Ammerman_New Light on Aetokremnos

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New light on Aetokremnos

Albert J. Ammerman and Jay Stratton Noller

Abstract

The note reconsiders the environmental setting of Aetokremnos, the controversial site of pre-

Neolithic age on the island of Cyprus. Some 12,000 years ago when the sea level was lower, the site

was not situated right on the coast in an island-like context as its excavators have claimed. Instead, it

was located near the top of a tall cliff at the back of a wide coastal plain. At the time there were, inaddition, actively forming dune fields just in front of the site. The discussion draws attention to three

ambiguities in the previous interpretation of Aetokremnos and proposes that a new series of

radiocarbon dates should be run on samples of bone in order to clarify the situation at the site.

Keywords

Aetokremnos; Cyprus; Mediterranean; Neolithic transition; coastal archaeology.

The aim of this note is to present several new observations on the environmental context

of Aetokremnos, the much-debated early site on the south coast of Cyprus. It will be of

interest to get the response of the sites excavator as well as that of others to our

suggestions. The collapsed rock shelter (called Vulture Cliff in English) is still the only

well-documented site in the literature that goes back to the time before the Neolithic on

the island (Simmons 1999). On the other hand, the site has been the source of considerable

controversy over the years (e.g. Bunimovitz and Barkai 1996; Reese 1996; Binford 2000;

Grayson 2000). The debate concerns both the nature of the archaeological deposit and the

much wider question of the extinction of Phanourios minutus, a local form of pygmy

hippopotamus, on the island. During the spring of 2004, we had the chance to make two

visits to the site Aetokremnos is a hard place to reach since there is limited access to the

military base where it is located. Our purpose in visiting the site was to gain a better

knowledge of its environmental setting. We did not have preconceived ideas about what

we expected to find there. If anything, out of respect for local knowledge, we tended to

accept the more favorable interpretations of the site put forward by the specialists in

Cypriot prehistory who contributed to the recent volume edited by Swiny (2001). What we

World Archaeology Vol. 37(4): 533543 Debates in World Archaeology

2005 Taylor & Francis ISSN 0043-8243 print/1470-1375 online

DOI: 10.1080/00438240500404359


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observed at Aetokremnos was rather different from the picture of the site given in the

literature: hence this brief note.

By way of introduction, both of us spent the academic year of 20034 doing research on

Cyprus as Fulbright senior scholars. Ammerman had the task of trying to use his experience

in doing archaeological surveys elsewhere in the Mediterranean (Italy, Greece and Tunisia) to

find new pre-Neolithic sites on the island. Previously, such early sites have proved to be quite

elusive. Noller, a soil scientist and geologist who has also worked on many archaeological

projects, undertook a new cycle of fieldwork on the mapping of soils and hydrological

resources on Cyprus. Since both of us had an interest in environmental archaeology, we

decided to join forces in taking a new look at Aetokremnos. Several new observations on

the shortage of headroom inside the shelter, on the position of the site on the landscape at the

end of the Pleistocene (when the sea level was lower) and on the occurrence of a dune ramp

that once ran up the sites steep south slope will be discussed below.

In turn, the new observations now meant that we had to re-read with greater care the

reports on the site in the literature (Held 1989, 1992a and b; Simmons and Wigand 1994;

Mandel and Simmons 1997; Reese 2001; Simmons 1999, 2001, 2002). This led to the

realization that there are several fundamental ambiguities in what the excavators have tosay about Aetokremnos. We shall consider three of them in the second half of this note.

One concerns the question of whether or not the shelter was ever a place that witnessed

human occupation. Both Held and Simmons commonly view Aetokremnos as a site that

was occupied (that is, a place where people lived on a regular basis). However, at other

times, they interpret the rock shelter as a place where special activities were carried out.

