ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the changes in the scale of the Cypriot economy in the transition from Late Antiquity to the early Middle Ages. Ceramics have been effectively used to argue convincingly that Cyprus was at the heart of the Late Antique system of economic exchange, as the literary sources of the period repeatedly praise the local abundance of wheat, wine, and oil. As Cyprus took advantage of its proximity to Egypt, it becomes clear that the fecundity of the island and its strategic position also prompted sound economic ties with other areas of the eastern Mediterranean that historiography has too often regarded as impermeable or even hostile, like Syria and Palestine. The usual conclusion being that the Cypriot economy was in disarray as a result of the Arab invasion and the collapse of the fiscally oriented exchange system in the eastern Mediterranean.
