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    Plan

    Plan détaillé Texte intégral 1. An unexpectedly rich but degraded site 2. The environment and resources of the PPNA village 3. The village: state, dynamics, mobility 4. Technical Systems: building, fire, water, toolkit, ORNAMENTS, subsistence 5. Cultural and symbolic traits; social life 6. Klimonas and the history of the Cypriot Neolithic 7. Klimonas in the Levantine PPNA Annexe Notes de bas de page Auteurs

    Klimonas

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    Table des matières

    Chap. 33

    The Neolithic village of Klimonas: technical, social and symbolic aspects; insularity and connectivity

    Le village néolithique de Klimonas. Aspects techniques, sociaux et symboliques ; insularité et connectivité 

    Jean‑Denis Vigne, Jean Guilaine, Remi Hadad, Laurence Astruc, François Briois, Thomas Cucchi, Lionel Gourichon, Pantelitsa Mylona, Solange Rigaud et Maria Rousou

    p. 545-604

    Texte intégral 1. An unexpectedly rich but degraded site 1.1. An archaeological godsend 1.2. Richness of the site and aim of the chapter 1.3. State of preservation and later occupations of the site 2. The environment and resources of the PPNA village 2.1. Topography, geomorphology, mineral resources 2.2. Plant community, fauna and biological resources 2.3. Village ecosystem and anthropisation 3. The village: state, dynamics, mobility 3.1. Dimensions of the village 3.2. Composition of the village and general building characteristics 3.3. Residential buildings 3.4. Communal building 3.5. Duration of village occupation 3.6. Mobility of villagers or village mobility? 4. Technical Systems: building, fire, water, toolkit, ORNAMENTS, subsistence 4.1. Preparation and implementation of construction materials 4.1.1. Wood 4.1.2. Earth (and stone) 4.2. Fire-related equipment 4.3. Hydraulic equipment 4.4. Toolkit and utensils in stone or in hard animal matter 4.4.1. Knapped stone tools (obsidian and flint) 4.4.2. Macro-tools 4.4.3. Stone vessels 4.4.4. Bone tools 4.5. Shell and green stone ORNAMENTS and dyes 4.6. Acquisition, transformation and use of foodstuffs 4.6.1. “Pre-domestic” cultivation and plant gathering 4.6.2. Hunting and carcass processing 5. Cultural and symbolic traits; social life 5.1. Expression of the symbolic realm 5.1.1. Three surprising absences: stone from architecture, seafood from the diet, burials 5.1.2. Figurines, statuettes, art objects 5.1.3. “Caches” 5.1.4. Symbolic practices related to animals 5.1.5. Orientation and internal organization of buildings 5.1.6. An “impoverished” replica of the PPNA 5.2. Manifestations of social life 5.2.1. Expressions of individual or group identity 5.2.2. Attempt at a social interpretation of the residential buildings 5.2.3. Communal organization 6. Klimonas and the history of the Cypriot Neolithic 7. Klimonas in the Levantine PPNA 7.1. Cyprus as one the poles of a pluricentric neolithization 7.2. A window into a coastal Pre-Pottery Neolithic 7.3. The PPNA as a group of transformations Annexe Notes de bas de page Auteurs

    Texte intégral

    1. An unexpectedly rich but degraded site

    1.1. An archaeological godsend1

    1Until early May 2011, before the circular contour of a half-buried “communal” building with a diameter of 10 m began to emerge beneath our trowels, the beginnings of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic in Cyprus were wide open to all hypotheses. Archaeological data were missing from the period between the Epipalaeolithic occupation of Akrotiri-Aetokremnos, at around 10,500 cal BC, and the first Cypro-PPNB village settlements of Shillourokambos (Guilaine et al. 1994, 2011, 2021) and Mylouthkia (Peltenburgh and Wasse 2003; chap. 1). The notion that this lacuna reflected 2 000 years of human absence was still defensible, but seemed rather unlikely. It was undermined by several tenuous markers at Troumbovounos (Briois et al. 2005, Guilaine and Briois 2005), Asprokremnos (McCartney et al. 2008) and Aspros (Ammerman et al. 2008). At Klimonas, the lithic material collected on the surface pointed to the presence of an earlier human Pre-Pottery Neolithic tradition than the Cypro-PPNB of Shillourokambos (Briois et al. 2005, Guilaine and Briois 2006). However, there was little indication of the existence of a phase of village cultivators comparable to the continental PPNA (9500-8500 cal BC), and the persistence of mobile groups with Levantine and Anatolian Epipalaeolithic traditions appeared more probable. The truth is that we anticipated this second option during the archaeological survey of Klimonas, in October 2009, and until the beginning of the 2011 excavations.

    2In the end, the second hypothesis, namely that of a PPNA village of hunter-cultivators, similar to contemporaneous continental villages and preserved over more than half a hectare (Vigne et al. 2011a, 2012, 2017b, 2019a), became evident during the course of five excavation campaigns, between 2011 and 2016 (30 excavation windows, 2400 days/persons; chap. 2, fig. 33-1), combined with and followed by long sessions of studying the material. The richness and diversity of the archaeological documentation and analytical data presented in this monograph are unprecedented in Cyprus.

    Fig. 33-1 – Ongoing excavation of Sector B, 20th May 2016.

    Photo J.‑D. Vigne, CNRS.

    1.2. Richness of the site and aim of the chapter

    3These results constitute one of the most significant PPNA corpora in the Near East:

    • 38 buildings or remains of buildings studied (chap. 6 to 8, 11 to 13), including the Communal building (chap. 5)
    • several dozen pedological profiles and micromorphological thin sections of the fluvial or colluvial terraces surrounding the site (chap. 3) and of building materials (chap. 9),
    • more than three tonnes of flint for the Communal building and 100,000 pieces of flint for Sectors B and F (chap. 14-15),
    • nearly 800 tools or fragments of macrolithic tools (chap. 16),
    • 105 remains of stone vessels (chap. 17),
    • 43 objects relating to osseous industry (chap. 18),
    • 1299 ornamental elements made of shell or stone (chap. 19),
    • about 30 other “symbolic” objects, including 21 figurines or similar objects (chap. 20),
    • 143 fragments of dyes (chap. 21),
    • 11,600 phytoliths (chap. 22), 576 charcoals, 5225 charred seeds and fruits and eight seed impressions (chap. 23),
    • 21,426 animal bones, of which 6602 were identified (chap. 24 to 31),
    • 13 human remains (chap. 32).

    4This final chapter aims to summarise the main findings of the excavation in light of the questions raised in the introduction (chap. 1). It outlines an overall image of the environment, technical systems (buildings, equipment, tools, adornment, agriculture, gathering, hunting), the underlying economic strategies, the symbolic manifestations and the social organization of Klimonas. It places these different aspects of village life in the Cypriot context, and compares them with the only other PPNA site known to date, Asprokremnos (McCartney 2017), and the later phases of the Cypriot Pre-Pottery Neolithic, mainly documented at Shillourokambos (8500-7000 cal BC; Guilaine et al. 2011, 2021), located 2.8 km to the north, and at Tenta and Khirokitia (7500-6000 cal BC; Todd 1987, 2003, Le Brun 1984, 1989, 1994, 2021), 14 and 19 km to the east respectively. Finally, comparisons with continental data open up new avenues for the last of the main questions listed in chap. 1, concerning specific Cypriot cultural traits and the connectivity of the island with the nearby continent at the beginning of the Holocene.

    1.3. State of preservation and later occupations of the site

    5Before embarking upon this synopsis, it is nonetheless important to somewhat qualify why the discovery of Klimonas constitutes an archaeological blessing. The Cypriot PPNA occupation only consists of half a hectare and several dozen dates around 8800 cal BC (between 20 and 60 years according to radiometric data, chap. 10). With Asprokemnos, which is however much smaller, Klimonas thus appears as an oasis of knowledge in a 9250 km² (the surface area of Cyprus) desert of spatial and temporal ignorance, as the continental PPNA extends over a millennium.

    6It is also important to emphasise what these remains have endured over nearly 11 000 years. Geomorphological observations and significant levelling of buildings (fig. 33-2) attest to very strong slope erosion throughout the Holocene, with an acceleration during the 6200 cal BC event (chap. 3). As a result, there are no remaining traces of PPNA levels in the highest zones of the site (southwest of the Central Sector, south part of Sector B), and the downslope edge, or even half of nearly 90% of the 38 studied buildings had definitively disappeared in the slope before excavations began (chap. 11, fig. 11-1).

    Fig. 33-2 – State of preservation of the first phase of the Communal building (16th May 2012). On the foreground, the entrance (chap. 5).

    Photo J.‑D. Vigne, CNRS.

    7As a result of this, and unlike for tell sites where erosion is always outweighed by the massive input of earthen building material, archaeological remains are in a superficial position in the soil at Klimonas. Bioarchaeological remains underwent intense pedological processes due to the effects of the rhizophere and microfauna (chap. 9), and are so degraded (see in particular chap. 23 and 24), that even the best-preserved parts of raw earth walls have lost their characteristic compacity, a criterion used to identify them easily at other sites. Apart from the deeper Communal building, most of the constructions could only be identified on the basis of their foundation trenches, interior floors and (the base of) concave structures (pits, trenches, post holes, threshold; chap. 6 to 8). The fact that stone was hardly ever used and the absence of mudbricks (adobe) for building, which we will come back to later, accentuated the destructive effects of time.

    8Besides its situation on a slope, the brevity of settlement and the intensive reuse of earth materials from previously demolished buildings also worked against the accumulation of thick stratification conducive to the preservation of many contemporaneous Levantine sites, which are usually inhabited over a longer duration. It is however fortunate that the terraces were not reused between 8800 and 5000 cal BC, when many Cypro-PPNB and Khirokitia culture settlements were recorded in the immediate vicinity of the site (Briois et al. 2005). A resettlement of the site would undoubtedly have accelerated the degradation of PPNA structures and materials, like for Sector 1 of Shillourokambos (Guilaine et al. 2011), and as shown by the extensive damage caused to the Klimonas structures when Sotira groups reoccupied the slope during the 5th millennium BC. The latter inflicted considerable damage on the fragile PPNA remains by digging out deep pits, generally for extracting building materials, around a small settlement centred on the middle terrace (chap. 4). On the other hand, the occupations of the Classical periods were much less destructive, as they were mostly linked to cultivation activities, which only involved superficial digging. They sometimes even contributed to the conservation of PPNA remains through the construction of low walls delimiting artificial terraces, as was the case in Sector B (chap. 4 and 7). The slope was uncultivated for decades and thus escaped the deep ploughing of the industrial era. Our intervention probably saved it from irremediable destruction as recent urban sprawl has led to sprouting concrete buildings all around the site over the past twenty odd years (chap. 2).

    2. The environment and resources of the PPNA village

    2.1. Topography, geomorphology, mineral resources

    9The village was located at an altitude of between 135 and 145 m, on a south-facing slope (fig. 33-3), facing the sea and the coastal knoll that was to become the site of the Amathus acropolis, some eighty centuries later. The slope was punctuated by three natural terraces and leaned against a small Miocene corallin limestone cliff to the north. Lower down, 300 m further south, the small coastal river Athiaki flowed continuously, supplied by two short tributaries, among others, flanking the site on the east and the west (chap. 2). Water was thus found nearby and was available all year round. The slight gradient was conducive to notching buildings in the slope (chap. 11), a low-effort architectural solution also recorded at other stratified continental PPNA sites, in both the southern (Finlayson et al. 2011) and the northern Levant (Stordeur 2015).

    Fig. 33-3 – Landscape diversity around Klimonas, seen from the South. The white and black arrows indicate Klimonas and Thetekou respectively

    Photo J.‑D. Vigne, CNRS.

    10The village does not seem to have extended to the clayey substrata bordering the terraces to the west. It lies either on regoliths from more or less marly carbonated Lefkara geological formations, or on their also relatively heavily carbonated colluvial or pedological cover (havara) of Pleistocene age (chap. 3). In both cases, the buildings thus stand on a sufficiently compact substratum for their structure to be partly supported by poles (chap. 11).

    11Carbonated colluviums and havara were both available on site and served as primary materials for building earth (chap. 9). The limestone Lefkara formations, outcropping abundantly at the edge of the site and over several hundred metres in the Athiaki valley, are interstratified by excellent-quality flint and chert layers, making them available on site in practically unlimited quantities (chap. 14). These outcrops explain the high density of Pre-Pottery sites in the Athiaki valley and in its immediate surroundings (Briois et al. 2005). This same flint was used in particular at Shillourokambos (Briois and Guilaine 2013).

    12Owing to the large network of faults in south Troodos following the river Athiaki (Devillers and Morhange 2011), a complex of ultrabasic rocks outcrops two minutes west of Klimonas, and pillow lavas covered by umber outcrop several hundred metres to the east. Mineral resources abound within a 5-km-radius of the site; abundant large and small pebbles in resistant rocks, used for making macro-tools (chap. 16), the Lefkara chalk sculpted to make stone vessels (chap. 17) and some figurines (chap. 20), most of the green rocks and fossil shells used for pendants (chap. 19), practically all the mineral dyes identified at the site (chap. 21), and even the fine Parekklisha sandstone used in “mosaic” pits (chap. 7). Only picrolite, a light-green rock appreciated for making ornaments, comes from further away, at least 20 km to the west, where the Kouris valley transports it from the Troodos (chap. 19 and 21).

    13The inhabitants of Klimonas thus used a wide diversity of locally available mineral resources (including water). They also used some resources from further away, or were in contact with populations who used them. The choice of site location for Klimonas was undoubtedly linked to this availability, even though the complex geological history of Cyprus generates highly diverse topographic situations and mineral resources. The same is true of the temporary settlement at Asprokremnos, contemporaneous with Klimonas, the location of which was partly determined by the local abundance of quality flint and mineral dyes linked to the proximity of a “gossan” (McCartney et al. 2008, McCartney 2017). On the other hand, the location of more recent Pre-Pottery sites, such as Shillourokambos, Tenta or Khirokitia, was less tied to the presence of lithic and mineral resources, apart of course from water.

    2.2. Plant community, fauna and biological resources

    14Pollen grains were absent from the samples submitted to V. Lebreton (MNHN) and plant macro-remains are generally poorly preserved. Our appraisal of plant diversity is therefore limited, particularly if we compare the corpus from Klimonas to that from the wells of Mylouthkia (Asouti 2003, Murray 2003) or from the village of Khirokitia (Thiébault 2003, Parès 2015, Parès and Tengberg 2017, Rousou 2022). However, the sufficiently well-substantiated available data reflect a more diversified and probably denser plant cover than at the present time (chap. 23), which is consistent with the admittedly tenuous isotopic data recorded in wild boar dental enamel (chap. 29). The dominance of pistachio trees (P. terebinthus and P. atlantica, but without the mastic tree P. lentiscus), the presence of deciduous oak, buckthorn, olive trees, hackberry and fig trees, depict a significantly less thermophilic and probably slightly more humid Mediterranean vegetation than at the present time, indicating a slightly less arid climate than nowadays. The avifauna differs little from that of Akrotiri and does not indicate any major changes in comparison with the end of the Younger Dryas (chap. 26).

    15These reconstructions suggest that the timber required for the construction of rectilinear posts and poles, as shown by our architectural reconstructions (chap. 5 and 11), was present on the surrounding slopes and in the alluvial plain of Athiaki, which was rather wide at that time (chap. 3). However, it is important to point out that the thickest and certainly the straightest posts were systematically pulled out and reused when buildings were demolished (chap. 11). This could denote a relative rarity of large-sized straight wooden elements, although it could also be explained by symbolic reasons or the economy of efforts.

