Forces of Transformation: The End of the Bronze Age in the Mediterranean

The volume is the first in nearly a decade to focus a wide range of scholarship on one of the most compelling periods in the antiquity of the Mediterranean and Near East. It presents new interpretive approaches to the problems of the Bronze Age to Iron Age transformation, as well as re-assessments of a wide range of high profile sites and evidence ranging from the Ugaritic archives, Hazor, the Medinet Habu reliefs, Tiryns and Troy. Implications for a changing climate are also explored in the volume. The end of the Bronze Age in the Mediterranean and Near East is a huge challenge requiring a diverse, global, flexible and open minded strategy for its interpretation - it is too vast and complex for any one scholar or interpretive approach. The scope of this volume is great, but not overwhelming, as the papers are organized coherently into themes considering climate, exchange and interregional dynamics, iconography and perception, the built environment - cemeteries, citadels, and landscapes, and social implications for the production and consumption of pottery. Thus, Forces of Transformation is broad enough to address many of the major concerns of the end of the Bronze Age, and also to encapsulate the current position of scholarship as it relates to this problem.

Table of Contents

Part 1: Considerations of Climate
Holocene climate variability in the eastern Mediterranean, and the end of the Bronze Age (J Eelco Rohling, Angela Hayes, Paul A.Mayewski and Michal Kucera)
Changes in Vernacular Architecture and Climate at the End of the Aegean Bronze Age (Jennifer Moody)

Part 2: Exchange and interregional dynamics
Just What Collapsed? A network perspective on ‘palatial’ and ‘private’ trade at Ugarit Bruce Routledge and Kevin McGeough)
Continuity and Change: the divergent destinies of Late Bronze Age ports in Syria and Lebanon across the LBA/Iron Age transition (Carol Bell)
Cultural Identity and Social Interaction in Crete at the End of the Bronze Age (Katia Perna)
Late Bronze Age Exchange Networks in the Western Mediterranean (Andrea Vianello)
Sicily at the End of the Bronze Age: ‘catching the echo’ (Davide Tanasi)

Part 3: Iconography and perception
Identity, Choice, and the Year 8 Reliefs of Ramesses III at Medinet Habu (R. Gareth Roberts)
Warriors, Hunters and Ships in the Late Helladic IIIC Aegean: changes in the iconography of warfare? (Angelos Papadopoulos)

Part 4: Built environment - cemeteries, citadels, and landscapes
Forces of Transformation in Death: the cemetery at Tell es-Sayidiyeh, Jordan (John D. M. Green)
The South-Eastern Aegean in the LH IIIC Period: what do the tombs tell us? (Mercourios Georgiadis)
The Last Days of a Canaanite Kingdom: a view from Hazor (Sharon Zuckerman)
The Significance of Changes in Spatial Usage at Mycenae (Elizabeth French)
From DA-MO to ‘Damos’ survival of a Mycenaean land allocation tradition in the Classical period? (Michael Franklin Lane)
Landscapes of Power and Proto-Urban Developments toward Urbanization in Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Latium vetus (Francesca Fulminante)
The Iron Age Transition at Troy (Maureen Basedow)

Part 5: Social implications for the production and consumption of pottery
End or Beginning? The Late Bronze Age to Iron Age transformation at Troia Aslan (Carolyn Chabot)
Handmade and Burnished Pottery in the Eastern Mediterranean at the End of the Bronze Age: towards an explanation for its diversity and geographical distribution (Bartlomiej Lis)
The Change of Pottery’s Social Meaning at the End of the Bronze Age: new evidence from Tiryns (Philipp Stockhammer)
A Note on the Material from the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age Cemeteries of Tell el-Farah South (Sabine Laemmel)
The Organization of Ceramic Production during the Transition from the Late Bronze to the Early Iron Ages: Tel Batash as a test case (Nava Panitz-Cohen)

edited by Christoph Bachhuber and R Gareth Roberts