Keswani/Mortuary Ritual, 6. Mortuary Ritual, Social Structure, and Macro-Processual Change in the Cypriot Bronze Age

This chapter considers the broader regional processes that impinged upon local systems of meaning and ritual, and the ways in which those processes, were experienced and influenced in the course of mortuary celebrations. The chapter further reviews the principal developments in areas of demography, settlement patterns, economic production, and household and community organization that may be inferred from non-mortuary archaeological data, along with their implications for social structure and ideology. The changing role of mortuary ritual in the social life of Cypriot communities is further examined, as well as the issue of how local ideologies and ritual practices were affected by supralocal or macro-processes of economic and sociopolitical change.