The Dynamics of Stability: Examining Cultural Continuity and Insularity in Neolithic Cyprus

该项目的目的是重新审查公元前6千年至公元前4000年塞浦路斯的考古证据，以期重新评估新石器时代后期塞浦路斯是一个岛国环境的普遍观念。这项研究产生了一本题为《在西南亚边缘：公元前6千年至4千年的塞浦路斯》的专著。这本书紧跟着项目的最初目标，但在调查数据和制定新方法方面使用了比最初提案中所述的更复杂的模型。除了将技术实践作为记录文化变化的一种方式进行考察外，该书还借鉴了生态学和进化生物学的最新理论，并使这些理论适应一般的文化变化。基于人工制品的研究和详细的气候和环境审查相结合，对这一时期的研究比最初提议的要复杂得多。书中得出的主要结论是，如果推动大陆文化变革的所有压力都得到放松，结果将是一个稳定的狩猎-采集经济，有点耕作和放牧：这似乎就是塞浦路斯的情况。这项研究成功地说明，随着大陆黎凡特人口的被迫增加，塞浦路斯社会能够在更长的时间内保持稳定的狩猎-农民经济。尽管我们传统上认为这是与世隔绝和孤立的，但塞浦路斯的条件更有可能有利于新石器时代早期生活方式的延续。事实上，书中提出的技术研究结果表明，在整个新石器时代，塞浦路斯与大陆保持着低水平的联系。

The aim of the project was to re-examine archaeological evidence from the 6th to 4th millennia BC in Cyprus, with a view to re-assessing the widely-held notion that it was an insular island environment during the later Neolithic period. A monograph entitled "On the Margins of Southwest Asia: Cyprus in the 6th to 4th Millennia BC" resulted from this study. The book sticks closely to the original aims of the project but more sophisticated models were used in the investigation of the data and in framing new approaches than had been stated in the original proposal. In addition to examining technological practice as a way of documenting cultural change, the book draws upon recent theories in ecological and evolutionary biology and adapts these to cultural change in general. The combination of artefact based research and a detailed climatic and environmental review has contributed to a much more sophisticated study of the period than was originally proposed. The principal conclusion reached in the book is that if all of the pressures that drove cultural change on the mainland were relaxed the result would be a stable hunter-gatherer economy with a bit of farming and herding: exactly what appears to be the case on Cyprus.This study has successfully illustrated that as mainland Levantine populations were forced to intensify, Cypriot society was able to maintain a stable hunter-farmer economy for much longer. Although traditionally we have viewed this in negative terms as insularity and isolation, it is much more likely that conditions on Cyprus favoured the continuation of early Neolithic lifestyles. Indeed, results of the technological studies presented in the book indicate that Cyprus maintained low-level contact with the mainland throughout the entire Neolithic period.