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Abstract

This thesis assesses the Late Cypriot IIC/IIIA (ca. 1200-1125/1100 BCE) expansion at Kition Kathari in order to better understand the Late Cypriot built environment. Specifically, I assess the use of monumental features such as ashlar masonry and stone anchors in the spatial organization of the city’s LC IIIA new temple quarter. Using space syntax (Hillier and Hansson 1984) and Fisher’s (2009a) “integrative approach”, a correlation appears between monumentality and spatial control. On one hand, I determine that ashlar masonry was used in spaces that were neither the least syntactically accessible nor the most syntactically accessible at the site. In other words, ashlar was deliberately used in spaces where it would be witnessed by a selected audience. On the other hand, I argue that large stone anchors were placed in thresholds and entryways as a means regulating spatial boundaries. These anchors served to facilitate “transpatial solidarity” (Hiller and Hanson 1984) and signal users that they were entering into ritual and cult spaces. In all, stone features at Kition Kathari materialized spatial, as well as social, order, and expressed elite control in the bourgeoning harbor city. More broadly, this thesis argues that Kition Kathari demonstrates consistency with contemporary monumental LC ritual architecture based off of Webb’s (1999, 2014) typology—so much so that we may conclude these spaces indeed facilitated cultic activity, as the site’s excavators understood (Karageorghis and Demas 1985; cf. Smith 2009). However, enough consistency is evidenced to argue the site was not the result of Mycenean colonization as Karageorghis and Demas (1985) originally reported, but instead was likely built by and intended for an audience familiar with LC ritual architecture.