Late Chalcolitic Period (circa. 2,800-2,500 B.C.)
Consideration of the final period of Chalcolitic Cyprus is inevitably
bound up with one of the most controversial aspects of Cypriot prehistory:
the nature of the remarkable changes that took place in the transition to
the Early Bronze Age.
After the transition, we are confronted by radically
new settlement patterns and architecture, new burial customs, pottery
styles, metalwork, and spindle whorls: in other words, virtually a
completely new material culture and clear evidence for an altered economy
and a new religious expression.
In order to understand how these changes
came about, we need an accurate and detailed knowledge of pottery styles
and other classes of material evidence leading up to and including this
original transition.
Because there is no fixed chronological framework for
the many relevant assemblages, such knowledge is precisely what has become
lacking. Therefore, it is necessary to identify as far as possible the
nature of Late Chalcolitic sites and their relationships to each other.
