Honor Frost Foundation Conference: Neolithic to Late Bronze Age Maritime Networks and Piracy

This session from the third day of the 2017 Honor Frost Foundation Conference on Mediterranean Maritime Archaeology, chaired by Timmy Gambin under the theme Connected by the Sea, brings together five papers on prehistoric and Bronze Age seafaring, exchange networks and piracy in the eastern Mediterranean.

Crystal El Safadi presents her doctoral research on the maritime world of the Early Bronze Age Levant. Using GIS modelling that incorporates wind and current speeds and directions alongside the performance of square-sailed vessels, she maps the Levantine Basin as a space deformed by sailing time rather than physical distance. Combining these time-space models with data from 168 coastal sites located within six hours' walk of the sea, she calculates least-cost maritime pathways between Egypt, the Levantine coast, Anatolia and Cyprus, arguing that favourable sailing times help explain why Egypt shifted its maritime trade from the southern Levant to Byblos.

Duncan Howitt-Marshall examines mariners, maritime connectivity and the social practice of sea travel in Early Neolithic Cyprus. Tracing seafaring back to the Late Epipalaeolithic site of Akrotiri-Aetokremnos and coastal foraging sites at Akamas-Aspros and Nissi Beach, he follows the introduction of mainland animals, crops and Cappadocian obsidian at Ayios Tychonas-Klimonas, Parekklisha-Shillourokambos and Akanthou-Arkosykos. He argues that transporting live cattle and procuring obsidian and deep-water fish required skilled wayfinders, large vessels perhaps using early sails, and specialist coastal communities.

Ezra Marcus, presenting joint work with Paula Waiman-Barak, discusses maritime connections in the Levant at the dawn of the Middle Bronze Age. Focusing on the 20th to 19th century BCE phases at Tel Ifshar on the central coastal plain of Israel, he presents petrographic analysis of imported Egyptian vessels, jars from the Akkar plain in northern Lebanon, large northern Levantine pithoi, and handleless cylindrical jars from the Syrian coast. He suggests that these bulky vessels point to direct intra-Levantine cabotage alongside Egyptian trunk routes.

Michele Massa reassesses third-millennium BC maritime exchange between the Aegean, coastal Anatolia, Cyprus and the Levant. Mapping the coastal spread of Near Eastern metrology, sealing practices, faience, ivory and stone vessels, he connects a mid-third-millennium surge in eastern goods, contemporary with the Cypriot Philia phase, to the adoption of the sail and the trade in Aegean, Anatolian and Cypriot metals.

A. Bernard Knapp closes the session by questioning recent scholarship on piracy in the Late Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean. Reviewing ship scenes on pottery from Bademgediği Tepe, Enkomi and Kynos, the Sea Peoples reliefs at Medinet Habu, proposed coastal strongholds such as Maa-Palaeokastro and Pyla-Kokkinokremos, and twenty-five cuneiform and Egyptian texts mentioning the Lukki, the Miši, the men of Arwad and the Šikila, he concludes that no Bronze Age term equates to pirate and that archaeological claims for a distinct culture of piracy remain unproven.