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Opportunistic Ports and Spaces of Exchange in Late Roman Cyprus

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Abstract

Ports served not only as interfaces between land and sea, but as central gathering spaces for economic and cultural exchange. Drawing on case studies from the eastern Mediterranean island of Cyprus, this paper situates opportunistic ports lacking built facilities within a broader socioeconomic context of diverse maritime communications, expanding rural settlement, and increased agricultural productivity during late antiquity. Though simple, these sites served as active agents in the development of new maritime networks as well as local markets throughout their hinterlands, adding flexibility and dynamism to the economic ties between city, countryside, and the wider late Roman world.

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Notes

  1. The terms “harbor” and “port” are often used interchangeably in discussion of maritime infrastructure. To avoid confusion here, the common convention is followed by which “harbor” refers to the protected, often partially or fully enclosed space used by vessels for shelter. By contrast, “port” here distinguishes a facility or location at which goods and people can pass between maritime and terrestrial contexts.

  2. See generally Frost 1972; Blackman 1982a, 1982b, 2008; Raban 1995; Blue 1997. Vitruvius 5.12 discusses the technology and engineering related to port construction.

  3. E.g. Rougé 1966; Houston 1988; Oleson and Hohlfelder 2011.

  4. See generally Lemonnier 1993; Pinch 1996; for Classical technology in particular, see Greene 2008.

  5. Rickman suggests 50–70 km as a reasonable maximum functional distance among ports across the Roman world, which corresponds well with the average distance of major port cities around the island during the Roman and late Roman periods. See Rickman 2008: 12.

  6. See generally McGrail 1981: 19–23.

  7. Thanks to F. and A. Garrod and P. Yiakoumi for information on this site. There are traces of a roadway between the cliff top and the nearby Sanctuary of Apollo, as well as a possible ancient passageway from the cliffs above down to the sea, though erosion has destroyed most of this. No evidence of activity was found recently in the waters nearby, though a few finds were reported years ago in the sand, and any artifacts here may have been covered by overburden from the eroding cliff face: see Leidwanger 2004: 19–20 and figs 4–5; Bullard 1987: 61 and figs 28–29; Leonard 2005: 566–568.

  8. Cf. the vast and diverse quantity of more recent historical finds that attest to exchange and a wide range of other social activities that centered on the jetty at Holdfast Bay, South Australia: see Rodrigues 2002.

  9. For the Roman period, see many of the sites included in the catalogs of Leonard 1995b, 2005: 321–634.

  10. Flemming (1978: 415) observes at Amathus a small rate of subsidence of around 0.13–0.3 m per millennium. If the same general pattern holds for the coastline further east, this would help to account in part for the submergence of onshore remains at Petrini.

  11. Along with the late Roman material recorded by this offshore survey were quantities of Late Bronze Age pottery suggesting another earlier use of this coastal area as an opportunistic port during the prehistoric period: see generally Manning et al. 2002: 159–160.

  12. See also the discussion in Rautman 2013: 198–199.

  13. Bekker-Nielsen (2004: 197) also posits a potential road branching off from the main coastal road and extending further up the Vasilikos Valley, although no traces remain that might prove this conjecture.

  14. This was likewise a busy period for the territory around Amathus itself: see Aupert 1996: 176–179.

  15. On the geomorphology of the Akrotiri peninsula and the chronology of its infill, see Stanley Price 1979: 8; Collombier 1987: 167–168; Leonard and Demesticha 2004: 189–191.

  16. Wessex Archaeology 2002: 9 nos. “WA17” and “WA31”; Sollars 2005: 72, 82; for the coastal circuit of roads along southern Cyprus, see Bekker-Nielsen 2004: 196–197 and map 25.

  17. Cf. Leidwanger 2004, 23–24. Further inspection and analysis of the material assemblages here suggests that this assemblage represents port-based activity: see Leidwanger 2009.

  18. As the inlets remain accessible from the beach to the north, these waters are used by some for swimming and fishing, particularly by spear fishermen.

  19. The area still farther south around Cape Zevgari is likewise rich in archaeological material, but artifacts are considerably less frequent in the intervening area, suggesting two distinct sites of activity: see Leidwanger 2004: 24–26.

  20. See reports from the 2007, 2008, and 2010 field seasons in the Bulletin de correspondance hellénique’s Chronique des fouilles en ligne: http://chronique.efa.gr/index.php/ (accessed 7/5/2013).