    16These archaeobotanical observations also suggest the seasonal availability of fruits (pistachios, olives, acorns, figs), including those of the Prunus genus, which could have been introduced from the continent at that time (chap. 23). These sparsely-wooded Mediterranean environments were propitious to the Cypriot dwarf wild boar (Sus scrofa circeus Cucchi et al. 2021; fig. 33-4, chap. 30), the only large mammal game on the island at that time (Vigne et al. 2011b). Given that its only predators were a handful of PPNA hunters, wild boars must have proliferated near the village. This is confirmed by the presence of all carcass portions on site (chap. 29). Carcasses were probably quartered at the kill site, somewhere near Klimonas, and there was thus no need to lighten loads for the return journey, as was the case for the largest Persian fallow deer at Shillourokambos (Vigne et al. 2016). Rivers such as the Athiaki, and their riparian forests, must have been particularly attractive for wild boars, but also for birds and their predators, such as blunt-nosed vipers, also represented at the site. Riparian forests were also a propitious environment for tortoises (Testudo sp.; chap. 25).

    Fig. 33-4 – Occlusal view of the horizontal ramus of a Cypriot endemic boar (Sus scrofa circeus) mandible (KL 15, US 6039; chap. 30).

    Photo R. Khawam, MNHN.

    17Wild boars were a seasonal resource, in the same way as spring or autumn fruits, as they were preferentially hunted between the end of the summer and the beginning of the winter at Klimonas, when they accumulated fat reserves (chap. 29). The diversification and marked seasonality of food resources also reflect wetland zones, absent from archaeobotanical records but evidenced by the remains of freshwater crabs (chap. 24) and especially waterfowl, ducks, geese, coots and harriers, which are winter visitors nowadays (chap. 26). Crabs may have been found in the perennial Athiaki at close proximity. However, birds must have been hunted further away, perhaps on the Limassol sebkha, 17 km towards the west, although the mouth of the large Amathus River (Yermasoyia valley), 5-6 km west of Klimonas, may also have formed a coastal lake, or at least deltaic wetlands, appreciated by wintering ducks and geese.

    18The relative abundance of the great bustard (Otis tarda), the second most important game after the wild boar, points to a dry grassland environment, better documented by wild cereal phytoliths (chap. 22) than by macro-remains. These grasslands probably extended over limestone plateaus, such as Armenokhori, the southernmost slopes of which end at the very edge of the village of Klimonas, in the form of the cliff bordering the northern terrace. The meat, and especially the seasonally accumulated fat of the great bustard, was a prized food resource in the north-western Mediterranean between the end of the Late Glacial and the beginning of the Holocene (Cuisin and Vigne 1998).

    19In a less arid and more forested environment than at the present time, the available plant and animal resources in Klimonas were therefore diversified and abundant, in the same way as the mineral resources. Without moving more than 5 km from the village, inhabitants had access to a variety of ecosystems, ranging from open forest to dry grassland, small coastal rivers, riparian zones and even wetlands. They could obtain fuelwood and timber, fruits, seeds, meat and animal fat during a large part of the year. All of these resources were seasonal, with agricultural spring produce complementing autumnal fruit gathering and hunting. Here, as on the mainland, and despite limited faunal and floral diversity as a result of insularity (especially with regard to mammals), diversification and seasonality are two main lines of the PPNA economic strategy (Gourichon 2004; Gourichon and Horwitz 2021).

    20However, the marine environment is missing from the picture. All of the crab remains, without exception, are from the freshwater genus Potamon. Shells were collected dead on the beach or, in most cases, in fossil form (chap. 19). Despite intensive sieving which provided lizard and rodent remains, not a single fish remain was found in the undisturbed PPNA levels (chap. 24). It is true that the sea was probably a little further away from Klimonas than it is today. But sea level was at most a few metres lower and the coastline was at the most 200 to 300 metres further from the site than today, accessible in less than an hour by foot. Besides, the sea was visible to villagers at all times.

    2.3. Village ecosystem and anthropisation

    21The presence of the village itself generated a new anthropic ecosystem (Vigne 2011a). Phytolith data suggest that cereals could have been cultivated in the village or, alternatively, that the terraces may have been cultivated shortly before or after settlement in the village (chap. 22). Conditions in the small alluvial plain of Athiaki would have been wetter and more propitious to cultures (chap. 3), but the need to protect crops against wild boar (perhaps with the help of dogs) accounts for the choice to grow crops in the village. We have also shown that hydraulic installations probably retained runoff or rainwater in the village (chap. 12). If the “pre-domestic” cereals revealed by carpological analysis were indeed at least partly cultivated on the site, then the village was home to two, or even three species introduced from the continent: einkorn, emmer wheat (chap. 23) and perhaps rye (chap. 22).

    22In any case, this village ecosystem was certainly occupied by anthropophilic and domestic animals: grey mice (Mus musculus domesticus) and cats (Felis silvestris lybica, fig. 33-5), both introduced from the mainland (chap. 28), appear alongside the dog (Canis familiaris). The role (among others) of the latter in “clearing” garbage is underlined by traces of gnawing observed on boar bones. This is the oldest Cypriot evidence of these three species (chap. 24). The bone morphology of the unquestionably domesticated Klimonas dogs shows that they are the offspring of PPNA canine lineages, and are not the result of an in situ evolution of possible lineages introduced as early as the Epipaleolithic (chap. 27). It is however still possible that mice and perhaps even cats were introduced to Cyprus long before settlement at Klimonas, during an earlier PPNA or even in the Epipaleolithic, since the former populated mainland Natufian hamlets as early as 12,000 cal BC (Weissbrod et al. 2017, Cucchi et al. 2020). Therefore, in addition to the two or three cereal species potentially present in the village, three allochthonous mammalian taxa were also found. And we cannot rule out the possibility that the Cypriot mouse (Mus cypriacus; Cucchi et al. 2006) and some native Cypriot amphibians or lizards (green toad, Schneider’s skink; chap. 25) completed this association of commensal and anthropophilic species, although their presence in the village may also be due to the activity of birds of prey or carnivores.

    Fig. 33-5 – First phalanx of a cat (Felis s. lybica; KL11, US 10.6), an evidence for the introduction of commensal species to the island (chap. 28).

    Photo J.‑D. Vigne, CNRS.

    3. The village: state, dynamics, mobility

    3.1. Dimensions of the village

    23The thirty or so excavation windows opened on the three terraces of Klimonas enabled us to delimit the preserved zones of the site and to estimate the surface area of the adjacent areas (to the north and east) possibly covered by the settlement without leaving any traces. This exercise pointed to a proposed range of somewhere between 5 500 and 9 000 m² (chap. 11). The residential areas of Sectors B and F, where the floors of two to four successive buildings are at least partially superimposed (chap. 6 and 7), show that constructions followed on from one another at a rate evaluated at less than 10 years by the Bayesian inference of radiometric data (chap. 10). Considering this pace of construction, we suggested that the village comprised a few dozen contemporary buildings and less than 80 to 500 inhabitants. These estimates place Klimonas well below the great Levantine PPNA settlements such as Jericho, Gilgal I, Netiv Hagdud, Mureybet or Göbekli Tepe (Cauvin 1978, Aurenche 1982, Bar-Yosef and Gopher 1997a, Bar Yosef et al. 2010, Schmidt 2010a,b,c), but in the average range of contemporaneous or slightly older sites, on a par with Hatoula, Jerf el-Ahmar, Körtik Tepe, Dhra’, Nemrik, M’lefaat, Hallan Çemi ou Qermez Dere (Kozłowski 1989, 1990, Lechevallier et al. 1989, Watkins 1990, Kozłowski et al. 1998, Rosenberg et al. 1998, Rosenberg 1999, Özkaya and Coşkun 2009, Stordeur 2015, Finlayson and Makarewicz 2020; fig. 33-6, chap. 11). On the other hand, in the Cypriot context, the preserved half hectare of Klimonas ranks among Neolithic sites of significant size: Asprokremnos is only preserved over about 100 m², Shillourokambos over 4100 m², Ais Yorkis over 2500 to 4000 m² and Tenta over a surface of 1200 m² (Todd 2003, Simmons 2012, Guilaine et al. 2021). Only Khirokitia is clearly larger than Klimonas (3 ha: Le Brun and Daune-Le Brun 2009, Le Brun 2017, 2021).

    Fig. 33-6 – Location of the archaeological sites mentioned in the text.

    CAD R. Hadad and F. Briois. Fonds https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Near_East_relief_map_blank.png

    3.2. Composition of the village and general building characteristics

    24The part of the village identified during the excavation is composed of a building with a diameter of 10 m (St 10), located on the middle terrace, in the centre of the settlement, and of a series of circular or oval constructions, with an average surface area of 14.8 m², i.e., diameters or major axes varying between 3 and 6.4 m (chap. 11). All these buildings are notched (or half-buried for St 10) in the gentle slope, and built in raw earth using the cob method (see below), reinforced with wooden poles or posts. They were all covered with a probably flat (or slightly domed) and slightly sloping roof. They generally had no internal partitioning, were equipped in a rudimentary manner (a hearth pit, earthen benches for the largest buildings), but with an east-facing side entrance, sometimes with additional structures (access ramp, threshold stone, doorframe, corridor and perhaps stone staircase).

    3.3. Residential buildings

    25The residential buildings were moderately notched into the slope (1 m at the most, fig. 33-7). The downhill part often lay on an embankment resulting from upslope digging. During the course of settlement, new buildings were often built on the terraces of previous edifices, which, over time, gave the impression that the village was stepped. However, unlike in Jerf el-Ahmar (Stordeur 2015), no artificial terraces were made here first to level the building site. Nevertheless, some small buildings were constructed on the terrace of a large previous building, without preparing a new one.

    Fig. 33-7 – The residential buildings of Sector B, seen from the west, before the excavation of sunken structures (chap. 7).

    Photo J.‑D. Vigne, CNRS.

    26Buildings can be divided into three size groups. The smallest (8-10 m²), sometimes lacking fireplaces but always sheltered, have been interpreted as possible technical areas (for crafts, cooking). The buildings in the other two groups (14-16 and 22-28 m²) are always equipped with a non-structured fireplace in an internal pit (chap. 12) and, in two cases, with a cupmark stone sealed in the floor. The base of the earthen walls lay in foundations trenches, about 30 cm deep at the most. They leaned against the vertical earthwork wall upslope, where benches could have served as buttresses. Downslope, they were reinforced by wooden posts set in the thickness of the earthen wall. In one case (B800), these posts formed an external retaining arch, implanted about a metre from the southern periphery and probably supporting an awning.

    27When lying on a compact substratum (havara, colluviums, marls), the levelled floors were simply covered with a thin earth floor. But a base (stony floor) had first to be laid on loose fill (earthworks) to support a thicker and always well smoothed floor. The estimated minimum weight of roofs was about 0.8 tonnes. They were supported by the upslope portion of the earthen wall, which was more robust than the downslope part as it leant against the dug-out notch, as well as by downslope peripheral posts. A central post sometimes completed the structure. Our estimates (chap. 11) show that each of the columns was able to support a weight varying between 45 and 130-150 kg, which is compatible with our architectural reconstruction.

    28The residential building B800 (Sector F, chap. 6) was located in the upslope periphery of the site and may have been built at a late stage in the short history of the village (chap. 12). This building is large in size (28 m²), with internal partitioning, two large sophisticated benches, the possible presence of two entrances, the above-mentioned probable southern awning and a larger external fire pit, probably intended to supply an internal heating plate with embers or heated stones.

    29On account of their shape, devoid of angles, unicellular organization and sparse internal fittings and equipment, the residential buildings of Klimonas appear to have been particularly unsophisticated compared to those of contemporaneous Levantine PPNA sites. This is particularly true of the northern Levantine tendency to build multicellular and quadrangular structures, as is well illustrated by the younger levels of Jerf el-Ahmar (Stordeur 2015). In this respect, the Klimonas buildings seem closer to southern Levantine traditions, which seem to maintain the simple forms inherited from the Epipaleolithic for a longer period of time, despite the development of new techniques such as cob and adobe. This simplicity is also evident at Asprokremnos, although the first building there is half-buried (McCartney 2017). However, it does not continue at Shillourokambos, where buildings remain round and unsophisticated but are built according to an original model, mostly in stone, on a deep foundation trench and with a concave substructure (Chazelle 2021). In the end, the fact that the buildings of Klimonas are stepped into the slope, the use of the cob method, and the sporadic presence of cupmark stones sealed in floors are the main indicators of a PPNA tradition.

    3.4. Communal building

    30The Communal building, located in a central position in the village, is significantly larger than the largest residential buildings in the village (78 m² compared to a maximum of 28 m² for the latter). Instead of being merely notched into the slope, it is the only half-buried structure known on the site (Vigne et al. 2012). The pit, forming a low amphitheatre floor (fig. 33-8), originally reached a depth of 120-150 cm upslope and 50 cm downslope (chap. 5). The architecture was more sophisticated than elsewhere as it combined a 3-m-wide entrance notched deeply into the slope, a peristyle of paired wooden posts compensating for the fragility of the south wall to support the roof, an imposing central post and the presence of two to four earthen pillars in the upslope half, one of which was certainly quadrangular in section. These features ensured the support of a probably flat (or slightly domed; cf. Daune-Le Brun 2007) roof, with an estimated weight of between 1.25 and 1.9 tonnes, distributed at a rate of 100 to 200 kg per supporting column. The internal structures of the Communal building are also different from the other buildings. They include a wide and low peripheral bench made of very fine earth, abutting the northern wall but also probably the southern wall, as well as a series of hearth plates located at the foot of the southern bench, and at least one small flat hearth which seems to have a ritual rather than a functional purpose (actual hearth pits being reserved for residential areas).

    Fig. 33-8 – The bottom of the Communal building at the end of the 2012 excavation (chap. 5). The north is on the left.

    Photo J.‑D. Vigne, CNRS.

    31This building, with its carefully smoothed and maintained floors, which was covered with mats, straw or rushes (chap. 9), also yielded nearly all of the 13 human remains found on the site (chap. 32), most of the remains of the only animal with a domestic phenotype, that is the dog (chap. 27), the only cat bone and most of the mouse bones. This denotes the probable use of the building for the collective storage of foodstuffs (crops? chap. 28).

    32Another distinctive feature is the repeated demolition and reconstruction of this monument (chap. 5). Within the vast circular pit St 10, at least four successive versions of the Communal building were built in a very short space of time (between 20 and 60 years; fig. 33-9, chap. 10). Each of the three latter buildings rested - via a thick levelled base - on the rubble of the previous one(s), and followed the previous plan with a few variations. These include a reduction in the width of the entrance, which decreased abruptly from 300 to 80 cm between the first and second phases (the second being the “intermediate building” of Vigne et al. 2012), and a change in the layout of the entrance, which took the form of a covered corridor supported by four sturdy posts.

    Fig. 33-9 – The first Communal building at the end of the 2011 season. The remains of the three successive building reconstruction phases are piled up in its filling, visible here in the east-west section (chap. 5).

    Photo J.‑D. Vigne, CNRS.

    33The distinguishing features of this building in Klimonas can be linked to a well-known architectural tradition on the continent. The size and sophistication of the building, the half-buried construction, the monumental entrance, the earthen pillars, the peripheral bench, the cycle of superimposed reconstructions, but also the strong link with the human bone remains or possible food storage, all these features place this building in the domain of Levantine PPNA monumentalism, and in particular of the subterranean circular structures known as “communal” buildings in the Euphrates valley (Stordeur et al. 2000, Hadad 2019a). There is no doubt as to the collective dimension of this building, perhaps linked to political-ritual gatherings.