The second ambivalence involves the issue of the lower sea level some 12,000 years ago and

whether or not the site had an island-like setting. The hippo swimming on the cover of

Faunal Extinction in an Island Society(Simmons 1999) exemplifies the notion that the area

near the site was once an island-like place separated by water from the rest of Cyprus. The

third ambiguity has to do with the quality of the radiocarbon dates that are available forthe site. Specifically, there seem to be serious limitations when it comes to the ages

determined for samples of bone (Simmons and Wigand 1994: 24951; Simmons 1999:

2005). This stands in contrast with the more general claim regularly made by Simmons

and co-workers that the age of their site is well established. For the question of the

extinction of the pygmy hippos on Cyprus, what really count, of course, are the bone

dates. In the heat of the debate over the site, there is a tendency to get carried away in

partisanship and special pleading. The reader is put in the awkward position of being

asked to takes sides: either to agree fully with what the excavators have to say or else to

dismiss the site entirely as its critics have done. It may be more productive to take a more

nuanced approach to the interpretation of Aetokremnos.

In the last ten years, there has been a growing awareness of the importance of Cyprus

for the study of the Neolithic transition (e.g. Guilaine 2003a; Peltenburg 2004a). We now

know that the aceramic Neolithic began much earlier on the island around 8,200 cal. BC

on the basis of radiocarbon dates from the sites of Shillourokambos, Mylouthkia,

Kalavasos-Tenta and Akanthou than was previously thought. At these settlements, even

in their earliest phases, one finds the package of cultivated plants (wheat and barley) and

herded animals (sheep, cattle and pigs) associated with the new subsistence economy.

There are, by the way, no hippo bones recovered at these aceramic Neolithic sites, which

534 Albert J. Ammerman and Jay Stratton Noller


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means, in all likelihood, that the extinction ofPhanourios minutushad already taken place

before the start of the Holocene. In addition, the lithic technology found at the sites is

closely related to that seen at early pre-pottery Neolithic B settlements on the mainland

(e.g. McCartney 2004). Moreover, obsidian, a volcanic glass used for the production of

stone tools, has made its way to these sites from sources in Cappadocia, implying regular

contact and exchange between the mainland and Cyprus. All of this has led Jean Guilaine

(2003a, 2003b) and Edgar Peltenburg (2004a; see also Peltenburg et al. 2000, 2001) to

argue that the island was colonized by groups of farmers and herders from the mainland at

an early date. Indeed, the precocious appearance of the aceramic Neolithic on Cyprus, as

Ofer Bar-Yosef (2001) has recently pointed out, raises important new questions for those

studying the origins of agriculture in the Middle East (see also the dialogue in response to

Peltenburg 2004b).

One of the critical questions now becomes what was happening on Cyprus in the time

before the Neolithic? Were there only seasonal visits by hunter-gatherers who came over in

boats from the nearby coasts of Syria and Anatolia for a few weeks or days at a time? Or

were there some foragers who had already chosen to put down roots on Cyprus and live

there on a more permanent basis? How far back in the Ice Age can we trace the earliestevidence for hunting and gathering on the island? The more reliable C-14 dates from

Aetokremnos those done on charcoal samples would appear to indicate an age of at least

9,500 cal. BC. Does the first time of arrival on the island equate with the Younger Dryas, the

cold, dry oscillation in the worlds climate (dating to about 12,000 to 13,000 years ago) when

some scholars (e.g. Bar-Yosef 2001) envision a high degree of mobility among the late

hunters and gatherers in the Levant? In this context, the site of Aetokremnos is perhaps of

even greater significance today than it was at the time it was excavated (198790).

While several other claims for pre-Neolithic sites have been made on Cyprus (e.g. Vita-

Finzi 1973; Adovisio et al. 1975), they do not appear to be all that convincing (Simmons

1999: 214). The first author recently re-examined several of the proposed sites in the fieldand found this to be the case as well. In effect, Aetokremnos has remained for many years

the only well-documented (albeit controversial) candidate for a pre-Neolithic site on the

island. This situation has now begun to change. Our own recent fieldwork has led to the

identification of a number of sites with chipped stone assemblages that are quite different

from those commonly found at aceramic Neolithic sites on Cyprus (McCartney 2004) and

that should date to an older time. This is not the place to go into the details of these new

sites, which were discovered along the coast on formations of aeolianite (cemented sand

dunes). This will be done in a separate report on the sites. It is worth adding here that

Carole McCartney, a lithic specialist with extensive experience in Cyprus, has examined

the material from one of the main sites at Ayia Napa and agrees with a pre-Neolithic

attribution. In practical terms, it may take some time and effort before one can work out

the specific ages of the respective sites. On the positive side, Aetokremnos no longer stands

alone as the only pre-Neolithic site on Cyprus. Of course, one of the obstacles to a better

understanding of the early coastal sites on the island is the current shortage of pre-

Neolithic sites on the adjacent coasts of Syria and Turkey.

