The origins of Early Iron Age polity in south-east Cyprus have traditionally been attributed to the formal imposition of Phoenician dominion over Kition in 707 BC. It is proposed that this paradigm fails adequately to acknowledge local agency in the preceding development of relations with Canaan and the Nile Delta from c.1650 BC onwards. Longue durée trends in settlement and societal development suggest that Late Bronze Age communities became pre-adapted to incorporation into wider Levantine spheres of interaction through participation in 'orientalizing' exchange. An emphasis is placed upon the significance of bulk commodity industry as a catalyst for social innovation, including the adoption of urbanism, concurrent with secondary state formation. Three case studies examine the development of regional settlement landscapes within the environs of Ayios Sozomenos, Pyla, and Hala Sultan Tekke. Discussion chiefly incorporates the results of new fieldwork conducted by the author [2007-2009] at the site of Pyla-Kokkinokremos. This involved pedestrian, geophysical and remote sensing survey combined with trial excavation. Several previously unknown archaeological features were identified, providing significant new information concerning the character and intramural composition of this important maritime centre. These findings complement those of previous missions, and reflect an established community rooted in its surroundings. A dominant trend of continuity in settlement and societal development, most clearly apparent through successive episodes of synoecism, is proposed for south-east Cyprus as a whole across the Bronze-to-Iron Age transition. Changes in occupation throughout the eastern Mediterranean at this time have conventionally been attributed to successive waves of migration and colonisation. This thesis constitutes an attempt at a pre-colonial narrative for Phoenician Cyprus, and by extension a conceptual framework to structure investigation of Levantine diaspora communities elsewhere in the Mediterranean.

This thesis takes the position that it is not clear that the aspirations and assumptions expressed by theories of international relations predicated on the narrative about the emergence of mature sovereign nation states acting within a system of such states offers a particularly helpful guide to political practices concerning boundaries and borders that are identified on the ground. This is especially the case if we pay attention to the specific practices of bordering in Cyprus. Through a reading of various sites of limitation and excess of Cypriot sovereignty – in relation to the Byzantine and Ottoman empires, the modern system involving Greece, Turkey and the United Kingdom, the United Nations and the European Union, ongoing complexities such as British Sovereign Base Areas (SBAs) and the ethnically mixed village of Pyla/Pile – this thesis investigates the consequences and considers the implications, both theoretical and actual, that arise in Cyprus.