Mediterranean Archaeology and Ethnicity 41for several other aspects of material culture seen in twelfth-century-BCsites in Cyprus:
architecture (cyclopean walls, the “dog-leg” gate, ashlar masonry), coroplastic art,
metallurgy (weaponry, fibulae), clay loomweights and torches, and household items
(clay or limestone “bathtubs”). As argued at length elsewhere (Knapp 2008: 249–264;
Voskos and Knapp 2008), most of the objects, features, technologies, or styles in ques-
tion have very complex biographies. They reveal a fusion, or better, the hybridization
of Cypriot, Aegean, and Levantine elements, and cannot be linked exclusively to the
Aegean world (similarly Catling 1980: 23). Moreover, the failure to consider such
goods and materials over the longer term undermines arguments based solely on “style”
(Leriou 2011: 252–3). By 1200BC, people from Cyprus and the Aegean had been in
contact for at least half a millennium, so we might indeed expect to see diverse types of
“Aegean” material culture appearing on the island, whether or not these involved some
migrant groups.
At the end of the Bronze Age and into the Early Iron Age in Cyprus, there is a range
of material evidence that might signal the presence of both “Phoenician” and “Aegean”
peoples (fuller discussion in Knapp 2008: 264–90). Moreover, it is clear that, by the
Cypro-Archaic period (ca. 750–475BC), Cyprus had become a largely Greek-speaking
island (Reyes 1994: 11–13; Iacovou 2005: 127). “History” thus informs us that this
fundamental change took place, but it does not tell us how or when it happened. As
Palaima (2005: 15) put it more broadly, “...how long did it take the people we now
call the Greeks in all the areas we now call Greece to acknowledge Hellen as a common
mythical ancestor, and what cultural phenomena and forces brought this about?” The key
question for Cyprus is whether Greek-speaking people (“Aegean” colonists or migrants)
were present during the twelfth–eleventh centuriesBC, and if so to what extent they were
instrumental in the material and social changes of that time.
Those who have argued for a specifically “Greek” migration to or colonization of
Cyprus during the Early Iron Age point to a single object to anchor their views: an
obelos(barbeque “spit”) found in Tomb 49 from theSkalescemetery at Palaipaphos
(Karageorghis 1983: 59–76, 2002: 125–7, Figure 263; Iacovou 1999a: 11–12). This
object was inscribed with the earliest attested Greek personal name in Cyprus,Opheltas
(see, most recently, Palaima 2005: 38). Some would maintain on the basis of this
object that Greek-speaking people were not just present but politically and socially
pre-eminent in Cyprus during the Early Iron Age (Snodgrass 1988: 12). In contrast,
Sherratt (2003: 226) feels that theobelosis thoroughly Cypriot in type and design,
and thus thatOpheltasmust have been “...a member of a Greek-speaking community
whose culture generally is indistinguishable from that of other contemporary Cypriots,
who is using a peculiarly Cypriot form of writing in a thoroughly Cypriot, or rather
non-Greek manner.”
Equally important for the present discussion is Iacovou’s (2006: 324) observation:
The introduction of a new language was not accompanied by a clearly visible Mycenaean–
Greek migrant package. In fact, were it not for the Greek language, the material record left
on its own could not defend the migration of Greek speakers to Cyprus at the end of the
second millenniumBC.