Turning to the question of occupation, Held (1989: 58) in an early publication speaks of

the occupants of the rock shelter (implying that people lived there). Elsewhere, he refers

to Aetokremnos as a camp site (Held 1992a: 119). Subsequently, he seems to have

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changed his mind: Aetokremnos appears to be a specialized processing site (in Knapp

et al. 1994: 403, where the possibility of occupation is, however, mentioned on the same

page). Simmons (1999: 13), in the first part of his book, likewise takes the rock shelter to

be a place that was occupied. However, in discussing the sites function in the last chapter,

he draws the conclusion that it was the locus of intense Phanouriosprocessing (Simmons

1999: 318). And yet the language used in discussing the nature of the site still includes the

notion of occupation: Was it a permanent, year-round occupation or was it occupied

seasonally? (Simmons 1999: 315). As explained below, this may not be the right way to

think about the formation of the deposit at Aetokremnos. In fairness to Simmons and

Held, all of us as prehistorians have a penchant for talking about our sites in terms of the

rhetoric of occupation. This is a habit that is hard to break.

Those who argue against human occupation at the site usually point to stratum 4, the

rich bone midden (some 10 to 35cm thick) at the base of the stratigraphic sequence. Much

ink has already been spelt on the nature of this unit. There are four main pieces of evidence

that are at odds with one another: (1) the occurrence of the remains of at least 374 pygmy

hippos (an MNI value patiently worked out by David Reese), (2) the complete absence of

cut marks on any of the hippo bones (which troubles most faunal analysts and which callsfor special pleading on the part of Simmons and company), (3) the fact that more than

one-quarter of the bones show traces of being burned, and (4) the remarkably small

number of stone tools recovered from the unit (only eleven of them in all, which calls for

more special pleading by the excavators). On the face of things, the most reasonable way

to interpret stratum 4 is as a natural bone midden (with the intrusion of chipped stone

pieces from layers above; if the tools really do belong with the bones, one would expect to

find extremely heavy traces of use wear on them).

A much better case can be made for the presence of human beings in stratum 2. This unit

has a thickness that is quite variable (1050 cm), and it is often separated from stratum 4 by

a sterile sandy layer (stratum 3) some 15 to 30 cm thick. The excavation of stratum2 yielded a large number of bird bones and seashells, seventy-three stone tools and some

4,000 pieces of hippo bone (representing at least twenty-nine individuals). With the

question of occupation in mind, this is all fine until one begins to look at the shelter in terms

of the third dimension. As shown in Plate 1, there is barely enough room between the

bedrock and the underside of the horizontal ledge that forms the shelters roof for a

mature person to stand up in the rock shelter. For instance, near the north wall of the

shelter, there is a space of only about 140cm between the bedrock and the bottom of the

ledge in its present eroded form (Held 1989: fig. 2; Simmons 1999: fig. 4.4; see also fig. 4.8

where the height is even less at a distance of 2m from the shelters east wall). There is, by the

way, no reason to think that its roof ever rose in height above the level of the bench of

bedrock just behind the shelter. One of the shortcomings of the book by Simmons and

associates is the difficulty of reading the very short archaeological sections and appreciating

their scale. What is really called for is a three-dimensional diagram that gives the basic

structure of the rock shelter as well as its elevations. Such a diagram would show that there

was not sufficient headroom to stand up inside the shelter during the time of stratum 2.

A vertically open space of any real depth is difficult to imagine given the nature of the

rock underlying the cliff, a member (subsection) of the Nicosia Formation of Pliocene age.

