ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts covered in this book. The book discusses the inability of traditional approaches to explain the developing trajectories of an eastern Mediterranean island too often regarded as a marginal limbo dangerously teetering on the brink of two empires at loggerheads. It provides a different perspective on the history of Cyprus in the transition from Late Antiquity to the early Middle Ages. The book presents arguments of social continuity, economic resilience, and urban and rural developments as a counter to the traditional notion of economic decline and social demise stemming from the catastrophic Arab raids and matched by the localization of the eastern Mediterranean exchange system. In particular Cyprus was in a position to intercept the trickle of regional wealth that reached the Mediterranean from Egypt, Syria, and Palestine, while at the same time remaining part of the economic dynamics of the Byzantine hinterland and at the end of the west–east trunk route.
