Early Cypriot Prehistory On the Traces of the Last Hunters and Gatherers on the Island-Preliminary Results of Luminescence Dating

Archaeological investigations at the Late Epipaleolithic/Pre-Neolithic campsite of Roudias, Cyprus, have revealed that this location was repeatedly visited by hunter-gatherer groups during the beginning of the Holocene. Despite the placement of the deeper lithic assemblages of the site within the Late Epipaleolithic tradition, the main obstacle of the site has been its lack of absolute ages. Previous attempts to date bone samples recovered from the site using radiocarbon were unsuccessful since the samples did not contain enough collagen to return reliable dates. The absolute chronology of the site within early Cypriot developments-Late Pleistocene or Early Holocene-has been eagerly awaited by researchers who try to document the arrival of the first human groups to the island. This study places the campsite of Roudias in its temporal setting using optically stimulated luminescence dating. Absolute ages (ranging from 7.2 +/- 1.3 to 12.8 +/- 1.6 ka) provide evidence for the duration of the occupation of the Roudias site from the Late Epipaleolithic (or even earlier) to the Late Aceramic Neolithic, but more importantly, they push back the time of the first colonization of Cyprus and the onset of seagoing practices in the southeastern Mediterranean.

Automated summary

The study used optically stimulated luminescence dating to determine the absolute ages of the Roudias campsite in Cyprus, revealing that the location was repeatedly visited by hunter-gatherer groups and pushing back the time of the first colonization and seagoing practices in Cyprus.