Although this formation is locally prized as a building stone elsewhere on Cyprus, this is



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not the case at the site. Here the nature of the alternating beds of poorly and well-cemented

calcarenite and limestone are of insufficient vertical separation and strength to develop a

sizeable or durable rock shelter. In fact, as seen in several of the published sections, fairly

large pieces of roof fall are observed to rest within both stratum 4 and stratum 2, implying

that the rock shelter, at least in some parts, was already in the process of collapsing. The

main point here is that once strata 4 and 3 were laid down, it was no longer possible to

occupy the rock shelter in any meaningful sense of the term. This leads to the suggestion

that activities were performed on the horizontal ledge above the shelter (where locally one

can see patches of red rock that may be due to fires) and that refuse (faunal remains and

other artifacts) was swept from the ledge into openings in the partially collapsed shelter

(making it more of a pit than a place of habitation). The clean up may have included the

purposeful caching of hippo bones as a source of fuel. Previously, Simmons (1999: 311)

has pursued a somewhat different line of thought to arrive at the idea that hippo bones

were cached at the site.

Plate 1View of the collapsed rock shelter at Aetokremnos. Note that the archaeologist is standing on

the bedrock and the underside of the ledge forming the roof of the shelter occurs in a position lower

than his head.



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The second point of ambiguity, as mentioned before, concerns the sea level some 12,000

years ago. Simmons (1999: 1314) is fully aware of the case for a lower sea level at the end

of the Pleistocene, as put forward by Gomez and Pease (1992), and yet he opts for a sea

level much like the modern one, which means that Aetokremnos is considered to have a

position right on the coast in a place with an island-like setting. This is a choice that is

difficult to justify in terms of what we now know about trends in sea level around the

Mediterranean (e.g. Pirazzoli 1998; Sivan et al. 2001; Lambeck et al. 2004) and tectonics

on Cyprus. From the last glacial maximum c. 18,000 BP, when the surface of the

Mediterranean Sea reached its low elevation ofc. 125m below modern sea level, toc. 6,000

BP, sea level rose at a rate of about 1m per century. On the other hand, one can argue

(without going into the details here) that the tectonic rate of uplift in the Akrotiri area over

the last 500,000 years is only on the order of 510mm per century. Thinking in terms of a

balancing act between sea-level change and tectonics for this period (the time between

18,000 and 6,000 years ago) is a fundamental misconception on the part of some

archaeologists. Admittedly, it is difficult for non-specialists to conceptualize the inter-

actions between these two rates in the earth sciences (eustatic sea level and tectonism).

For present purposes, we identify the sea level at 12,000 BP to stand at 70m below sealevel today following the lead of Lambeck and Chappell (2001), Peltier (2002), and

Lambeck and co-workers (2004). Whether this value is taken to be 20 m higher or lower is

not going to change the basic situation. As shown in Figure 1, this has two main

implications. First, the Akrotiri Peninsula is a tectonic massif separately uplifted from the

mainland, which has preserved and protected the submarine and subaerial depositional

formations of the Kouris River for the past several million years. As such the peninsula is

a physiographic artifact of the landscape shaped in deep geological time. It is only for brief

moments during this long history that the peninsula is partially submerged by the sea the

most recent episode beginning around 6,000 BP (turning the headland into an island at that

time as shown by the dashed line in Fig. 1). The second implication is connected with thepresent-day bathymetry of the peninsula, which reveals a submerged landscape of

moderate slope toc. 150m depth (at about 5km from the present coastline). The landscape

at 12,000 BPhad a kilometer-wide plain backed by a cliff where the site is located (Fig. 1).

Thus, Aetokremnos was neither situated in an island-like setting nor did it have a position

right on the coastline.