    34However, in light of its continental counterparts, the relatively shallow digging depth before construction - which decreases with the piling up of successive reconstructions -, the absence of stone except for wedging large posts and pillars, as well as the thinness of the walls, contribute to a more gracile structure. This is particularly striking compared to the massive monuments of Göbekli Tepe, Jerf el-Ahmar or Dja’de. In chap. 5, we suggested interpreting this difference as a result of the exacerbated importance of a ritualized cycle of destruction/accumulation, which is at the same time less spectacular and more recurrent at Klimonas than on the mainland (chap. 5). It is also possible that the relative lightness of the otherwise spacious structure corresponds to a shift in the social organization linked to its construction and use, which were possibly less coercive and restrictive than on the continent (Hadad 2017). We will come back to this point later.

    35No buildings comparable to the Communal building of Klimonas have been identified in the context of the Cypriot Pre-Pottery Neolithic. Peltenburg (2004) and Clarke and Wasse (2019) suggested that the large circular buildings at the top of Kalavasos-Tenta may date back to the early PPNB, or even the late PPNA, and thus perpetuate this architectural tradition locally, but this interesting hypothesis remains tenuous. Moreover, the destruction ritual, so frequent on the mainland (Hadad 2019b), is only very sparsely documented in the Cypriot Pre-Pottery Neolithic until the appearance of sophisticated procedures for sealing buildings at Khirokitia (Le Brun 2003, 2017).

    3.5. Duration of village occupation

    36According to the 52 radiometric data, the duration of the filling of the pit with different versions of the Communal building, as well as the succession of residential buildings in Sector B, would be between 20 and 60 years. These data also show that the sedimentary processes of the two sectors were contemporaneous (chap. 10). This narrow chronological bracket is entirely consistent with the homogeneous material evidence observed in all the excavation windows. This is also the case in building B800, for which radiometric dates are very similar to those of other buildings, but which could be several years or decades more recent (chap. 11). The duration of village occupation thus covers three or four human generations at the most.

    37This finding contrasts with the impression of stability and dynamism reflected in the respectable size of the village, the abundance and diversity of resources and tools, and the rapid renewal of constructions, including the successive phases of the Communal building. No catastrophic explanation can be advanced: only two out of about thirty buildings showed traces (debatable, moreover) likely to result from a fire. This contrasts with more recent sites such as Shillourokambos, Tenta and Khirokitia, which were all occupied for more than 1000 years. And although assessments of the duration of continental PPN occupation are generally not as accurate as for Klimonas, settlements generally seem to have been occupied for much longer periods of time, apart from those in the Syrian desert (Wadi Tumbaq, Abbès 2007, 2008b), a few rock shelters or specialised occupations (Kuijt 2004, Marder et al. 2007, Rhodes et al. 2020).

    3.6. Mobility of villagers or village mobility?

    38For Asprokremnos, the closest PPNA site to Klimonas in geographical terms, and strictly contemporaneous with it (Manning 2014), a singularly short occupation was interpreted in terms of mobility. According to C. McCartney (2017, p. 47), the four built structures identified on the site illustrate “a temporary and repeated dwelling in a preferred place [less intensively constructed over time], rather than permanent settlement”. They attest to the persistence of a “multiplicity of situations of mobility adapted to the diversity of tasks, a multiplicity that has been documented on a large scale by anthropology, all periods taken together (Averbouh et al. 2021). In the case of Asprokremnos, the non-permanent settlements would have responded to the need to be in close proximity to deposits of high-quality flint and colouring minerals in order to exploit them intensively and to accumulate them as goods for exchange.

    39At first sight, although it is located very close to substantial flint sources, Klimonas does not seem to follow the same pattern due to the higher number of buildings and their organization in a real village, arranged around the Communal building. However, in a context of a multiplicity of situations of mobility, the fairly short occupation – and the fact that the site yielded very few heavy installations – could nevertheless illustrate an original and – who knows – possibly a form of village mobility unique to Cyprus. To take this idea further, two questions must be asked: what could have been be the causes of abandonment? And where could the population of Klimonas have moved to after the abandonment of the village?

    40Given the diversity and abundance of resources, resource depletion seems an unlikely reason to explain the departure of the population. Instead, should we look for an explanation in the architectural dynamics of the site? In the last phase of the Communal building, the base of the construction, lying on the rubble of the previous ones, almost reached the level of the surrounding village floor. As a result, the interior of the building was no longer underground at all. Would the loss of this quality have been enough to abolish the chthonian character of these deep structures (Stordeur 2015, Hadad 2019a), to the point of stripping the building of its symbolic value? Would it (also?) have jeopardised the architectural stability of the building, given that the upslope wall leant against the dugout base? Could this have justified abandoning the entire village and not returning to the site? Should we rather suggest a major earthquake, which are recurrent in Cyprus? Or had the slope become unstable due to the accumulation of anthropogenic sediments and was therefore abandoned faced with the alternative option of carrying out laborious earthworks?

    41Moreover, it is fitting to wonder whether this abandonment was accompanied by a long-distance displacement, involving a change of territory and adaptation to a new environment, or whether it was limited to a displacement of the village to a nearby location, where the catchment site would have remained more or less the same. This second, more parsimonious solution could be supported by the discovery of at least four concentrations of PPNA-type flints during the survey (appendix 33-1), less than 300 m east of Klimonas, at the same topographic level, between the localities of Thetekou and Pirtakharis. One of these loci had yielded, as early as the late 1980s, a “large concave grindstone (…) with a large central circular cupula, 14 cm in diameter and 4 cm deep” (Site 23, Thetekou, fig. 33-3, Briois et al. 2005, p. 50). On the basis of the description, there is little or no doubt that this is a cupmark stone, typical of the PPNA but not recognised as such at the time of discovery, long before the existence of such an early Pre-Pottery Neolithic in Cyprus was suspected. At Klimonas, the two cupmark stones found in situ were sealed into a building floor. It is therefore probable that the discovery of Thetekou-Pirtakharis attests to the presence of a building occupied in a durable manner before or after the occupation of Klimonas. It is thus possible that the settlement only moved a few hundred metres without any appreciable change of location or delimitation of the territory.

    42To conclude this section, could the short duration of settlement be explained in terms of cohabitation problems between the different social components, leading to a “breach of contract” followed by the break-up of the community? Fission and relocation events are not uncommon in sedentary societies, including agricultural ones (Whiteley 1988), so much so that it is not unreasonable to consider that they may have played a role in the migration of PPNA groups to Cyprus (Hadad 2017). In this vein, we could imagine that a continental-type village model based on the association of “residential buildings/communal building” was not successfully adopted in Cyprus over the long term, which may have led to dispersal to peripheral or more distant hamlets. The notion of a relative territorial stabilisation of the Cypriot PPNA, still marked by cycles of mobility, has been raised in relation to Asprokremnos, but no agricultural activities were observed at this latter site. Unlike Klimonas, the nature of subsistence, based on hunting and gathering activities, may have generated an economic system of seasonal displacement (McCartney 2010). Should we consider the existence of different simultaneous modes of mobility on the island, including the possibility of moving a village while maintaining its unity? Or an imported model in crisis while another one remained more flexible? These questions will remain unanswered until the short gap (three to five centuries) between Klimonas and the earliest phase of Shillourokambos, as well as the conditions of the emergence of the Cypriot PPNA between the tenth and early ninth millennia, are documented.

    4. Technical Systems: building, fire, water, toolkit, ORNAMENTS, subsistence

    4.1. Preparation and implementation of construction materials

    43Three materials were used to build the architectural structures described in the previous paragraphs: wood, earth, and very occasionally, stone (chap. 11).

    4.1.1. Wood

    44Evidence of the use of timber is indirect and scarce, and is mainly based on the typology of the numerous “post holes”. Building B800 is a good illustration of this (chap. 6, fig. 6-9). The 44 cylindrical holes are less eroded than in Sector B and display a wide variety of diameters (7-35 cm), contours (corresponding to trunks or split wood) and depths. Here, as in other structures with post holes, including the Communal building, the central post is not necessarily larger than the other main weight-bearing posts (20 cm in diameter in B800), but is much more deeply rooted (75 cm in B800), or carefully wedged with sometimes massive stones weighing several dozen kilograms (Communal building). The estimated diameter of the other posts used in the architecture is between 15 and 20 cm (25 cm at the most). They served as secondary supports for reinforcing peripheral walls (in the downslope half, as explained above), internal partitions or door frames. A third category consists of posts (7-12 cm in diameter) used to entrench internal fittings or equipment, such as the side of the benches in building B800, probably made of wooden planks, placed on their sides and anchored in a small trench. We noted that some small-sized posts were paired in the peristyle of the Communal building, as in the residential constructions of Sectors B and F (fig. 33-10). This was probably to compensate for the previously mentioned relative scarcity of long, straight and thick wooden posts or to economise on shaping them. No remains of lithic macro-tools (adze, axe, etc.) were found at Klimonas, whereas such tools are often associated with timber work on the continent.

    Fig. 33-10 – Sub-nadiral view of building B800 (Sector F, chap. 6) under excavation, seen from the north. In the northern half, three pairs of small post holes can be seen, as well as the narrow but deep central post hole.

    Photo J.‑D. Vigne, CNRS.

    45Unlike at Khirokitia (Daune-Le Brun 2007), and probably also at Shillourokambos (Chazelle 2021), no evidence of massive fire was found at Klimonas. The analysis of imprints left in the burnt earth are usually used to clarify roof construction methods. At Klimonas, we can only postulate the use of finer poles, canes (available in the wetlands mentioned above), reeds (shown to have been worked by lithic microwear, chap. 15) or grasses and sedges (taxa identified in the form of phytoliths, chap. 22), interwoven in different ways on a light frame (Stordeur 2015) before being covered and mixed with raw earth.

    4.1.2. Earth (and stone)

    46On the other hand, the chaîne opératoire of earth preparation and application at Klimonas are much better known, owing to sedimentological and micromorphological analyses of the various architectural components (foundations, floors, benches, walls) of the Communal building and buildings B800 and B10 (Mylona et al. 2017, 2021, Mylona 2018; chap. 9). The local havara, carbonated colluvium or demolition material from previous buildings were used as basic constituents. After being soaked in water, they were crushed and to varying degrees, sorted, homogenised and mixed with an organic temper, mainly cereal husks, and secondarily straw from grasses and sedges. The latter were cut up beforehand, as suggested by the presence of fragmented phytoliths (chap. 22). The composition and quality of earth were adapted to the intended architectural function. For stony floors, floor base embankments and the bases of walls, benches or pillars, the material was mixed with stones, flints, broken macro-tool elements (chap. 16) or domestic waste (chap. 24). For walls, unformal floors, formal floors (sensu Karkanas and Efstratiou 2009) or bench finishes, a finer compound was selected and enriched with organic matter to varying degrees. Coating cannot be precisely characterised due to massive secondary carbonation, but the smaller graded materials were applied by mixing soaked earth and by direct shaping, sometimes by superimposing interlocking balls, sometimes beds of raw earth, using the cob or stratified cob technique (Chazelle 2008).

    47Finally, it is important to recall that floors (and certainly walls) were regularly re-plastered. At least in the third phase of the Communal building, some areas were covered with mats or straw (chap. 9). Some surfaces may possibly have been painted (chap. 6, figs. 7-65), as was the case at some contemporaneous continental sites (Stordeur and Ibáñez 2008, Coqueugniot 2014) and at Kalavasos-Tenta (Todd 2003). Some walls were probably decorated with fossilised marine mollusc (Glycymeris) valves embedded in raw earth (chap. 19).

    48Stone was only sometimes used to wedge the bases of posts, for thresholds and perhaps steps to the entrances of residential buildings, to reinforce floor and pillar bases and, in one case, to increase the surface area of the upslope wall of a large building (B10, chap. 7, fig. 7-39; fig. 33-11).

    Fig. 33-11 – East-west section of the mud wall (bauge) of building B10, leaning to the left against the only architectural arrangement of stones observed on the site (chap. 7).

    Photo J.‑D. Vigne, CNRS.

    49The cob technique used at Klimonas is relatively standard and comparable to its Pre-Pottery Neolithic counterparts described in Cyprus or in the Near East, at least where micromorphological analyses back up macroscopic observations (Le Brun 1984, 1989, Wattez and Courty 1996, Stordeur and Wattez 1998, Hourani 2003, 2011, Love 2013, Flohr et al. 2015, Stordeur 2015). Here, as on the continent, the development in the PPNA of the use of chaff as temper, by-products of cereal cultivation, is noteworthy (Willcox and Stordeur 2012). What is striking, however, is the very limited use of stone despite the availability of materials. Stone is sometimes massively used as a foundation and wall reinforcement, on northern Levantine PPNA sites in particular (Aurenche 1982, Stordeur 2015). The absence of rammed earth (pisé) or prefabricated modules (adobe) is also noteworthy. Although mudbricks appear around 9000 cal BC in the Jordan Valley and the Middle Tigris Valley (Bar-Yosef et al. 2010, Sauvage 2009, 2011), there is no evidence of them in Cyprus before the 7th millennium, where they were used alongside stone in a mixed system at Tenta (Todd 2003) and Khirokitia (Daune-Le Brun 2007). Only “proto-bricks” were found at Shillourokambos, in the early phase B (Chazelles 2011, Guilaine and Chazelle 2021). On the strength of the massive use of building earth, the technical system of Klimonas is firmly anchored in the sphere of PPNA practices. However, it can be described as relatively conservative, and assimilated to a less specialised version of technical variability, on account of the absence of the use of stone and mudbrick (chap. 9).

    4.2. Fire-related equipment

    50With the exception of the small, not very functional flat fireplace and the large hearth slabs in the Communal building (chap. 6), fire-related equipment is limited to very standardised fireplaces (chap. 12). These are sub-hemispheric pits with an average depth of 30 cm (fig. 33-12). There is one fire pit per residential building in practically all the buildings. The hearth is located inside the building, with the exception of building B800, which is equipped with a heated plate, suggesting the use of the well-known technique, in prehistory and up to the present day, of heating stones, pebbles or macro-tool fragments with a flame, in this case in a hearth outside the building, and then transferring them to a pit or, more rarely, to a plate. The frequent presence of heated stones in the inner hearths of the buildings in Sector B suggests the use of a similar practice to that found in building B800.

    Fig. 33-12 – Hearth pit of building B08 under excavation (chap. 7)

    Photo O. Armand, U. Paul Valéry.

    51The fact that these hearths are distributed at a rate of one per building is unusual for the PPNA (Finlayson et al. 2011) and could recall Natufian practices (Albukaai 2016). Another characteristic is the simplicity of the feature. It consists of a simple pit, accompanied in nine cases out of 19 by a small peripheral pit that may have served as a nightlight. Apart from the heating stones that sometimes remained in the hearth infilling, no stones were found bordering the combustion pit. This simplicity has already been observed at Shillourokambos (Guilaine and Gérard 2021) and contrasts with the sophistication of the dressed fireplaces observed on the mainland as early as the Natufian (Albukaai 2016). It may perhaps correspond either to a Cypriot tradition, or at least a tradition specific to the Amathus region. In any case, it is tempting to link this characteristic to the rarity of stones used for construction, highlighted earlier. We will come back to this later.

    4.3. Hydraulic equipment

    52A few sparse indications suggest the implementation of a system to control the circulation of runoff water in the village, or even water collection and storage (chap. 12). Evidence of such hydraulic structures, however rudimentary, could be related to a broad range of practices that appeared in the PPNA (Finlayson et al. 2011, Stordeur 2015, Clare 2020) and are better known in the PPNB (Molist Montaña 1996, Fujii 2013, Geyer and Coqueugniot 2013), including in Cyprus (Simmons 2012), where they played a major role in the impressive well of Shillourokambos (Guilaine et al. 2011) and Mylouthkia (Peltenburg 2003), which are the earliest traces of such installations known to date.

