ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an overview of Cypriot rural settlements and urban centres and the changes they faced in the transitional period. Adopting a more wholistic approach is urgent, considering the chronic lack of well-published surveys and the need for an all-encompassing scansion of historical change in rural and urban societies in the passage from Late Antiquity to the early Middle Ages. If levels of habitation and economic activity in rural settlements remained substantial, this also fed into the presence of local urban markets for agrarian and non-agrarian production – in other words, the city-countryside production, demand, and distribution circuits we have repeatedly referred to. It is quite unusual to be able to trace the post-conquest official dialogue between eastern Mediterranean Christian communities in urban centres and rural areas such as Khlorakas.
