The history of Khirokitia, an Aceramic Neolithic village in Cyprus, is marked by a series of successive events clearly evidenced by variations in the spatial extent and organization of the village; the major one in the course of its occupation was an outstanding shift of the built area that happened around the end of the 7th millennium cal BC. As for changes in climatic, the study of the hydromorphological evolution of the riverbed running at the foot of the hill has revealed the existence of torrential flows and violent erosion that seem to indicate the onset of an erratic and concentrated precipitation during the occupation of the village. This chapter focuses on these main events that affected the village and investigates changes and continuities that can be observed in the environment as well as in the village relationship to the environment, subsistence strategies, craft techniques and activities organization, architectural practices, social organization and rituals.

Chapter 3 assesses the built archaeological remains of the Third Intermediate Period and establishes the locations of preserved Third Intermediate Period domestic settlement remains to assess the different regional built environments of settlements and the way in which settlements developed spatially over time. The settlements are further analysed to define the way in which Late Period urban policies affected the development and preservation of Third Intermediate Period urban topography within the archaeological record. The maintenance of or changes in urban topography of the Third Intermediate Period are discussed in the light of the top-down policies of a new political regime in a re-unified government and state in Late Period Egypt. The chapter assesses whether the settlements in the Third Intermediate Period developed as independent entities within specific regions or if there was a general pattern of settlement policy across different political boundaries and geographical regions. It also assesses characteristics of new ideologies, both political and religious, and the economic limitations of different regions through the construction of monumental architecture (walls, temples, and palaces), the nucleation of domestic architecture around monumental constructions, the development of architectural design in both administrative, religious, and domestic architecture, and the self-sufficient nature of local populations.