Includes summary in English language (p. 71).

Includes bibliographical references (p. 86-89).

The change from curvilinear to rectilinear architecture in the early Neolithic of Southwest Asia is a well-known phenomenon with many socio-economic implications. Now that it is becoming increasingly clear that inhabitants of Cyprus were in close contact with the mainland from at least the late 9th millennium calibrated B.C., the persistence of the curvilinear tradition on the island long after the emergence and elaboration of the rectilinear mode on the continent stands out as a particularly strong anomaly within general Near Eastern architctural developments. This paper epxlores reasonsfor the dichotomy in the use of social space. The first part makers a case for strong links between distinctive house types in the Mediterranean Levant/North Mesopotamia and Cyprus. The substantive second part argues that an island ideology of co-operative endeavour acted as a check on the establishment of the kind of unegalitarian begaviour which led to privatisation of domestic space on the mainland. Stresses within this ideology, it is suggested, contributed to the eventual abandonment of Khirokitia. The devergent trakectproes pf ear;u Mep;otjoc s[atoa; prgamozatopm om Cuprus and the mainland shed light on the nature of social transformations that accompanied the odoption of farming.