What we found of major interest in our visits to the site is good evidence for thick

aeolian sand ramp deposits and palaeosols that extend from the sea up to the cliff top and

beyond. While Mandel in his chapter in Faunal Extinction in an Island Society (Simmons

1999) focuses his attention on the study of sediments at Aetokremnos, he did not carry out

extensive off-site investigations. In fairness to Mandel, he is aware of the presence of

aeolian sand sheets and dunes and their relation to a coastal plain at a time of lower sea

level. However, his observations and suggestions do not seem to have been taken up and

integrated with the other chapters of the book. The problem of recognizing the sand ramp

is, in part, due to the marked Holocene erosion on the steep slopes near the site, which

have left only minor vestiges of this part of the former landscape. By looking east along

the coast today, one can see much better preserved examples of palaeo-dune ramps in

places with less pronounced erosion. The essential thing for active dune formation at the

time Aetokremnos was frequented, as documented by stratum 3, was the wide coastal



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plain in front of the site. One of the implications of the dune fields along the coast and the

massive dune ramps running up the south slope was an environmental context that was

not conducive to the growth of trees. In other words, there would have been a shortage of

trees for fuel in the vicinity of the site. At the same time, advantage may have been taken

of the soft sands for driving the hippos as part of the strategy for hunting them. In

addition, the dune ramp may have facilitated the task of dragging the dead animals back

up to the rock ledge at Aetokremnos, one of the nearest good surfaces for processing them.

The third aspect of ambiguity in the reports on Aetokremnos concerns the sites

radiocarbon dates. This is above all the case for the dates run on bone samples. Of

the thirty-one radiocarbon determinations from the site, nine are on pieces of bone.

Figure 1Map of the Akrotiri Peninsula showing the shoreline at the present time, 6,000 BP and 12,000

BP. The site of Aetokremnos is located at A. For orientation, L gives the position of the present-day

harbor at Limissol. Topographic contour lines are shown at 20m intervals for the reconstructed

12,000 BP landscape without its Holocene deposits and landforms (including the valley of the Kouris

River on the west side). Highlighted here are the actively forming dune fields on the coastal plain in

front of the site.



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As mentioned before, they are considered by the excavators to be the least reliable dates

for the site (Simmons and Wigand 1994: 24951; Simmons 1999: 2005). Indeed, eight out

of ten of the more recent dates at Aetokremnos are those done on bone, and their ages are

not in agreement with the positions of the samples in the sites stratigraphy. In fact, all

except two of the bone samples yield dates that are as young or even younger than the

oldest C-14 dates now available for aceramic Neolithic sites on Cyprus (i.e. around

9,200 BP uncalibrated). In short, there is a clear need to run a new series of bone dates

at a laboratory such as Oxford where improved methods for dating this material have

been developed. We propose that this new series include at least ten samples: four on

hippo bones from stratum 4, four on hippo bones from stratum 2 and two on bird bones

from stratum 2. This is a modest proposal one that should remove much of the

controversy that still surrounds the site. If the new dates on hippo bones from stratum 2

give basically the same ages as the two bird bones from the same stratum (and they are in

agreement with the previous charcoal dates for this unit), then a strong case can be made

for the hunting of hippos. On the other hand, if the new bone dates for stratum 4 turn out

to be much older than those for stratum 2 (and they are also found to be heterogeneous in

age), then the new evidence would support the idea that this unit was a natural bonemidden. The cost of running such a new series is quite low in light of the potential

significance of Aetokremnos.

In closing, it may be worth offering a summary of what we see happening at the site.

This is put forward merely as an alternative scenario to open up new ways of thinking

about Aetokremnos. The site was situated near the top of the dune ramp at a time when

the sea level was much lower and there was a coastal plain in front of the site. The rock

shelter itself was quite small, and it was already in the process of collapsing some 12,000

years ago. By the time of stratum 2, there was no longer enough headroom inside the

shelter to make it really suitable as a place for occupation. We leave open the thorny

question of how to interpret stratum 4, the rich bone bed resting on the bedrock. Only anew series of C-14 dates can tell us whether it was simply a natural deposit or whether

human agency was involved in its formation. On the other hand, there is a much better

chance that pygmy hippos were hunted by the human beings who contributed to the

formation of stratum 2. Again, the new series of radiocarbon dates would have the last

word to say here. Taking this to be the case for the sake of argument, effective use would

have been made of the dune ramp and the dunes on the coastal plain for driving the hippos

into a place where they were easier to kill. The processing of the hippos took place not on

the dunes but on the ledge above the shelter. It was a more conducive place for this kind of

work than the sand dunes. And the refuse from the various activities done on the ledge was

then discarded or swept into the collapsed shelter. Given the shortage of trees on the dunes

