The Kingdom of Alashiya and the Bronze Age Collapse

In this interview with Nick Barksdale for the Study of Antiquity and the Middle Ages channel, Louise Hitchcock discusses Alashiya and Cyprus during the Late Bronze Age and the 12th-century collapse. She begins with whether Alashiya designated the 15th-century city of Enkomi or the whole island, where monumental administrative buildings appeared at several centres by the 13th century.

After outlining early Levantine settlement and Anatolian arrivals around 2500 BCE, Hitchcock turns to Aegean connections. Arguing against a 13th-century Mycenaean colonization because Mycenaean kraters on Cyprus were imported from the Argolid, she proposes that after the fall of Minoan Crete and Knossos, Cypriots adopted Aegean prestige features such as the Cypro-Minoan script, pithos halls, ashlar masonry and horns of consecration to promote their copper and pottery trade.

On religion, she discusses Aphrodite's black stone at Palaepaphos (Kouklia), the five temples linked to metallurgy at Kition, the horned altar at Myrtou-Pigadhes, and the Horned God and Ingot God at Enkomi, citing George Papasavvas on the later addition of the Ingot God's beard and ingot base. She then examines Akkadian diplomatic letters from Tell el-Amarna and Ugarit, noting Yuval Goren's petrographic match of three Amarna tablets from Alashiya to clay near Alassa.

The final part covers the 12th-century collapse and the Sea Peoples: destructions at Maroni, Kalavasos and Alassa, continuity at Kition, Kouklia and Hala Sultan Tekke, new settlements at Pyla-Kokkinokremos and Maa-Palaeokastro (which Hitchcock and Aren Maeir interpret as a pirate settlement rather than the colony argued by Vassos Karageorghis), and 11th-century Cypriot ingots and tripod stands in Sardinia, possibly tied to Cornish tin.