ABSTRACT
Bronze Age Kissonerga-Skalia, located in western Cyprus, was a long-lived settlement occupied from ca. 2500 to 1600 BCE. At the threshold of the Late Cypriot Bronze Age, earlier domestic structures were levelled and built over with a complex that included monumental walls, large open spaces and industrial-scale facilities, including pyrotechnical installations. During the construction and use of this complex, there are indications that apotropaic strategies, in the form of deposition of unusual sets of materials and artefacts, may have been employed to ensure the success of the building project. This paper explores whether, alongside the increase in scale and diversity of structures that occurred across Cyprus at this time, there may have been new ritual practices introduced. These may have arisen as a result of interactions with peoples from the wider eastern Mediterranean as seaborne trade networks expanded or as a local response engendered by increasingly complex social relations.
