2010).
Any study of ethnicity (or identity) in the Mediterranean should take into account on
some level the mobility of different kinds of peoples—migrants and colonists; armies
and conquerors; pilgrims, raiders, and traders—and how these movements may or may
not be related to an “ethnic” identity. One pertinent case to consider is the “Aegean
colonization” of Cyprus, which forms one part of a flurry of “migrations” that took
place in the twelfth–eleventh centuriesBC: “Aramaeans” in the Levant, “neo-Hittites”
in northern Syria, and “Philistines” and “Israelites” in the southern Levant. All these
followed in the wake of a breakdown in the strongly centralized economies of the
Late Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean, and the attendant collapse of several towns,
city-states, and kingdoms (summarized in Knapp 2009). In the coastal or near-coastal
sites of the southern Levant, alongside indigenous “Canaanite” traditions, new and quite
distinctive material assemblages are widely seen, as least by Israeli scholars, as marking
the arrival and settlement of the “Philistines” (e.g., Bunimovitz 1998; Ben-Shlomo
et al. 2008: 226–7; Yasur-Landau 2010), and perhaps other groups of Sea Peoples
farther north (e.g.,Šikilaat Dor,Sherdenat Akko—Gilboa 2005: 48–52; Yasur-Landau
2010: 170–1).
Several scholars have argued that similarities between Cypriot and Philistine pottery
point to the common origin of “Aegean” settlers in Cyprus and in the southern Levant
(e.g., Dothan 1983; Mazar 1985; Stager 1995; Bunimovitz and Yasur-Landau 1996;
Bunimovitz 1998). Others present variations on this theme: Killebrew (2006–07), for
example, suggests that the “Philistine” migration originated in Cyprus or in regions sur-
rounding it (i.e., Cilicia). Sherratt (1998: 301–7), a prominent critic of the “Philistines”
as an ethnic phenomenon, argues that Late Helladic IIIC:1b pottery (termed “Philistine”
in Israel) was produced and distributed in the eastern Mediterranean by a loosely based
confederation of maritime merchants based in or near Cyprus. In her view, the ear-
liest Philistine pottery in Israel should be regarded as “...a functionally determined
selection of the Cypriote White Painted Wheelmade III repertoire” (Sherratt 2003: 45,
1998: 298).
Barako (2000, 2003; also Killebrew 2006–07) disagreed with Sherratt, arguing that
it is not only the Philistine pottery (i.e., the Late Helladic IIIC:1b or derivative wares)
that points to the arrival of a new ethnic group in the southern Levant by sea, whether
from the Aegean or perhaps via Cyprus. Barako lists other material goods and practices
entirely foreign to local (“Canaanite”) cultural traditions: Aegean-style loomweights,
figurines, cooking pots, pebbled hearths and hearth rooms, incised scapulae, and the
high percentage of pigs in faunal assemblages (see also Faust and Lev-Tov 2011:
14–16). The scapulae and seated Ashdoda figurines he cites are most likely Cypriot,
not Aegean products (Sherratt 1998: 302, n.17; Russell 2009). Based on both material