Biocultural aspects of culture contact, exchange, and population movements on Cyprus

Osterholtz examines Bronze Age population movement on Cyprus through two models, colonization and migration/integration, and tests them against skeletal evidence from six assemblages spanning the PreBA and ProBA. Colonization is associated with imposed social change and declining health among local populations, while in migration and integration repeated contact and exchange create new social ties and identities. She argues that long-standing trade connections could have eased newcomers' integration on Cyprus, and sets out the competing colonization and continuity or hybridization explanations for population change in both periods.

The case study uses skeletal assemblages from Sotira Kaminoudhia and the Kalavasos Village Tombs for the PreBA, and from Episkopi Phaneromeni, Kalavasos Mangia, Kalavasos Ayios Dhimitrios and Hala Sultan Tekke for the ProBA. The assemblages are generally commingled and fragmentary, and Osterholtz records age, sex, dental and skeletal stress, trauma, musculoskeletal markers and mortuary context. She follows Knapp's chronology, PreBA c. 2400–1700 BC and ProBA c. 1700–1100 BC, with subdivisions PreBA I and II and ProBA I, II and III (pp. 228–229).

Results cover trauma patterns, childhood stress indicators, dental wear and changes in burial practice. Later assemblages show more linear enamel hypoplasia, while general stress indicators stay consistent across periods. Early single interments gave way to multiple burials, and ProBA II tombs were intramural and sometimes associated with administrative structures (pp. 229–231).