    4.4. Toolkit and utensils in stone or in hard animal matter

    4.4.1. Knapped stone tools (obsidian and flint)

    53Obsidian from Göllü Dağ (GD5: Kaletepe/Erikli Dere) is represented at Klimonas by a large and thick blade, a lateral blade and two bladelets. This is the oldest evidence of obsidian in Cyprus (chap. 14). However, this influx is very modest compared to the abundant bladelets found in the Cypro-PPNB at Shillourokambos (Briois et al. 1997, Briois and Astruc 2019) and to the even more numerous pieces found at Akanthou (Şevketoğlu and Hanson 2015).

    54In contrast, flint is very abundant. This stems from the abundance and proximity of this raw material and shows the importance of knapping activity in the village. Blocks were roughed out at the acquisition site, with a preference for translucent flint, and core preforms were brought back to the village. The low rate of use evidenced by microwear analysis (11%) indicates mixed flint tool production and use. All this could suggest that Klimonas was part of an exchange network comparable to the one mentioned by C. McCartney (2017) for Asprokremnos.

    55Flint chaînes opératoires are simple, economical and efficient. The main one concerns the production of small unidirectional blades from conical or pyramidal cores, as part of a well-controlled process (chap. 14, fig. 33-13). Cores could reach 15 and 23 cm in height in their initial phase and were carefully maintained during the knapping process. Bidirectional debitage was very marginal, unlike in the older phase of Shillourokambos, some 300-400 years more recent than Klimonas (Briois and Guilaine 2013). The main products were central blades with converging arrises and edges, which were the preferred blanks for the many projectile points found on the site. The latter can be divided into two main types: rhombic or triangular with a short tang. Their high fragmentation rate points to intense use for hunting, which is confirmed by microwear (chap. 15). The triangular type is similar to contemporaneous arrowheads of the Middle Euphrates (beginning of Mureybet phase III, Jerf el-Ahmar, Sheikh Hassan, Dja’de phase I; Coqueugniot 1994, Abbès 2007, 2008a), while the rhombic type recalls the Nemrik points of the Tigris valley. The latter are similar to the Asprokremnos arrowheads (McCartney 2011), which are distinguished, however, by a shorter or even convex base, lacking a true tang, according to technical variability also observed within the Nemrikian (Maeda 2018). Other blades were used without retouch or as blanks to produce varied domestic tool types, not very different to those from Asprokremnos. These are mainly burins and side scrapers, secondarily micro-perforators and sickle blades.

    Fig. 33-13 – Knapped flint (chap. 14 and 15): A, conical core for unidirectional blades (KL11-12, US 10.6) and B, arrowhead (KL11, St 47).

    Photos F. Briois, EHESS.

    56Microwear data attest to the use of lithic tools for a number of important activities. For subsistence, hunting (arrowheads with frequent impact marks) and grain harvesting (composite sickle inserts with longitudinal gloss) are well represented in the collection. Evidence of butchery, on the other hand, is much rarer and is limited to small filleting operations. A broad spectrum of small-scale work on a wide range of materials shows that numerous objects were produced in wood or other rigid plants, hide, bone, stone and shell. This diversified production is also observed in the Near Eastern Neolithic sites where no technical specialisation is discernible as regards the functional purpose of the industry. These activities correspond fairly well to what we would consider to be domestic activities. However, production specialisation is conceivable, as the size of the whole assemblage appears to indicate an extra-community distribution of the industry.

    4.4.2. Macro-tools

    57Macro-tools were shaped and used on site. They were often recycled for architectural purposes, and at times deposited in caches. The most suitable rock type was selected from the diverse available raw materials (diabase, gabbro, microgabbro, but also secondarily, limestone and flint), by choosing the mechanical properties best suited to the intended use (chap. 16). Hammers are the most abundant tools (42%), followed by grindstones and handstones (26%) and retouchers (13%; fig. 33-14). Each category of tools is characterised by a high degree of standardisation and careful shaping by hammering, polishing and, for grinding or milling, pecking. The toolkit bears witness to accomplished techniques and precise know-how. From a functional point of view, the rarity of mortars and pestles suggests that hulling was carried out with a grindstone after soaking the grains, using a method also assumed to have been used in the Northern Levant and on the Upper Tigris (Davis 1982, Moore et al. 2000). The study of traces and residues shows that handstones were also used to grind dyes, for hide processing and for hammering stones. These multiple uses account for their abundance at the site. Hammer stones were also often used to shape or rejuvenate grinding tools.

    Fig. 33-14 – Macro-tools (chap. 16): type 1 handstone with ochre residue (left) and retouchers/compressors (SU 604).

    Photos J. Robitaille, EHESS.

    58This industry is strongly oriented towards processing plant products, and particularly cereals. As such, it fits perfectly into the continental PPNA corpora of macro-tools, and marks a relative rupture with the Natufian. The reuse of elements in architecture is also widespread on the continent. Only retouchers, used to make flint tools and arrowheads, seem to be specific to Cyprus, perhaps because of the absence of deer antlers on the island at that time.

    4.4.3. Stone vessels

    59Stone vessels are much rarer and less sophisticated at Klimonas than at Shillourokambos (Manen 2017, 2021), Mylouthkia (Peltenburg et al. 2001), Ais Yorkis (Simmons 2012) or, even more so, Khirokitia. Vessels consist of bowls, mortar bowls, basins or dishes in soft limestone with very simple shapes, thick sides and sometimes irregular surfaces. They are seldom decorated (chap. 17). Residues of dyes reminiscent of those found on one of the three vessels from Asprokremnos (McCartney 2017) indicate that they were not only used for food preparation. Stoneware accompanied the development of the PPNA on the mainland. In comparison, at Klimonas, it appears to be particularly rare and crudely made.

    4.4.4. Bone tools

    60It would be tempting to explain the paucity of evidence of bone industry at Klimonas by poor overall bone preservation, given that very complete corpora are found at certain PPNA sites (Campana 1989, Le Dosseur 2011). In fact, it results at least as much from the inadequacy of bone blanks. At the beginning of the 9th millennium BC, Cyprus was lacking in ruminant or equine metapodials (as well as antlers), which are essential for making the quality PPNA bone tools found on the continent. In the wild boar skeleton, the only large mammal species in Cyprus between 10,500 and 8500 cal BC, the only sufficiently rectilinear, long or massive bone segments are the fibula and the distal half of tibiae. These two skeletal parts were exclusively used at Klimonas, in addition to a few rare large bird ulnas. The techniques applied are nevertheless those of the Levantine Pre-Pottery Neolithic: extraction by grooving, fracturing, rectifying (scraping or abrasion) and polishing. They were mainly applied to the manufacture of pointed tools (chap. 18). These poorly-standardised and often rapidly made tools fit well with the “puzzlingly simple” (Le Dosseur 2011) industry that prevails in both the Northern and Southern Levantine PPNA. Comparisons with the Cypro-PPNB and Khirokitia, when good use was made of the metapodials of ruminants introduced in the meantime (Legrand 2003, Le Dosseur and Stordeur 2011, Vigne 2011b, p. 914, Le Dosseur 2021), highlight the constraints exerted by island endemism during the Cypro-PPNA (Legrand-Pineau 2010).

    4.5. Shell and green stone ORNAMENTS and dyes

    61Flint tools were also used to manufacture adornments in shell, bone, tooth or local stones as part of everyday domestic production (chap. 19). The raw materials used are fossil shells, green rocks (mainly picrolite but also asbestos, serpentinite and malachite) or green, red, yellow or black dyes (chap. 21). On the basis of blocks of raw materials, blanks, preforms and finished and used objects found on the site, we were able to reconstruct several chaînes opératoires. These are not very standardised, and tend to be opportunistic and expedient, except for the manufacture of tubular beads on thick fossil Spondylus shells (fig. 33-15). The latter underwent rather elaborate technical processing. All these pieces were frequently deposited in caches or buried in architectural structures after use, indicating another symbolic function. Significant differences emerge in the composition of shell adornments in the three main sectors excavated at Klimonas: Spondylus and Glycymeris are over-represented in the Communal building while tusk shells (Dentalium) are clearly predominant in the residential buildings of sectors B and F. This distribution could point to the identity or social dimension of their respective uses.

    Fig. 33-15. Three items illustrating the chaîne opératoire for the manufacture of tubular beads on Plio-Pleistocene giant spondylus fossil shells (chap. 19).

    Photos and CAD S. Rigaud, CNRS.

    62Shell adornment differs little in style from that of the mainland PPNA (Bar-Yosef Mayer 2018). However, the preferential use of fossil blanks is noteworthy (and thus a relative disdain for shells from the seashore; chap. 19). The use of very large Plio-Pleistocene fossil Spondylus pebbles (Spondylus crassicosta) is specific to the Amathus region, since it has only been observed at Klimonas and in the early phases of Shillourokambos (Serrand and Vigne 2011, 2021, Rigaud et al. 2017). It could prefigure the more general trend in Spondylus shells in north-eastern Mediterranean ornaments in the 8th and 7th millennia (Perlès 2018). However, this trend concerns the present-day species, S. gaederopus, which has a much less massive test than that of S. crassicosta. Note, however, that the use of the latter for crafts is also mentioned in the Middle Neolithic of Sardinia (Manca 2013).

    63Tusk shells (Dentalium) are more abundant than in the mainland PPNA (especially in building B800), which could be related to an Epipaleolithic tradition or to a greater availability of the resource.

    64Many characteristics of the Klimonas adornments and their evolution between the Cypro-PPNA and Cypro-PPNB are similar to those found on the mainland. The multiple influences suggest links with different regions of the Near East.

    4.6. Acquisition, transformation and use of foodstuffs

    4.6.1. “Pre-domestic” cultivation and plant gathering

    65Very few carpological remains of cereals or imprints in burnt earth were found at Klimonas (chap. 23). However, other markers point to a relatively intensive cereal exploitation: the presence of sickle blades confirmed by microwear analysis (chap. 14 and 15), the abundance of macro-tools used for hulling and grinding (chap. 16), the intensive use of chaff and, secondarily, straw in earth material (chap. 9), the presence of broken phytoliths indicating the practice of crushing or chopping (chap. 22), the introduction of continental taxa such as emmer wheat (Triticum dicoccoides), einkorn (T. monococcum ssp. aegilopoides; chap. 23, fig. 33-16) and possibly rye (Secale sp.; chap. 22), and the presence of the commensal mouse of continental origin (Mus musculus domesticus; chap. 27). There is little doubt as to the cultivation of introduced or maybe also local cereals (barley, Hordeum spontaneum) with a still wild morphology. This is part of the same innovative drive as on the continent, described as “pre-domestic” (Willcox 2013), a teleological but nonetheless evocative term. This practice prefigures the development of Cypro-PPNB agriculture several centuries later at Mylouthkia, Shillourokambos, Tenta and Ais Yorkis (Murray 2003, Willcox 2003, 2021, Simmons 2012).

    Fig. 33-16 – Charred carporemains: A, grain of Triticum cf. monococcum (St 6668); B, spikelet fork of Triticum dicoccoides/dicoccum (SU 10.3); C, seed of Pistacia terebinthus (Sector B).

    Photos M. Rousou, MNHN.

    66Apart from cereals, the main fruits or seeds represented at Klimonas are pistachios (Pistacia terebinthus, P. atlantica), acorns (Quercus sp.), olives (Olea europaea), hackberries (Celtis tournefortii), figs (Ficus carica), mallows (Malva sp.), Galium nutlets (Galium sp.), wild grasses (chap. 23). The presence of Prunus sp. wood could point to an early introduction of the genus, which has been considered non-indigenous to Cyprus up until now. However, the absence of crucifers should be noted, perhaps due to taphonomic factors. Indeed, it is likely that the relatively low diversity mainly stems from poor preservation. It would therefore only reflect a small part of a nascent agricultural economy which must have primarily relied on the collection of a wide spectrum of wild seeds or fruits, as was the case on the mainland in the PPNA and in the later phases of the Cypriot Pre-Pottery Neolithic. The deep mortar in the floor of building B18 suggests the production of fermented beverages (chap. 11) and a much wider dietary, social and symbolic use of plants than is reflected in the carpological spectrum.

    4.6.2. Hunting and carcass processing

    67The abundant arrowheads (chap. 14), and particularly of fragments probably brought back to the village with carcasses (chap. 14 and 15), the generally unselective slaughter in terms of sex and age proportions, the absence of osteoarchaeological signs of captivity (chap. 30) and the rarity of foetal remains (chap. 29), all point to hunting as the sole means of acquiring the only large game present on the island at that time: the small endemic Cyprus wild boar (Sus scrofa circeus nov. ssp. Cucchi et al. 2021; chap. 30). The rest of the faunal spectrum, comprising only 7% of the identified vertebrate bones, also comes from hunting (great bustard, ducks, geese, raptors, pigeons, crows; chap. 26) or collecting (land tortoise, Testudo s.s.; chap. 25). The proportion of birds hunted at Klimonas is comparable to that observed in the PPNA (“Mureybetian”) phase of Mureybet (Gourichon 2004, vol. 2, tab. 4.3) or Jerf el-Ahmar.

    68The strategy for hunting wild boar mainly targeted females with offspring, and to a lesser extent, older solitary males, while animals under six months of age were spared (chap. 29). This activity was concentrated between late summer and early winter, outside labour-intensive farming periods, that can be considered as a low-risk and high-yield strategy (Peters et al. 2005, Gourichon 2004, Gourichon and Helmer 2008). It is particularly efficient in the form of drive-based hunts, in big packs or in association with dogs (chap. 27), both of which can reasonably be considered for Klimonas. Hunting was all the easier since, as we have already pointed out, the animals probably lived close to the village and may even have been attracted by human activities (crops, waste), as was the case at certain Anatolian sites prior to domestication (Rosenberg and Redding 1998, Ervynck et al. 2001, Lösch et al. 2006). Moreover, in the absence of any predators other than humans, the Cypriot boar must have proliferated (Vigne 2011b). Besides, insularity led to reduced locomotor capacities (chap. 30), making the Cypriot boar a somewhat less agile runner than its continental counterparts (Cucchi et al. 2021).

    69Apart from the relative importance of the great bustard, and the absence of the ungulates that dominated the mainland hunting scene alongside the wild boar (gazelles, cattle, equines, goats, deer, etc.; Gourichon and Horwitz 2021), this hunting-based animal resource acquisition strategy, like the strategy of targeting female wild boars with their young, fits perfectly into the PPNA context (Ervynck et al. 2001, Peters et al. 2005, Arbuckle 2016, Vigne et al. 2017b). It in no way prefigures the period, in Cyprus as in the Levant, of the first domestic ungulates (goats and cattle, then sheep), 400 years after the abandonment of Klimonas (Shillourokambos, ancient phase A), and even less that of animal husbandry at the turn of the eighth millennium (Shillourokambos, ancient phase B, middle and recent phases; Vigne 2011c, d, e, 2021b, Vigne et al. 2011b, c, Cucchi et al. 2021).

    5. Cultural and symbolic traits; social life

    5.1. Expression of the symbolic realm

    5.1.1. Three surprising absences: stone from architecture, seafood from the diet, burials

    70First of all, as we have seen, the very limited architectural use of stone at Klimonas is surprising (chap. 11), given that this material is available on the site and in its immediate surroundings (fig. 33-17). The absence of any marine produce (chap. 24) is even more puzzling, given the proximity of the coastline (fig. 33-17), located less than an hour’s walk away. In addition to these two marked omissions, we cannot overlook another, more discreet absence, namely the very limited number of human remains. Here, we discuss the possible symbolic or cultural significance of these apparent exclusions.

    Fig. 33-17 – View of the Klimonas terraces during the 2016 excavation season, seen from west, showing the abundance of stones in the immediate surroundings of the site, and the proximity of the sea.

