I’ve spent the last few weeks working on revising the historical conclusion to the survey volume from the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project. This conclusions looks at our results from the survey in four different ways:
1. In terms of wider regional trends for each period.
2. In terms of the relationship between the local political and economic center, Kition/Larnaka, and our site.
3. In terms of the relationship between our site an island wide, regional, and trans-Mediterranean communication and trade networks.
4. In terms of the changing religious landscape of our area.
As readers of this blog know, our site preserved evidence for both an Iron Age and Hellenistic period sanctuary (here and here) as well as a Late Roman basilica style church. After the abandonment of the church in the 7th century and its eventual destruction sometime later, there is little evidence for settlement or religious activity at our site. This does not, however, mean that the site was not part of a religious landscape in the area.
In my effort to imagine the changing religious landscape of our study area, I offer the following from a fairly early draft of our conclusion:
The wider regions of eastern Larnaka bay preserves considerable evidence for a thriving Christian communities in the Medieval period. There is evidence that the basilica at Pyla-Koutsopetria underwent some late modifications, but these appear likely to have occurred prior to the abandonment of the site. The removal of Cyprus floor slabs and marble revetment from the floors and walls of the excavated annex room suggests that the religious status of the building did not preclude it from being quarried. It also indicates that the building likely stood for some time after its final abandonment. The various graffiti present in the annex room may date to a period after the building’s abandonment suggesting that some religious activity persisted in the area even after its abandonment. Morever, the quarrying of prestigious material from the church may have served to adorn another religious structure elsewhere in the region as occurred at the Episcopal church at Kourion.
In later time, the religious landscape of the region was likely closely tied to the economic landscape. There were extensive holding of the Orthodox Church and various Moslem religious institutions in the vicinity of Pyla village. While there is no evidence that the coastal lands fell under the control of either institution, they almost certainly influenced local land values, labor markets, and agricultural prices. As Given and Hadjianastasis have recently noted that rhythm of agricultural life would have been shaped by the church bells or the tsimandro or the call of the muezzin.
Finally, the early 20th century base maps for the cadastral survey of Cyprus note that the ruin of Ayia Panayia stood on the route of the coastal road in our study area. There is no evidence that this building was a church, and it is almost certain that this is the Venetian or Ottoman fortification described by Cesnola and remains overgrown and visible to this day. It is notable, however, that this building was identified at some point as a religious structure suggesting that in the local imagination – or perhaps merely that of the surveyor – this presence of almost any ruin in the countryside evoked the past religious life of the community.
