<p>How and why communities on Cyprus connected with the broader eastern Mediterranean in the third millennium BC has been much debated. In particular, the nature of the so-called Philia horizon, with its clear affinities with Anatolian assemblages, has been the topic of widely divergent perspectives on what happened and what role people on the island played. Using a constructed boundary perspective, I will reconsider the manner in which communities on Cyprus connected to adjacent lands in the third millennium BC during the Late Chalcolithic (2900–2500 BC) and the Philia (2500–2200 BC)&#xa0;periods. The aim is to demonstrate the selective nature of Anatolian assemblages and practices taken up in Cyprus in these periods, and how they are appropriated in local cultural practices that diverge considerably from those known on the mainland. This perspective leads to a marked shift in our ability to understand how Cyprus became increasingly connected to the broader eastern Mediterranean in the third millennium BC.</p>