    Photo J.‑D. Vigne, CNRS.

    71Stone is also absent from construction in the only other PPNA site in Cyprus, Asprokremnos (McCartney 2017), but not from any of the more recent Pre-Pottery settlements on the island. Even if raw earthwork is the dominant technical material for mainland PPNA architecture, such a radical exclusion of stone is unusual. This absence is accentuated in Klimonas by the exclusive use of earth and wood in the large Communal building, while stone was extensively used for its counterparts on the Continent. The only comparable site in this regard is Wadi Faynan 16 (Jordan, Mithen et al. 2011, Flohr et al. 2015), where very limited stone was used with cob, including in the architecture of communal buildings. In contrast to Klimonas, stone was nevertheless used for foundations, in the thickness of some walls and for various other structures (Mithen 2020). The exclusion of stone from the architecture of Wadi Faynan 16 is thus not as radical as in Klimonas.

    72This Cypro-PPNA characteristic involves greater architectural precariousness, frequent maintenance and more regular reconstruction. This exclusion of stone also applies to hearths, which contain no stone structures. It does not extend to flint tools or macro-tools, of course, but can also be seen in the paucity of stone vessels, in contrast to many other Pre-Pottery sites. Likewise, the scarcity of symbolic stone objects, limited to ornaments, a few anthropomorphic figurines bordering on the abstract, and rare grooved stones with simplified motifs, contrasts with the abundant statuary of the continental PPNA and could perhaps be linked to the virtual absence of stone in buildings. In any case, this virtual absence of stone appears to be a cultural trait specific to Klimonas, perhaps even to the Cypro-PPNA.

    73Marine produce, either fish, crustaceans or molluscs, is absent from Klimonas (where they are only represented by fossil shells found on land (chap. 19), but also in the Cypro-PPNB of Shillourokambos. In this latter site, marine shells (Serrand and Vigne 2011, 2021) and fish are almost absent in the early and middle phases, with the exception of the remains of a few very large groupers (Desse and Desse-Berset 2003, 2011, Desse-Berset et al. 2021). They make a feeble appearance in the recent phase, but with a certain diversity. Seafood is also poorly represented at Khirokitia, especially in comparison to the contemporaneous coastal site of Cape Andreas-Kastros. Whether this reflects a progressive bipolarisation of the Pre-Pottery settlement of Cyprus between strictly coastal and ichthyophagous groups, on the one hand, and village-based groups turning their backs on the coastline and fish foods, on the other, as proposed by Desse and Desse-Berset (2003), remains an open question. Regardless, such a strict and long-lasting (almost two millennia) dietary exclusion is more likely to evoke a kind of “taboo” or prohibition. Such a rejection would thus underline the strong symbolic connotation of the sea for the villagers of Klimonas.

    74This restriction could be compared to the lack of interest that the inhabitants of PPNA sites along the Euphrates showed for food from the river (Gourichon 2004), in contrast with the riverside sites of the Tigris valley (Coşkun et al. 2010, Itahashi et al. 2017). However, this relative disdain is not really comparable to the Cypriot “taboo”, since the latter only concerned marine products, not freshwater crabs. Moreover, it is impossible to ascertain whether the inhabitants of Klimonas would have refused to eat freshwater fish, since there is no indigenous freshwater fish fauna on the island. The comparison is further weakened by the difference in size of the two rivers bordering these sites, the Athiaki in Cyprus and the Euphrates in Syria, and by the lack of a true coastal continental point of comparison. It should be noted, however, that fish from the Jordan River were not neglected by the PPNA in Palestine (Bar-Yosef and Gopher 1997a, Bar-Yosef et al. 2010).

    75More generally, it is important to emphasise the strict, total and long-lasting character of the dietary exclusions concerning Cypriot marine foods in the 9th millennium BC. Apart from the well-known prohibitions specific to certain major monotheistic religions, an interesting parallel concerns Tasmanian Aborigines before colonization. It is worth summarising here as it points to a possible island-context influence. Based on the reports of explorers and then ethnologists of the 18th and early 19th centuries, as well as on rich and precise archaeozoological analyses, R. Jones (1978) established that the mainly coastal Tasmanians abruptly, totally and definitively ceased to consume fish about 3500 years ago. Yet fish fauna had previously accounted for more than half of animal content in their diet, as was the case for all coastal Aborigines in Australia. Jones does not mention any formalized ban – “they showed positive abhorrence at the thought of fish being human food” (p. 20) – but speaks of a “deliberate cultural choice” (p. 44) that can only be explained through a structural approach (p. 45). In the spirit of the social Darwinism dear to him (Bowdler 1980, Jones 1980), he interprets this as economic maladaptation (p. 45) and explains the long persistence of this maladaptation by low competitive pressure between a low number of small human groups living on a vast and rich territory (68,400 km²) and by the absence of a more competitive economic model (“lack of better competing neighbouring economies”, p. 46). Unlike for the Cypriot PPN, this exclusion does not extend to all seafood, since langoustines, abalone and marine animals other than teleosts and chondrichthyans continue to be routinely exploited in a socially and technically well-organized manner. For Tasmanians, the “ban” was thus a matter of ichthyophobia, concerning the sea as well as fresh water. Bearing this difference in mind, it is clear that the rigidity, geographical extent and millennial duration of this seafood exclusion, as well as the fact that it at least partly concerns the same zoological groups in both places, establishes a link between these geographically, culturally and historically very distant but both insular examples.

    76The third peculiarity noted at Klimonas is the scarcity of human remains. Only 13 human remains were recorded at the site (chap. 32), in comparison to the 6602 identified animal bones (0.2%). This could simply signify that the burials were strictly restricted in an area that our excavations did not encounter, or completely destroyed by erosion. This hypothesis cannot be ruled out, even though it does not correspond to known Pre-Pottery practices on the nearby mainland, where intense mortuary activity is often (but not always) recorded on sites, since the Epipalaeolithic. This typically takes the form of burials or the deposition of body parts in villages, under the floors of houses (Nemrik, Netiv Hagdud, Gilgal I…), or in outdoor areas (Hatula, Jericho, Mureybet, Mallaha, Çayönü… Aurenche and Kozlowski 1999).

    77Moreover, the nature and distribution of the 13 human remains from Klimonas also point to a specific system of funerary practices rather than the hypothesis of bad archaeological luck. For the spatial and anatomical distribution of these remains does not appear to be random: they are exclusively composed of small head bone fragments (eight of which from skullcaps; chap. 32), reminiscent of amulets by their size and shape. In three cases, the bone is burnt. Ten out of the 13 human remains were found in the Communal building. One of them was clearly deposited in a small pit within the northern bench (chap. 5, fig. 33-18), suggesting strong symbolic connotations. These practices contrast with those of the Cypro-PPNB of Shillourokambos, Mylouthkia, Ais Yorkis, Tenta and the sites of the Khirokitia culture, all of which are marked by the burial of bodies or body fragments in the village, as well as by the presence of collective burials (Fox et al. 2003, Le Mort et al. 2008, 2021), but never by the deposition of isolated skulls or parts of skulls in small numbers and in a communal location.

    Fig. 33-18 – Fragment of human left parietal hidden in a small pit inside the earthen bench of the Communal building (KL12, St 186).

    Photo J.‑D. Vigne, CNRS.

    78On the other hand, these characteristics can be related to the careful treatment of skulls on the mainland. As early as the Epipalaeolithic, skulls were removed and underwent very elaborate procedures in the PPNB (Stordeur and Khawam 2007, Kuijt 2008, Bocquentin et al. 2016). In the PPNA, skulls were often associated with monumental architecture (Gresky et al. 2017, Hadad 2019b), even at sites otherwise devoid of human remains, such as Jerf el-Ahmar, where the ritual also takes the form of an acephalous corpse in one of the communal buildings (Stordeur 2015). Various explanations can be put forward to account for the absence of the rest of the body and of other corpses (cremation, remains left to scavengers or entrusted to the waters…), and different hypotheses have attempted to grasp the underlying motivations of the focus on skulls (taking of trophies, ancestor worship, etc.), but none has yet solved the enigma. Klimonas thus provides new elements in this regard. It is part of a PPNA tradition, to which it adds a focus on the manipulation of small “portable” fragments, perhaps as a sign of increased mobility, or of a less assertive link to places and settlements.

    5.1.2. Figurines, statuettes, art objects

    79In the domain of symbolic expression, it is important to mention the role of picrolite, already briefly cited above. Picrolite was used as early as the Epipalaeolithic at Akrotiri-Aetokremnos (Simmons 1999, fig. 6.8), but really seemed to take off during the PPNA at Klimonas. No object made in picrolite, which is local to the island, has ever been found to date in the mainland. However, the use of green rocks, valued for the manufacture of ornaments or remarkable objects, is quite widespread in the Neolithic. In the Levant, they were sought out for making jewellery and symbolic pieces as early as the Natufian period, and were systematically selected thereafter in the form of apatite, amazonite, serpentinite, copper minerals (Porat and Bar Yosef Mayer 2008). Later, in the West, Andalusian variscite was exploited for the same purpose. As early as the Early Neolithic, imports of this material reached certain LBK sites in the Paris Basin in the sixth millennium, some 2000 km away, before becoming the venerated rock of the Armorican Middle Neolithic (Querré et al. 2019). This wide-ranging quest for green rocks could be associated with vegetation and fertility, with the colour symbolizing plant growth (Porat and Bar Yosef Mayer 2008). This early focus on green material may have sparked off interest in copper ores, accounting for the antiquity of the earliest copper objects at several PPNB sites (Tell Qaramel, Cayönu, Aşıklı, Halula).

    80The anthropomorphic representations found at Klimonas are extremely schematic and reveal a rather sober design (chap. 20, fig. 33-19). Whereas at Asprokremnos, a clay-modelled head of a figurine, characterised by two bulges (ears? eyes?) could be compared to a specimen from the Levantine site of Gilgal I (Manning et al. 2010, McCartney 2010), the Klimonas productions are much more schematic and consist of cylinders or limestone cones, with the waist marked by a median incision. This bipartite division into “minimalist” morphologies corresponds to an anthropomorphic outline divided into an upper part representing the head and torso, and a lower part combining the pelvis and legs. This abdominal delimitation was later found in many “schools” or training centres of figurine production, highlighted by the representation of a belt (Guilaine 2022). As mentioned above, in three instances, these objects were found in association with a pit dug into the floor of a building.

    Fig. 33-19 – Limestone anthropomorphic figurines: A, Sector B, out of context; B, Sector F – St 857, ISO F22.

    Photos F. Briois, EHESS.

    81The only more figurative piece, closer to continental PPNA standards, was a large picrolite pendant (chap. 19, fig. 33-20), found under the threshold stone of building B10.

    Fig. 33-20 – Anthropo-zoomorphic picrolite pendant (ISO B040), in situ under the threshold stone of building B10 (chapters 7 and 19).

    Photos S. Rigaud and J.‑D. Vigne, CNRS.

    5.1.3. “Caches”

    82“Caches” (in the sense of the term used by Astruc et al. 2003) or hidden deposits were identified in all the architectural components of the residential and communal buildings. Some empty pits, as well as a group of 39 blades on the floor of B17, could indicate practices of “storage” for later use. In this case, the deposits would be related to technical use. Conversely, they could also result from practices related to building abandonment: recovery of elements for empty pits, closing deposits in the case of blades. However, only objects or groups of objects that remained “hidden” can be considered to provide reliable information on symbolic practices (chap. 13). The systematic nature of these deposits rules out the hypothesis of forgotten elements and underlines their intentionality.

    83In the floors of buildings, objects were deposited in small, often irregular pits, some of which were certainly sealed with plaster (foundation deposit), whereas others were not (closing deposit). Building B800 is a particularly illustrative example of this (chap. 6). Other deposits were found in foundation trenches and at the base of walls, at the bottom of post holes (especially central ones), under sloping entrances or threshold stones, and in raw earth benches. Except for the deposit in post-holes, which may result of their dismantlement, this entanglement with architectural materiality necessarily resulted from foundation or construction rituals.

    84The nature of the deposit varies. Some consist of mundane objects, others can be remarkable artefacts or assemblages, or even concave structures covered by later developments.

    85The mundane objects include fragments of raw material (e.g., dyes or boar tibias used for tool making), preforms, stone or bone tools, or ornaments that may or may not have been used. The same category of object or material sometimes recurs in the architectural elements of the same building: Spondylus and Spondylus objects in building B17, bone tool elements in B10 (chap. 7).

    86The remarkable artefacts are anthropomorphic conical stone figurines (chap. 20, fig. 33-19), found in association with ochre, embedded in the floors of some residential buildings (B05, B09, B800). The most beautiful ornaments, namely in green rock, were hidden under threshold stones or entrance ramps (chap. 19; fig. 33-20). Other notable objects include a whole upturned stone bowl, above-average-sized arrowheads, a whole decorated shaft straightener bearing traces of use, the finest bone punch found on the site, very regular unused handstones, a very young boar skull and mandible. They were all buried at the base of ­foundation trenches or earth walls. Above mentioned small human skull “shards” hidden in the benches of the Communal building are probably related to a similar practice. Some unused quality tools were also hidden (chap. 16): were they made exclusively for this purpose? Could this partly explain the large proportion of unused tools at the site (chap. 15)?

    87The remarkable assemblages are flint blades (five caches of three to nine pieces in B800, 40 blades in a former post hole in B07-B08), or sets of boar bones (about fifteen deposits unevenly distributed between seven buildings: B09, B10, B17, B25-27, B800; St 10; chap. 31, fig. 33-21A). These include two complex assemblages: a series of four right scapulae at different stages of growth, between one and 10 months old, but above all an astonishing “pseudo-anatomical” arrangement of a mandibular symphysis of an old male, with two large tusks, roughly joined to a hemi-maxilla of a young adult male, as well as two vestigial metapodials, bony supports of the dewclaws well known to hunters for the characteristic trace it leaves on the ground (chap. 31, fig. 33-21B). These two assemblages were buried in the earth wall base of buildings B10 and B25, respectively. The allusion to hunting is clearly combined with a reference to growth stages, to the succession of generations or some form of (seasonal?) renewal. This symbolism would be in keeping with a ritual dedicated to the construction of a new building on the rubble of the old one.

    Fig. 33-21 – A, Flint blades « cache » (St 6818) in the B07-08 building floor; B, « Cache » at the base of the B26 building wall, composed of the careful arrangement of the cranial rostrum and abaxial finger bones of several wild boars.

    Photos F. Briois, EHESS, and J.‑D. Vigne, CNRS.

    88Alongside these “hidden” objects, it is important to mention concave structures dug out to varying degrees that may have been used for variable periods of time before being covered by architectural elements or under new buildings. This is the case of a “mosaic” pit (chap. 12) covered by the wall of B28, but also perhaps of the two “mosaic” pits in the Communal building. This may also be the case for the havara pit in sector B, at the base of which a female stone figurine with a broken-off head was deposited (chap. 7 and 20). Half of the hearth-pits were emptied of their functional contents and filled with silt, often containing remarkable objects. These include two identical assemblages of three basalt spheres associated with a stone retoucher, in two adjacent buildings (B10 and B18). Other remarkable objects (ornaments, handstones) were also found in non-emptied hearths.

    89The frequency and diversity of these depositional practices indicate the high degree of awareness of the inhabitants of Klimonas with regard to the remains of their architectural activities, even when “hidden”. This was also the case in other Pre-Pottery Cypriot (Le Brun 2003) or continental (Hadad 2018) societies. Despite the relative fragility of the buildings and the short duration of site occupation, these hidden deposits demonstrate the ritualised nature of technical actions such as dismantling and construction. Perhaps the accelerated rhythm of the renewal of built structures, as a result of the scant use of stone, bestowed specific importance on the ritual effectiveness of these “hidden deposits”.

