40 A. Bernard Knapp
and social practices, Yasur-Landau (2010: 227–81, 2011) expands the argument,
focusing on cooking and storage wares, textile production, and the organization of
domestic space.
All these efforts to establish the material markers of “Philistine” identity in sites of the
Early Iron Age southern Levant are compelling, even if efforts to pinpoint that group’s
origin remain equivocal, a point made forcefully and convincingly by Maeir et al. (2013).
Many of these materials—cooking and drinking utensils, foodstuffs, household features
(loomweights), and forms (hearth-centered)—or their associated technologies represent
some of the criteria noted earlier as prerequisites for identifying an ethnic group in the
material record (e.g., distinguishing material culture complexes and their boundaries;
isolating goods and materials associated specifically with a group’s ethnicity rather than
its political or economic circumstances). Quite why this “Philistine” phenomenon has
to be seen as a large-scale migration (e.g., Stager 1995; Barako 2003; Yasur-Landau
2011: 252–3), however, is never made fully clear. On this point, moreover, the argu-
ment for a “Philistine” migration to the southern Levant becomes aligned with argu-
ments made for the much more contentious “Aegean” migration to Cyprus (see also
Hitchcock 2011).
In general, attempts to link either specific historical episodes or grand narratives to the
archaeological record of Cyprus have been subject to much debate. Muhly (1984: 49),
for example, insisted long ago that “...it is no longer possible...to find support for
any theory that attempts to identify Philistines or any other group of the Sea Peoples in
the archaeological record as known from Cyprus at the end of the Late Bronze Age.”
Muhly’s reaction was directed against those who argued that the commonalities between
Cypriot and Philistine pottery point to a single origin for “Aegean” settlers in Cyprus
and in the southern Levant.
The so-called “Aegean colonization” was certainly not a case of colonization, and
variations in all the relevant material culture involved indicate that it was not solely
Aegean in origin or derivation (Voskos and Knapp 2008). The material basis for argu-
ments surrounding an Aegean colonization of Cyprus has always been centered upon
the Mycenaean pottery found in Cyprus: its origins, growth, and development, and the
transition to local forms of production during the twelfth centuryBC(summarized in
Steel 2004). There is a long-standing tension between Cypriot (and many other Mediter-
ranean) archaeologists who see pottery as evidence for trade, and those who regard it as
an ethnic or cultural marker of large-scale migrations or small-scale movements of indi-
vidual potters, merchants, or refugees (Sherratt 1999: 164–8). Generally speaking, the
former viewpoint (pottery as trade) tends to hold sway today, but the latter (pottery as
people) still prevails in cases where the local production of previously imported wares can
be demonstrated: this is precisely the situation for Aegean-style pottery found in Cyprus
and the Levant during the late twelfth–thirteenth centuriesBC.
It has also been argued that Aegean colonists introduced other types of material goods
to Cyprus during the twelfth centuryBC. For example, Karageorghis (2001, 2002:
71–113) maintains that the use of a Mycenaean-type central hearth at Cypriot sites
such as Enkomi, Alassa, Maa, and Hala Sultan Tekke is only explicable if Mycenaean
colonists had settled the island. He has also suggested an Aegean origin or influence