  21. Commercial transshipment has been suggested as a potentially important component in the economy of Dreamer’s Bay, which might indicate why such an extensive facility was chosen: Leonard and Demesticha 2004: 202.

  22. About 1 km inland from Akrotiri’s south coast, the sites of Pano Katalymata and Kato Katalymata were certainly also utilized during this Roman and late antique periods, and perhaps also earlier; see Wessex Archaeology 2002: 9 (“WA 12” and “WA 13”).

  23. Though typically associated with the Bronze Age, stone anchors continue to be used in the eastern Mediterranean alongside later and more sophisticated types: see generally Kingsley 1996.

  24. On the later history of the area, see Swiny 1982:161; Leonard 2005: 570–571.

  25. Direct connections between the nearby mainland and Cyprus are well-attested in the early Roman era as well: see Kaldeli 2009, 2013; Autret and Marangou 2011; Autret 2012; Leidwanger 2013.

  26. See also Heinzelmann 2010 and Scheidel’s recent ORBIS project: http://orbis.stanford.edu/ (accessed 7/5/2013).

  27. A partially submerged column at another simple anchorage off the west coast of Cyprus as Dhrousha-Kioni may have served such a purpose: see Leonard 1995a: 133, 137 fig. 4, 138 fig. 6, and 139.

  28. McGrail 1981 and Houston 1988 provide substantial evidence for beaching of vessels up to more recent times.

  29. Houston 1988: 561 fig. 2.

  30. Van Nijf (2008: 291–292) discusses merchants avoiding customs duties in the province of Asia; with Cottier et al. 2008. Holleran (2012: 89–90) mentions selling outside the city of Rome to avoid taxes. How port duties were administered in Roman Cyprus remains unclear. Leonard raises the possibility that farmers in more recent times may have avoided major ports for tax reasons: see Leonard 2005: 745–746, 953–954.

  31. At Petrini, as indicated above, and perhaps also at Avdimou Bay: Leonard 2005: 570.

  32. E.g. on the island of Amrum: Segschneider 2002.

  33. See also the variety of simple coastal sites in Ulriksen 1994; Ludowici et al. 2010.

  34. See also generally van Dommelen 1993.

  35. E.g. Koder 1986. For Cyprus, see the model of interaction between Cyprus’ capital of Paphos and its hinterland developed in Rupp 1997. See also the discussion of rural–urban interaction in Papacostas 2001: 116.

  36. For the range of interaction, commercial and otherwise, discussed in particular by the rabbinic and literary sources regarding Roman fairs and markets in Palestine, see generally Rosenfeld and Menirav 2005.

  37. Salamis: Flemming 1974; Davies 2012; Paphos: Leonard and Hohlfelder 1993; Hohlfelder 1995; Amathus: Empereur 1995; for Cyprus’ network of ports in the Classical era, see generally Theodoulou 2012.

  38. This was by many measures one of the most prosperous periods of antiquity for the island: see generally Papageorghiou 1993; Rautman 2000, 2003: 247–258; Papacostas 2001; Metcalf 2009: 337–378.

  39. Such network thinking is increasingly prevalent in recent studies of maritime connectivity in late antiquity and beyond: e.g. McCormick 2001; Arnaud 2005; Knappett 2011; Malkin 2011.

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Acknowledgments

The ideas presented here have benefited from discussions over the past few years with a number of audiences and individuals to whom gratitude is owed, especially Elizabeth S. Greene, C. Brian Rose, Thomas Tartaron, Mark Lawall, and Caroline Autret. The volume’s guest editor and anonymous referees provided keen insights and a wealth of helpful suggestions for this paper and beyond. The sites of Avdimou Bay and West Akrotiri were investigated as part of the Episkopi Bay Survey (2003–2006) by kind permission of the Department of Antiquities and its then directors, Sophocles Hadjisavvas and Pavlos Flourentzos. Funding and logistical support for these survey seasons were provided by the Institute of Nautical Archaeology, Texas A&M University, RPM Nautical Foundation, Thetis Foundation, and the University of Pennsylvania. Sincere thanks are due to the members of the survey team, including Troy Nowak and Joshua Daniel whose drawings of pottery from West Akrotiri and anchors from Avdimou Bay appear here.

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    Justin Leidwanger

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Leidwanger, J. Opportunistic Ports and Spaces of Exchange in Late Roman Cyprus. J Mari Arch 8, 221–243 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11457-013-9118-0

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