    5.1.4. Symbolic practices related to animals

    90Some symbolic practices related to animals cannot be linked to the three striking absences highlighted above (5.1.1.), nor to hiding or accumulating objects in buildings.

    91These concern in particular dog remains. Around 90% of the 35 dog remains discovered on the site were found in the Communal building, in the form of deposits under the entrance ramp, in earth floors or in the benches of the first two phases (chap. 27). The analogy with the rarity and location of human remains is striking and may point to a close symbolic association between deceased humans and the dog, the only definitely domesticated animal found at Klimonas. No equivalent situation is known on the continent, but the widely described association between burials and dogs on Natufian sites in Palestine springs to mind (Davis and Valla 1978, Tchernov and Valla 1997, Valla 2008). Here, it could indicate that the dog carries a strong psychopomp value, on top of being linked to hunting and ­scavenging.

    92Other species were probably imbued with symbolic values, such as the great bustard, depicted on a green rock pendant (chap. 19, figs. 19-35), or the blunt-nosed viper, which is curiously rather well represented in the herpetofauna, as it was at Akrotiri (chap. 25). This latter animal is also an important element of the continental PPNA symbolic realm (Helmer et al. 2004).

    93However, the boar is clearly the most important animal in the Cypriot PPNA “bestiary” (chap. 31). A marked anomaly in the slaughter profile of the remains in the Communal building indicates that young individuals, killed between six and nine months of age, were probably consumed there, between late summer and early autumn. The main, if not exclusive, implication of this focus on animals less than a year old, in collective rituals perpetrated at the beginning of the hunting season, evokes the idea of seasonal renewal (the birth of the young) and the succession of generations, like the remarkable deposits mixing young and adult animals mentioned above. A lack of cranial elements also suggests that some practices concerning the head elude us.

    94On the other hand, we note an over-representation of mandibular symphyses bearing tusks, unusual objects very similar to those of Bonçuklu (PPNB, Central Anatolia; L. Martin, pers. comm.). They are sometimes even deposited in “caches”. The wild boar may thus have played a symbolic role equivalent to that of another “bi-pointed” animal at the same period on the continent, the aurochs. The absence of the latter in Cyprus suggests a transfer of symbolic value from the aurochs to the boar.

    95On the mainland, the diversified PPNA species carried a wide range of symbolic values (Helmer et al. 2004). In Cyprus, these symbolic values were restricted to a reduced number of taxa, consisting mainly of wild boar and the dog, as in other well-known island areas with limited biodiversity, such as Corsica (Vigne 1995).

    5.1.5. Orientation and internal organization of buildings

    96We highlighted (chap. 11) the relatively constant northeast orientation of building entrances in the successive phases of the Communal building or in residential structures. This was interpreted as a technical adaptation designed to prevent the prevailing winds (and the often very heavy rains that accompany them nowadays) from blowing into these rather fragile buildings. The position of the fireplace inside residential buildings is quite variable, but it is regularly located in the half opposite the entrance. Other features, such as hiding places for deposits in the walls, are probably not randomly located, but given the small number of cases, no general pattern can be outlined. In the Communal building, the main northeast/southwest axis imposed by the position of the entrance (to the northeast) is superimposed by a symmetry based on the cardinal points, which we have proposed to interpret – again in a very materialistic way – as the consequence of an adaptation to the direction of the slope (oriented north-south).

    97In both cases, however, we cannot rule out the possibility that a symbolic dimension may have been taken into consideration as much as weather or mechanical constraints. Pre-Pottery Neolithic buildings in the Near East are often divided in a such a way (Baird et al. 2016). And we cannot ignore the fact that these same directions (N-S and NE/SW) guide the orientation of the deceased in the Natufian tombs of Mallaha and Hayonim (Valla 2008). More generally, the anthropological repertoire provides numerous examples of the symbolic polarisation of settlements, dwellings or the activities that took place there. This is the case, for example, among Siberian peoples, where the material space of the tent or yurt is structured by the entrance, the hearth and various remarkable deposits. These areas correspond to several other material or virtual spaces (the human body, the territory, virtual worlds in which the shaman travels) in a system structured by pairs of opposites (right-left, top-bottom, man-woman, sun-moon, reindeer-bear, etc.). A shaman can cross through all these spaces, made familiar to everyone owing to the decorations on his costume or his drum (Stépanoff 2022). Comparisons should only be cautiously attempted, but it would be absurd to ignore the fact that the meagre archaeological markers at our disposal potentially bear an unsuspected semantic dimension.

    5.1.6. An “impoverished” replica of the PPNA

    98The relative richness and diversity of the symbolic manifestations recorded at Klimonas, particularly those related to the animal world, are central to major trends specific to the PPNA, in rupture with Natufian traditions. They bear witness to the transformation of mentalities at the beginning of the Neolithic (Cauvin 1994, Helmer et al. 2004, Peters and Schmidt 2004). The successive demolition-reconstruction of the Communal building (and residential buildings), which should also be seen as being part of common Pre-Pottery practices (Hodder 2018, Hadad 2019a), completes this picture of an island fully imbued with PPNA cultural traditions. However, in the absence of stone and the more monumental elements bearing engravings or sculptures present on many mainland sites, the material expression of this symbolic realm is less spectacular than for other PPNA sites known so far. Paradoxically, the statuary is somewhat richer and more attractive at Asprokremnos than at Klimonas, although not enough to erase the impression of “impoverishment” emanating from this Cypriot PPNA. Yet it is important to recognize, in this sobriety, the creativity of a community confronted with the absence of the main symbolic referents of the continent.

    5.2. Manifestations of social life

    5.2.1. Expressions of individual or group identity

    99The diversity of adornments (fig. 33-22), possibly worn as pendants, on clothing or in the hair (chap. 19), probably reflects a complex system of inter-individual or inter-group differentiation, as at many continental Pre-Pottery Neolithic sites. The same was probably true of the abundant and diversified dyes (chap. 21) that may have been used, if not for body paint, at least for dyeing clothing. The specialisation of certain “caches” installed in the foundation trenches of residential buildings could underline a preoccupation with the expression of the identity of inhabitants, of a possible “household”, or perhaps even of a supra-domestic affiliation (lineage, initiatory societies…). Furthermore, the technicity of the chaîne opératoire, as well as the perpetuation of numerous traditions rooted in the continental PPNA, point to an organized system of knowledge transmission.

    Fig. 33-22 – Zoomorphic pendant (great bustard?) made of green rock.

    Photo S. Rigaud, CNRS.

    100Leaving aside these ultimately rather banal observations, the absence of burials may seem to be a deterrent for evaluating possible status differences between individuals, through funerary rites, for instance, or the anthropological and genetic characteristics of the deceased. Pre-Pottery mortuary practices are, however, notoriously difficult to interpret in terms of status, power or wealth. Even on sites with varied and sophisticated practices, they do not appear to express an unequivocal inter-individual differentiation. In Klimonas, two potential levels of social integration emerge: housing structures (a term we prefer here to “household”, as it is more sociologically neutral) and the village.

    5.2.2. Attempt at a social interpretation of the residential buildings

    101Klimonas, as we have seen, is characterised by highly standardised fire pits, imbued with symbolic value (chap. 12), and found in all the medium and large residential buildings in the three excavated sectors. They are, however, absent from the Communal building. These fireplaces for private use contrast with the shared and often more sophisticated fire-related structures of continental PPNA sites or of the subsequent Pre-Pottery Neolithic period in Cyprus, at Shillourokambos or at Khirokitia (of which only one example is known at Klimonas, near the large building B800). As such, they could be related to forms of social organization more similar to the Epipalaeolithic or to an early PPNA (Stordeur 2015) than to that of continental sites contemporaneous with Klimonas.

    102In chap. 11, we saw that the two cupmark stones were found in small buildings (in a layout documented in southern Jordan, Finlayson et al. 2011), in addition to the almost systematic hearth-pit, leading us to consider that these spaces were used for craft purposes. This idea that “household” organization encompassed several buildings could not be verified on the basis of spatial organization and the differentiation of structures. However, this functional interpretation does not rule out the possibility that areas used for crafts were shared by several or all of the domestic groups. This would thus reduce the importance of the private domain in an economy marked by the importance of collective activities. In this case, and contrary to what the notion of “household” suggests, residential units would not necessarily correspond to production units. By excluding the smallest buildings from the domestic realm, this hypothesis also reduces the range of variation in the size of “houses” (between 22 and 28 m²), and argues in favour of a low level of inter-group inequality as well as a low estimate of village demography (chap. 11).

    103On the other hand, we could almost as easily consider any building with a pit hearth as a domestic structure on its own, and thus accept the idea that domestic and artisanal activities were grouped together in the same housing structures. This organization has already been suggested for the Natufian (Valla 2008). At Klimonas, this would imply that all buildings were residential units, with a few rare exceptions. This would reinforce the importance of hearths as a basic unit of socio-­economic organization, as well as accentuating disparities in size between “houses” (from 10 to 28 m², between B07 and B800), and ­inter-group inequality and average estimates of village demography. However, given this disparity and the amplified differences in house size, this hypothesis relies on the primacy of a supra-domestic level of social organization, which could be materialised by the Communal building, consistent with classic functionalist models of village structure at the beginning of the Neolithic (Flannery 1972).

    104Depending on which of these postulates is adopted, the disparity in surface areas of residential buildings is 20% (6 m² difference for the first hypothesis) and 60% (18 m² difference) respectively. Despite the systematic occurrence of private hearths, these figures are of the same order of magnitude as in several other continental PPNA villages (tab. 33-1) and appear to be very low compared to Khirokitia. This difference with the latter site could be explained by the existence, at Khirokitia, of households composed of several buildings organized around a shared domestic area (Le Brun 2021). No equivalent organization has been identified in Klimonas, nor in the rest of the PPNA.

    Tab. 33-1 – Comparison of the minimum and maximum areas of residential buildings in some sites of the continental PPNA. Data from Aurenche and Kozłowski (1999).

    Surface (m²)MinMaxMax-Min%
    Nemrik9,619,61051,0
    Hallan Cemi3242187,5
    M’lefaat18442659,1
    Netiv Hagdud12,563,651,180,3
    Gilgal I7201365,0
    Klimonas Hyp 12228621,4
    Klimonas Hyp 210281864,3
    Khirokitia466,562,593,98

    105Comparisons with contemporaneous continental sites are impeded by the fact that architectural variability is not necessarily expressed by inequalities in building surface areas. Instead, the degree of internal complexity (as in the transition from Gilgal to the neighbouring and more recent sites of Netiv Hagdud and Jericho, Bar-Yosef et al. 2010), variations in shape or modes of collective organization (Finlayson et al. 2011) are more often deemed to be significant. In Jerf el-Ahmar, for example, the proximity of the Communal building has been interpreted as generating a hierarchy that seems to have become more pronounced over time (Stordeur 2015). No such evidence exists at Klimonas, where building shapes recur at different scales, and no correlation between the surface area of buildings and their proximity to the Communal building has been detected, and where the latter, occupies a central position in the village (like building EA30 of level II/west Jerf el-Ahmar, and in contrast to other levels and to other continental sites). It is important to recall that the largest residential building excavated at Klimonas, B800, is the furthest from the centre of the site. It is also the building with the highest degree of internal complexity, although this may be the result of less significant erosion. With the exception of the latter case, if the size, shape and spatial organization of settlement structures reflect social structure to any extent, then the village group at Klimonas appears to be very undifferentiated.

    106Two trends emerge from this attempt at a social reading of residential construction. The first one is the private concentration of some attributes, like the hearth pits. This could reflect the relative importance of the domestic group, either as residential units within an egalitarian whole (first hypothesis), or as a ­differentiated unit of production (second hypothesis). The second trend is the low degree of general variability and possible hierarchisation of buildings compared to other contemporaneous continental sites or to more recent Cypriot sites.

    5.2.3. Communal organization

    107In any case, this organization of settlement structures is marked by a strong collective leaning. In this respect, the village of Klimonas is even more clearly related to the PPNA tradition. This level of social integration is of course materialised on the site by the Communal building, with its complex history marked by several episodes of demolition-reconstruction, and the activities that took place there.

    108The construction of this building (fig. 33-23), which is among the most spacious in the PPNA, required the excavation and displacement of 70 m3 of havara and carbonated colluvium, i.e., a mass of around 140 tonnes. If we take the benchmark put forward by one of us (Hadad 2019a) of 1.5 person-days/m3, we can estimate the digging effort at 105 person-days, in addition to the building of a peripheral earth wall with a total volume of 10 m3, and the laying of a 1.25-to-1.9-tonne-roof on a dozen or so deeply anchored supports (chap. 5). Such a construction event was clearly carefully planned in advance and could only be the result of a well-orchestrated collective effort, mobilising the energy of a significant part of the village’s workforce over several days or weeks. However, this mobilisation is inferior to the assumed efforts for certain similar, smaller but more deeply buried buildings on the mainland (Mureybet, Jerf el-Ahmar). Indeed, the extra labour required by the large surface area of the Klimonas building still represents less effort than that required for digging a deeper pit and building more massive structural elements (Hadad 2017).

    Fig. 33-23 – Attempt to reconstruct the semi-underground Communal building of Klimonas.

    CAD J.‑D. Vigne, CNRS.

    109Each of the successive demolition and rebuilding phases also required collective energy and involved significant organization and effort. As the new structure was built directly on the rubble of the old one, inhabitants did not have to dig a pit. However, the installation, dismantling and levelling of former buildings must have represented a considerable amount of work, obviously driven by the choice to maintain the building in the same place at all costs, even if it gradually became less buried as time went by.

    110The upkeep of the building also required organization, no doubt on a seasonal basis, and a devolution of labour to the community. We saw earlier that certain parts of the floor were covered with mats or straw and that runoff water accidentally entering the building must have been periodically drained (phase 3; chap. 9). Collective efforts were probably also necessary for the maintenance of supplies possibly stored in the building, as well as the organization of ritual activities, assemblies or banquets, the indirect evidence of which is be found in structures inside the building (benches, hearth floors) and the overabundance of wild boar bones from the year.

    111Other village facilities and activities mentioned earlier, such as hydraulic installations, but also harvests, crop protection, and group hunting, may also have involved collective actions. These would have been organized throughout the year with temporalities staggered between annual seasonal activities (agriculture, hunting, building maintenance, etc.), the more or less decennial reconstruction of the community building, and possible multi-decennial village mobility.

    112The drastic reduction in the size of the entrance to the Communal building between phases 1 and 2 again raises the question of inequalities. A 3-m-wide entrance such as that observed during the first phase of use suggests a widely opened space. It was subsequently restricted to a width of 80 cm, with a roofed corridor, suggesting greater control over access to the interior of the building. This recalls the sometimes-cramped entrance arrangements or concealed spaces known on the continent. In comparison to the latter, the Klimonas structure is not only relatively spacious, open and light, but also requires - as we have seen - less construction effort (Hadad 2019a). If, therefore, this building represents the most inclusive and least coercive pole of a shared architectural model, should we interpret its transformation as a desire to curb this “egalitarian” tendency without being able to rely on greater collective mobilisation? Should it be seen as a desire for a more rigorous selection of participants in the activities that took place there? Or, more simply, as a structural response to increased visibility of the inside space as the building became less deeply buried? Was it to hide the building from unauthorised onlookers? Or, more prosaically, was it to ensure a better protection of the space and the probable supplies stored inside it? These possible explanations are obviously not mutually exclusive.