(as well as the distance from the site to the coast for the collection of driftwood), it is now

even more likely that the hippo bones would have been cached as a source of fuel. It is

even possible that the shelter (with its limited interior height by the time of stratum 2) was

used as a smoke house to cure and dry hippo meat. This might help to explain the high

percentage of burned bones and the ephemeral features recovered during the excavation

(recall that most of the features and loci occur in association with stratum 2 (Simmons

1999: 96)). Still another scenario to consider would be the possibility that natural bone

from stratum 4 (again taking this to be the case simply for the sake of argument) was



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exploited by people in more recent times as a source of fuel. This might help to explain the

rather tormented stratigraphy observed at the site. Finally, Aetokremnos was not the only

site on Cyprus in the years before the aceramic Neolithic. On the contrary, it was one of

many coastal sites frequented by those who took to their boats from time to time and

visited the island from the mainland. These mobile, late Pleistocene foragers were the first

tourists to reach the remarkable island of Cyprus.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Sophocles Hadjisavvas, the then Director of the Department of

Antiquities in Cyprus, for the permit to do the reconnaissance work and for his advice on

where to search for early sites. We wish to express our appreciation for the generous

assistance of those on the staff of the Fulbright Commission in Cyprus. Our special thanks

go to Frank Garrod for making arrangements to visit the Sovereign Base and for guiding

us to Aetokremnos. Tom Davis, the Director of CAARI, joined us on one of the visits to

the site. We thank him and others on the staff at CAARI for their hospitality andencouragement. We wish to thank Dr. George Petrides, Director of the Geological Survey

Department (GSD), and Mr. Ioannis Panayides and Ms. Zomenia Zomeni, Regional

Geology GIS Section (GSD), for their support and expertise on Cypriot geology.

Support for Nollers research on Cyprus was provided in part by grants from the

Agricultural Experiment Station of Oregon.

Albert J. Ammerman,

Department of Classics, Colgate University,

Hamilton, New York, NY 13346

Jay Stratton Noller,Landscape Pedology, Department of Crop & Soil Science,

Oregon State University, 3017 Agricultural and Life Sciences Building, Corvallis,

OR 973331

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4534.

Albert J. Ammerman did his graduate studies at the Institute of Archaeology in London

under the supervision of John Evans and completed his PhD in 1972. Over the next twelveyears he worked in close collaboration with Luca Cavalli-Sforza and wrote a number of

well-known publications on the Neolithic transition in Europe. From 1985 through 2003,

he carried out more than thirty seasons of fieldwork (with a focus on environmental

archaeology) at early sites in Rome and Venice as well as the Agora of ancient Athens.

This work resulted in a series of publications on the origins of both Rome and Venice.

Since 2003 he has returned to the Neolithic transition and conducted fieldwork at sites in

Greece and Cyprus pertaining to this question. Over the years, he has taught at Stanford

University, the State University of New York at Binghamton and Colgate University. For

a number of years, he was also a visiting professor at the University of Parma and the

University of Trent in Italy.

Jay Stratton Noller is Associate Professor of Soil Science in the School of Agricultural

Sciences, Oregon State University, USA, with over twenty years of professional experience

in the earth sciences and archaeology, including soil science, geomorphology and

geoarchaeology. Individual and team projects span study sites on five continents, with the

primary research goal of contributing to improved understanding of soillandscape

relations in eco-systems. He is interested in the relationship of humans with soil,

particularly on centennial to millennial time scales, which necessarily involve archae-

ological approaches to study, He has co-directed or participated in many archaeological

projects in Cyprus and other countries around the Eastern Mediterranean, as well as in thePacific Coast region of the USA and Peru.


Documents

Ammerman_New Light on Aetokremnos