    113As these questions lead to others, the aim is not so much to elicit clear and definitive answers as to formulate avenues for comparative reflection. Which parts of society were admitted to the building and how did it evolve during the decades of village settlement? Did inequalities increase, as the size and complexity of the residential building B800 also seem to suggest, and if so, did these inequalities date from a recent or final phase of site occupation? Could this have been a trigger for the early abandonment of a village engaged on a path well-known on the mainland, but frowned upon in Cyprus?

    114Finally, could this large building have been used for inter-communal activities, as some authors have suggested for Göbekli or Wadi Feynan (Schmidt 2005, Finlayson 2018)? Unfortunately, we have no information on relations between the inhabitants of Klimonas and other mobile or sedentary neighbouring groups, except for the above-mentioned hypothesis of the exchange of stone tools produced in large quantities from local deposits of good-quality flint. Picrolite, the most distant natural resource from the site, could be a possible counterpart.

    6. Klimonas and the history of the Cypriot Neolithic

    115Table 33-2 outlines the emergence and progress of the different innovations throughout the history of the Epipalaeolithic and the Cypriot Pre-Pottery Neolithic, between 10,500 and 5500 cal BC. Here, we will limit our discourse to a few general comments, and open up a broader chrono-cultural focus.

    Tab. 33-2 – Comparison of the main features of Klimonas (Cypro-PPNA) with those of Akrotiri-Aetokremnos (Epipaleolithic), Parekklisia-Shillourokambos (early to late Cypro-PPNB), Kalavassos-Tenta (late Cypro-PPNB and Khirokitia culture) and Khirokitia.

    116We will merely mention the two sites of Aspros and Nissi Beach, considered to be the earliest evidence of settlement in Cyprus, as the diagnostic elements found there were not observed in situ in the stratigraphy, and no fauna or isotopic dates are associated with the material. The chronology of both sites is thus uncertain and solely based on a typological comparison of the lithic industries (Ammerman 2014, Kaczanowska et al. 2014, Kaczanowska and Kozłowski 2014). Fragmentary data from Vretsia-Roudias are probably related to the Epipalaeolithic (Efstratiou 2012, Efstratiou et al. 2017), but also lack accurate dates. They appear to go back to around 10,800 cal BC, at the most (Tsakalos et al. 2021). In layer 2 of the Akrotiri-Aetokremnos shelter, more reliable chronological data indicate that hunter-gatherers camped under the porch at around 10,500 cal BC. The lithics found at the site include circular scrapers and several raw materials from the island. These populations were already familiar with some of the flint outcrops in the Lefkara formation (used for their productions) and picrolite (Simmons 1999). They had thus already travelled through several geographic sectors of the island. These hunter-gatherers, currently considered as some of the first inhabitants of Cyprus, may have set up open-air camps, in the same way as contemporaneous Natufian or Khiamian settlements on the mainland. However, apart from the possible example of Roudias (Efstratiou et al. 2017), these fleeting camps have yet to be identified. It is important to recall that hamlets, or even permanent settlements emerged in the Levant at that time, with circular constructions on cut-out slopes or curvilinear arrangements at the foot of rocky walls (Abbès 2008b, Valla 2008, Bar-Yosef and Valla 2013). Ongoing research by our team at the site of Paktomena (Armenokhori; Briois and Vigne 2022) aims to shed light on this little-known phase of Cypriot Prehistory.

    117The foundation of Klimonas, around 8800 cal BC, thus opens up the question of the contribution of possible legacies from earlier settlements in parallel to continental influxes by sea. Are the cultural characteristics of Klimonas the result of a compromise between possible local heritages and mainland traditions? Or was the continental influence decisive, erasing most of the local legacies? One point seems certain: external relations determined the introduction of cultivated cereals, emmer wheat and einkorn (and even rye), the development of stemmed arrowheads and the oldest known obsidian imports. It is tempting to add to that list the circular constructions and the associated community building model, as well as the commensal animals accompanying farming (mouse and cat). On the mainland, however, sedentism linked to circular buildings and the presence of commensal mice can be traced back to the Natufian (Valla 2008, Weissbrod et al. 2017). This is the case at Mallaha, where stone-walled buildings were dug out on a slope (Valla 1981), or at Abu Hureyra, where circular, partly pit-like structures with supporting posts were recorded (Moore 2000). Were similar structures built at an early stage in Cyprus? Some might even ask the same question of communal buildings, generally considered to be an “import” of a PPNA model. Could such a system have been instigated as early as the Natufian, in early sedentary communities, as in building 131 at Mallaha (Valla 1988), or the large structure at Wadi Hammeh (Edwards 2012)? As it stands, this hypothesis of an ante-PPNA “individual house/collective building” model can no more be confirmed in Cyprus than on the mainland. Therefore, the advent of this model in Cyprus should be considered as an innovation of the PPNA.

    118As for the people themselves, the almost-total absence of human remains at Klimonas follows the same pattern as a minority of Levantine sites, such as Jerf el-Ahmar, although on this latter site there are some erratic human remains beside those found in the communal buildings. This does not prefigure the evolution of the Cypriot Neolithic. In Cyprus, the first funerary data come from Structure 23 of Shillourokambos (with no preserved DNA) and from the well of Mylouthkia (see Lazaridis et al. 2022 for DNA). Later evidence of funerary practices is widely attested at the settlements of Tenta and Khirokitia (Le Mort et al. 2008).

    119It is thus legitimate to wonder what Klimonas subsequently handed down to later societies. First of all, we should note that the circular plan was maintained in all Cypriot constructions for several millennia. Unlike on the continent, where quadrangular plans were widespread, sometimes as early as the first half of the 9th millennium (Jerf el-Ahmar, Cayönü), round constructions persisted in Cyprus throughout the Pre-Pottery Neolithic period, including the Khirokitia culture. After the hiatus of the 6th millennium, circular or quadrangular plans with rounded corners persisted in Sotira settlements in the 5th millennium (Sotira, Paralimni, Dikaios 1961, Flourentzos 2008). They were also characteristic of Chalcolithic dwellings, between the 4th and 3rd millennia (Lemba Lakkous, Kissonerga Mosphilia, Peltenburg 1985, 1998). Yet, from the early phase A of Shillourokambos onwards, we observe a relative change in materials. Houses and enclosures were built with vertical wooden posts and earth, as at Klimonas, but stone and “proto-bricks” appeared during the Early B phase (ca. 8000 cal BC). During the Middle phase, these materials once again took a backseat to the ancestral cob technique (Guilaine et al. 2011, 2021). Stone only definitively made a breakthrough in the recent phase, towards the end of the 8th millennium at Shillourokambos, associated with mud-brick on other sites (Tenta, Khirokitia). These interruptions in the course of the 8th millennium have yet to be interpreted.

    120Did Klimonas transmit the “public building” model to later Cypriot cultures, as some authors have suggested (Clarke and Wase 2019)? No “pit”-type monuments have been observed at Shillourokambos, suggesting a possible rupture. However, Structure 23 tends to leave this question open-ended: it was originally a circular well similar to others recorded at the site. As a result of erosion, its walls converted it into a sort of underground cavity, which was gradually filled in (Vigne et al. 2011d). Yet, we remain circumspect on account of the upper part of this structure: a sort of large pit with a diameter of 5 m, probably resulting from anthropic alteration. It is puzzling why such a cavity would be enlarged in this way, only to use it as a simple rubbish bin, especially as this large volume could only be an inconvenience in the centre of the settlement. It is thus fitting to raise the hypothesis of a “pit-type building” with a ceremonial function, especially as in its more recent stages of use, it sometimes took on a funerary aspect to become a sort of cellar-hypogeum (with several deposits of corpses), and sometimes a symbolic aspect with deposits of remarkable objects: flint blades, symbolic objects made of picrolite (Guilaine 2017), and the horn trophy of a billy goat (Vigne et al. 2011d).

    121Communal buildings may also have persisted in an “aerial” form at the site of Tenta. Complex S 14, on the upper part of the settlement, is characterised by three concentric walls, sometimes with cells, and an external diameter of 12 m (Todd 1987). We must also mention the case of the complex composed of “tholos 1 A” and building S. 148 of Khirokitia (Le Brun 2021, p. 205 and following), isolated in an enclosed space and flanked by various peripheral cells (Dikaios 1953, Le Brun 2003, Peltenburg 2001). Can this be considered as a different architectural expression of the duality between residential and communal buildings, whose archetype is to be found at Klimonas?

    122Some technical features of the early phase of Shillourokambos mark a clear break with Klimonas and can be considered as Cypro-PPNB innovations. This is the case of the development of stoneware on green rock, combined with limestone vessels, whereas only the latter were present at Klimonas. It is also true of the clear economic shift resulting from the introduction of the domestic goat and cattle, the beginning of Cypriot wild boar breeding and, a few centuries later, sheep (Vigne et al. 2011c).

    123Moreover, it is important to underline here that the slaughter age data for boars gathered at Klimonas for the early 9th millennium are deemed to be representative of a local hunting exploitation system. They thus provide a new reference system for refining interpretations of the early phase A of Shillourokambos, during the second half of the 9th millennium. We can now confirm that pig breeding had already been initiated at that time, while hunting wild boar was still the dominant activity.

    124Livestock breeding activities may have diminished the role of hunting. The latter nevertheless continued and soon increased again when Mesopotamian fallow deer were introduced, around 8000 cal BC, to become a popular prey alongside the wild boar (Vigne et al. 2016). The significance of the gradual decline (or even disappearance?) of cattle, long considered to be absent from Cyprus before the Early Bronze Age (third millennium; Croft 1991), is still a matter of debate. The absence of cattle from Chalcolithic sites in the 4th millennium implies that the cattle-pulled plough was not used in Cyprus, whereas it was widely used in Europe. Here again, the island seems to be out of phase with continental developments. Evidence of cattle harnessing and the use of the plough goes back to the Early Bronze Age in Cyprus, to the second half of the 3rd millennium, as shown by the well-known model from one of the Vounous hypogea depicting a ploughing scene (Dikaios 1940).

    125The absence of pottery and the continuation of stoneware in a long continuum from Klimonas to the Khirokitia culture are also Cypriot singularities. Again, this is a clear expression of a break with the continent, where pottery became commonplace from 7000 cal BC in the Northern Levant and around 6500 cal BC in the Southern Levant.

    126To summarise these various considerations, the Pre-Pottery history of Cyprus comes across as an incessant compromise between continental and assimilated influxes, but with a specifically Cypriot creativity. At times, it even appears to be opposed to the use of certain techniques, which were only adopted on the island after a significant time lag. Subsequently, the whole of Cypriot prehistory demonstrates the tendency of these island societies to forge an original cultural identity. Klimonas is the best-known original hub of this history.

    7. Klimonas in the Levantine PPNA

    7.1. Cyprus as one the poles of a pluricentric neolithization

    127From a Cypriot viewpoint, the discovery of Klimonas considerably supplements a still-deficient chronology. One the one hand, it means that we can no longer feasibly consider the Epipalaeolithic “camps” recorded at Akrotiri and possibly Roudias and Pakhtomena as occasional. On the other, it forces us to see the PPNB “colonists” of Shillourokambos and their imported cattle as the legatees of a local Neolithic heritage, at least in terms of cereal cultivation (chap. 23). This continuity is well documented by the introduction of wild boars in the 11th millennium cal BC (Vigne et al. 2009), the subsequent hunting of the endemic descendants of those boars by the inhabitants of Klimonas, and finally their local domestication during the PPNB (chap. 30, Cucchi et al. 2021). Although Klimonas was only inhabited for several decades, it actually opens up a window of several centuries on the early Prehistory of an island continuously connected to the mainland, an island that we can no longer consider to be the secondary and passive receptacle of continental innovations.

    128From a regional viewpoint, this discovery has major implications for our understanding of neolithization, and in particular of its “pre-domestic” phases. Cyprus is no longer a marginal frontier of a Near Eastern hub, but has become the integral part of a dynamic and multipolar territorial whole (Vigne et al. 2019b). In this respect, the results of the Klimonas excavation must be viewed alongside the recent evolution of archaeological paradigms towards a pluri-centric conception of the Early Pre-Pottery Neolithic on the continent (Ibáñez et al. 2018). Unlike the better-known PPNB, considered very early on as a “sphere of interaction” (Bar-Yosef and Belfer-Cohen 1989, Bar-Yosef 2001), or as a whole unified by the effect of a “conquering” diffusion (Cauvin 1994, see the 2nd edition 1997 for Cyprus), research on the PPNA has long been associated with the definition of “nuclear” zones, whether as the initiating phases of a PPNB culture radiating from the Middle-Euphrates (Edwards 2016), or as the culmination of Natufian sedentary life in the Jordan Valley (Belfer-Cohen and Goring-Morris 2010). Yet the defining elements of this transition period are now unevenly distributed throughout the Near East, and are not necessarily part of a single trajectory.

    129Multiple recent excavations on the Upper Tigris, for example, have confirmed the early advent of sedentary settlement, with massive architecture and rich symbolism, yet indifferent to farming practices and cereal cultivation (Körtik Tepe: Benz et al. 2015, Hasankeyf: Itahashi et al. 2017, Güsir Höyük: Kabukcu et al. 2021; fig. 33-6). Conversely, on the arid margins of the Southern Levant, new sites contribute to our knowledge of PPNA hunter-cultivator ways of life, but do not present the monumental aspects of the most important northern sites (Zahrat adh-Dhra’ 2: Edwards and House 2007, Dhra’: Kuijt and Finlayson 2009, Wadi Faynan 16: Mithen et al. 2011). Up until recently, the PPNB of Central Anatolia was considered to be dependent on a late Levantine diffusion. It now appears to be partly rooted in local traditions, with the preservation of a non-agricultural component, but also a driving role in caprine domestication (Bonçuklu: Baird et al. 2018, early levels of Aşıklı: Özbaşaran et al. 2018, Stiner et al. 2022). Recent discoveries in the long-overlooked Iranian Zagros reveal a slightly more recent Pre-Pottery tradition than the Levantine PPNA, characterised by the probable non-agricultural exploitation of wild cereals (Weide et al. 2018). Such sites also yield evidence of a communal building and the ritual consumption of wild boar (Asiab: Bangsgaard et al. 2018, Richter et al. 2021), both reminiscent of Klimonas, at the opposite geographic end of the Near East. These developments are not totally in phase, but they outline a more diversified and interconnected early Pre-Pottery Neolithic between the end of the 10th and the middle of the 9th millennia than previously alleged at the ­macro-regional level.

    7.2. A window into a coastal Pre-Pottery Neolithic

    130In this mosaic, Cyprus is of course characterised by its maritime location. This does not prevent the island from having strong links to a vast pan-Levantine sphere, in the techno-economic as well as symbolic fields (tab. 33-3). This sphere, also characterised by the cultivation of the same founding cereals, would thus extend from southern Jordan to the northern foothills of the Euphrates valley. In the absence of contemporaneous sites on the mainland coast, however, we can only approach these links from the Cypriot perspective. It is important to emphasise that Klimonas is the only coastal PPNA site documented to date – with the possible exception of Nahal Oren (Noy et al. 1973), the chrono-stratigraphy of which is rather uncertain (Bar-Yosef 1981). As such, Klimonas provides invaluable information on the relationship between Levantine cultures of this period and the sea. These people were at the same time seasoned navigators (Vigne et al. 2014) and yet reluctant to exploit marine resources (cf. above). If one extends this exclusion to the fluvial resources of the Euphrates, it would reinforce the impression of pan-Levantine unity, in contrast with the more river-oriented, and less cereal-oriented, cultures of the Tigris valley.

    Tab. 33-3 – Attempt to relate the main features of Klimonas to Natufian, continental PPNA, site-specific or Cypro-PPNA traditions.

    131More conjecturally, Klimonas thus points towards the existence of a vast section of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic still totally beyond our reach. On the mainland, apart from sites identified in the Sands of Beirut before their destruction by urban sprawl (Tell aux haches, Borj Barajne, Fleisch 1970), and traces of human presence in the rock shelters of Mount Carmel (Nadel et al. 2012), the oldest coastal Neolithic sites date from the PPNB. They are concentrated on the Syrian-Lebanese coast and are very poorly known due to their position at the base of a tell (Ras Shamra - Ougarit, Contenson 1992), or to contemporary human activities (Tell aux scies, Cauvin 1968). The mainly PPNB site of Tabarja, near Byblos, has recently begun to fill this void (Yazbek, 2020). At the present time, along the whole shoreline opposite Cyprus, in Cilicia (Mersin, Breniquet 1995), on the Syrian (Tabbat el-Hammam, Braidwood 1940), Lebanese (Byblos, Cauvin 1968) or Israeli coasts (Atlit Yam, Galili et al. 2020), human settlements are only well documented when, paradoxically, the island affirmed its distinctiveness with the Pre-Pottery culture of Khirokitia, and began turning towards the exploitation of marine resources.

    132Yet, some indirect evidence sheds light on the relationship of the Cypro-PPNA with its continental counterpart. In this respect, imported cereals are very telling, since they include both emmer wheat and einkorn, respectively used at that time in the south and north of the Levant. The possible presence of rye is perhaps a little more surprising, since it is traditionally associated with colder or more mountainous environments, even though significant quantities of the species are known in the Jerf el-Ahmar PPNA (Willcox and Stordeur 2012). In general, cereals appear to play a relatively important role at Klimonas compared to the mainland, where there is a greater diversity of cultivated and non-cultivated species. It is important to bear in mind that plant remains are very poorly preserved at Klimonas, but the absence of pulses, at a time when they were exploited on the mainland, could denote the existence of a sort of selection of transfers between the mainland and islands, independently of any geographical origin. Cyprus would thus appear to be a point of convergence for the new interest in cereals and their cultivation in different parts of the Levant, even before their domestication and integration in a shared PPNB system.

    133A similar, although much less precise, picture emerges from the study of the imported fauna. The Klimonas dogs, who arrived from the continent in the PPNA (instead of being inherited from a possible local Epipaleolithic stock), match the dog population known at that time in the Levant (Mureybet, Jericho: chap. 27). Mice, on the other hand, indicate proximity with the lineages of Central Anatolia, subsequently enriched by Levantine contributions (chap. 28). The wild boar, which apparently arrived earlier, points to Northern Levantine ancestry (chap. 31). In the present state of knowledge, the idea that Klimonas was exclusively dependent on a well-defined and known continental zone must therefore be abandoned. It is clear that multiple influences, either simultaneous or accumulated over time, were at work.

    134No genetic markers were preserved in the material from Klimonas, but it is likely that the multiplication of analyses on different materials would only result in showing a multiplication of repeated relationships over time, far from the somewhat romantic image of settlers arriving fully equipped with a Neolithic “package”. Non-biological markers, in any case, point to mixed, locally reinterpreted influences. As we saw above, the architecture indicates proximity with the Euphrates Valley in terms of communal buildings, echoing strong similarities between the lithic industries from both regions (chap. 14 and 16). But the residential component is closer to the South Levant, as are ornamental elements (chap. 19), showing a more marked continuity with Epipalaeolithic traditions also perceptible in Klimonas.

    135However, all of this is not enough to make Cyprus a PPNA crossroads. In fact, obsidian, the strong marker of mobility during this period, tends to undermine such a notion. The presence of obsidian clearly shows that Klimonas was integrated in circulation networks. Nonetheless, the very small quantities of the material tend to indicate that these links were rather tenuous. Practically nothing is known of contemporaneous sites in Anatolia, and in particular in Cilicia, which makes it impossible to develop this discussion. But things changed drastically during the PPNB, when Cyprus became much more integrated in these networks (Briois et al. 1997, Şevketoǧlu and Handson 2015). In the same way, adornments and stoneware were made locally at Klimonas (chap. 19), whereas these materials sometimes circulated widely on the mainland at that time (Alarashi and Chambrade 2010).

    136Although it is clear that Cyprus cannot be considered as a hub of exchange or mobility in the PPNA, the island nevertheless shows that coastal areas played a much more important role in this period than the paucity of archaeological documentation would tend to suggest. Klimonas demonstrates the adaptability – including the acclimatisation of plants and animals – and navigation skills of these societies, previously known in much drier and more open environments. It therefore seems plausible to suggest that a major taphonomic bias affects our understanding of the diverse aspects of the PPNA phenomenon. This bias is undoubtedly at work in the sometimes brutal climatic and anthropic transformations of coastal landscapes, which is well illustrated at Klimonas, an eroded site threatened by urban sprawl (with no need however to refer to a tsunami: Shtienberg et al. 2020), and may prompt us to revisit the material from early surveys in Beirut or Jaffa (Neuville 1929, Fleisch 1970). But this bias is perhaps also at work in sedentary settlements, which reproduce the same overall types of Pre-Pottery architecture, as seen at Klimonas, but with a more diversified and transitory bent (maybe including a large number of small specialised sites: Marder et al. 2007, Malinsky-Buller et al. 2009, McCartney 2017) than the great tells located in dry and open environments. The often-reported paucity in the Mediterranean zone during the PPNA (Gopher et al. 1999, Tsuneki et al. 2006, Haïdar-Boustani et al. 2013, Garrard 2017) would thus be the result of an adaptation, the form of which was not very visible to the archaeological eye, but which nonetheless played the potential role of a melting pot, uniting traits known elsewhere to be associated with a single region and found together in Cyprus.

    Fig. 33-24 – Symphyseal part of a wild boar mandible deposited in a cache (St 6793, chap. 31).

    Photo J.-D. Vigne, CNRS.

    7.3. The PPNA as a group of transformations

    137In other words, considered in terms of connectivity, Klimonas incites us to understand the PPNA differently. We should not view it as a whole subject to historical-cultural diffusions, of which Cyprus would be the ultimate recipient, and whose reconstruction would necessarily be risky, to say the least. Nor should we consider it as a simple chronological horizon or transition, nor even as a stage of evolution in the Neolithic period, but rather as a “group of transformations”, i.e., a whole defined by concomitant and significant variations around a common structure (Lévi-Strauss 1973). Two main vectors of these variations, hunting and territoriality, will help us to summarise and clarify, in conclusion, Cypriot singularities in overall PPNA practices.

    138The insular poverty of the faunal spectrum must have represented a major factor of transformation for PPNA traditions. On the mainland, hunting does not only represent a major and diversified subsistence activity, but also a highly important social practice. This is particularly true of the Northern Levantine plains, where we find the same types of arrowheads as at Klimonas, and where collective hunts of large herds of ungulates took place (gazelles, equids, aurochs - Gourichon 2004, Gourichon and Helmer 2004, 2008). In the symbolic field, these practices focused essentially on one species, the aurochs, suggesting possible ritualised hunting (Cauvin 1997, Stordeur 2010, Coqueugniot 2014, Pöllath et al. 2017). We showed here that in the absence of these large mammals, the wild boar was hunted with family-group-oriented strategies, as on the continent, and took on part of this symbolic value (chap. 31) and its concomitant social repercussions. This idea is backed up by the fact that it is the only other game with consistent symbolic connotations, at least in some of the regions where it is present (Peters and Schmidt 2004, Bangsgaard 2019). Furthermore, in Anatolia, it continues to be associated with aurochs hunting even after both species were domesticated on other sites (Hodder and Meskell 2011, Arbuckle 2013, Baird et al. 2016). Klimonas contributes to positioning the boar alongside the aurochs in this singular position, between two worlds, in the realm of Pre-Pottery animal symbolism.

    139The inhabitants of Cyprus were thus able to find a way to perpetuate the PPNA hunting system on technical and symbolic levels. However, the organization of the hunts themselves must have been clearly affected. The collective and undoubtedly seasonal aspect of hunting was still a strong feature, but it took place in the direct proximity of the site. Above all, it became less dangerous and easier than on the mainland (chap. 29). Therefore, the status of hunting as a structuring event of social life is called into question.

    140This leads to other hypothetical questions in related domains. For example, the strong symbolic value of the dog at Klimonas (chap. 27) is unique in the PPNA but reminiscent of the Natufian tradition (Davis and Valla 1978, Tchernov and Valla 1997). Could it be linked to the more important role of the dog in a more modest form of hunting? This change in hunting tactics, discussed by Yeomans et al. (2019), also raises the question of the format of weapons and the characteristics of lithic tools (chap. 15). Could the low proportion of obsidian reflect a decreased importance of social statuses linked to hunting? Should the relative simplicity of arrowheads, and the absence of el-Khiam points, a persistent PPNA marker, or Helwan points, be interpreted in this way? We noted that the latter was replaced in Cyprus by a Nemrikian system (chap. 14), suggesting an analogy with what is observed on the Tigris (Coqueugniot 2004). This does not imply the existence of a direct cultural filiation (Nemrik points are also found in the Northern Levant, Kozłowski and Aurenche 2005), but perhaps rather a similar technical reaction to the less socialising role of hunting. In any event, Klimonas presents the beginnings of bidirectional debitage, although still very different to that observed in the PPNB.

    141More fundamentally, these observations incite us to revisit the main social organization tendencies identified at Klimonas. Again, in relation to the Euphrates, in parallel with the absence of major hunting episodes, we note the absence of structures for the collective consumption of animal or plant foodstuffs (Willcox and Stordeur 2012, Dietrich et al. 2019), such as large exterior pit ovens (Cauvin 1997, Molist 2008, Stordeur 2015). Could the concentration of hearths in private spaces observed at Klimonas denote a change from the strong collective character of the PPNA on the continent? The Communal building nonetheless appears to have been used for collective activities, with possible cereal storage (chap. 5 and 28) or ritualised feasts of wild boar (chap. 29). But the communal architecture at Klimonas also required less effort in terms of construction work, and was also more open (at least in the first phase) and relatively more spacious than the average communal buildings on the mainland. Should this be interpreted as a sort of slackening of the rules, specific to Cyprus, in a reinterpreted form of collectivism? Does this denote, by contrast, the relative importance of hunting, as opposed to cereal cultivation (present in Klimonas), in the constitution and implementation of these rules on the continent?

    142Lastly, this architectural characteristic leads us to the other major vector of transformation: territorialization. If the reconstruction of the Communal building, as well as perhaps the final abandonment of the village, can be interpreted as collective efforts in the relation to places, they are clearly distinguished by certain key variations. Much emphasis has been placed in this chapter on the short duration of settlement and the fact that stone was not used as a building material, despite its availability at the site. This emphasis on negative aspects may seem surprising, but makes sense when placed in the context of PPNA territoriality. Klimonas shares certain structural practices with continental sites, such as foundation and closing deposits, or superimposed reconstructions, the rhythm of which is even faster paced at Klimonas, probably in relation to the lighter architecture (chap. 5). But large PPNA tells do not merely result from the accumulation of reconstructions over time, they are also massive construction sites with a monumental character even after they have been sealed (Hadad 2019b), with perennial infrastructures such as embankments (Kenyon 1981, Schmidt 2010b, Stordeur 2015), sometimes even from the beginning of settlement. The Cypriot transformation of Pre-Pottery sedentism should not be interpreted as a weakening of the relationship to place, which is regularly reiterated at each reconstruction during settlement. Rather, it appears as the affirmation of this transitivity due to the fragility of earth materials, without anything to balance it.

    143Indeed, the brevity of settlement at Klimonas is not as surprising as the fact that village occupants never seem to have made an effort to increase the longevity of the inhabited area. This would have been manifest, for example, in the terracing of the slope, as observed at Jerf el-Ahmar, a site of equivalent size. It is tempting to equate this absence of temporal inertia with the absence of funerary practices, which are frequent in PPNA sites. Here again, the deposition of human skull fragments in the Communal building indicates affinities with continental sites, especially sites without proper burials, such as Jerf el-Ahmar. However, reducing the dead to small and easily transportable objects indicates a more marked tendency towards the circulation and the deterritorialization of human remains. Should this be interpreted as more intense and diversified facets of group mobility, with links to the insular and maritime location of Klimonas? Or to the exploitation of a particularly attractive source of flint for a network of settlements scattered across the island of Cyprus?

    144This second vector of transformations is more surprising than the first, as it is not as easy to link to environmental factors as hunting. The question of the adaptation of PPNA territoriality to the Mediterranean environment remains open ended. On the one hand, the discovery of Klimonas raises the possibility that equivalent sites may have disappeared from the best-known areas, on the Euphrates or the Jordan, because of the absence of tell formation or as a result of being buried under the alluvial plain. On the other hand, the taphonomic bias altering our understanding of the PPNA in coastal regions does not only seem to be due to post-depositional processes (erosion, anthropic destruction…), but also to cultural choices that fall within the range of PPNA variability, although no exact equivalents to such drastic choices are known in the Levant. It could be tempting to compare Wadi Faynan 16, in the arid south of Jordan, to the Cypriot case on account of its reduced use of stone, and the not very embedded, open and spacious communal architecture, even compared to Klimonas. However, it differs radically from Klimonas in that there is intense funerary activity at the site. Here, rather than the duration of occupation, it is the size of the settlement that appears to be reduced (2000 m², Mithen et al. 2016, Finlayson and Makarewicz 2020).

    145Other configurations are thus emerging, from the same background, of what have been considered until now as the “margins” of the PPNA. The practices observed at Klimonas not only highlight the singularities of a Cypriot Neolithic, but encourage us to formulate hypotheses for other regions and to look for a shared structure among such variability. Within this multipolar PPNA, now considered as a group of transformations, we must not only evaluate the relation of Cyprus to the continent, but also vice versa, as the continent can no longer be understood without Cyprus.

    Annexe

    KLIMONAS-Ch33-A01, https://doi.org/10.34847/nkl.257a1hp2
    Prospection entre Thetekou et Pirtakharis (Ayios Tychonas, Cyprus; 13/05/2018) • Survey between Thetekou and Pirtakharis (Ayios Tychonas, Chypre; 13/05/2018)
    François BRIOIS (EHESS), Jean-Denis VIGNE (CNRS), Solange RIGAUD (CNRS)

    Notes de bas de page

    1. The Greek translation of this chapter by Maria Rousou can be found at: https://doi.org/10.34847/nkl.1c63142l.

    Auteurs

    • Jean‑Denis Vigne
    • Jean Guilaine
    • Remi Hadad
    • Laurence Astruc
    • François Briois
    • Thomas Cucchi
    • Lionel Gourichon
    • Pantelitsa Mylona
    • Solange Rigaud
    • Maria Rousou
    Précédent Suivant
    Table des matières

    Creative Commons - Attribution - Pas d'Utilisation Commerciale - Pas de Modification 4.0 International - CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

    Le texte seul est utilisable sous licence Creative Commons - Attribution - Pas d'Utilisation Commerciale - Pas de Modification 4.0 International - CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés) sont « Tous droits réservés », sauf mention contraire.

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    Vigne, Jean‑Denis, Jean Guilaine, Remi Hadad, Laurence Astruc, François Briois, Thomas Cucchi, Lionel Gourichon, Pantelitsa Mylona, Solange Rigaud, et Maria Rousou. « The Neolithic Village of Klimonas: Technical, Social and Symbolic Aspects; Insularity and Connectivity ». In Klimonas, édité par Jean-Denis Vigne, François Briois, et Jean Guilaine. Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2024. https://doi.org/10.4000/129jh.
    Vigne, Jean‑Denis, et al. « The Neolithic Village of Klimonas: Technical, Social and Symbolic Aspects; Insularity and Connectivity ». Klimonas, édité par Jean-Denis Vigne et al., CNRS Éditions, 2024, https://doi.org/10.4000/129jh.

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