Synopsis
During the Late Bronze Age, the Eastern Mediterranean formed a world of relatively closely integrated societies. In this Small World Network, stretching from the Elamite kingdom in southwestern Iran to the Mycenaean principalities in Greece, the scene was dominated by the Great Kings of Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, and the Hittite empire, who competed for hegemonic power and tried, with variable success, to extend their dominions. - During the 12th and the early 11th century, the Late Bronze Age system collapsed. The crisis did not affect all the subregions simultaneously and to the same extent. Signs of instability and regression can be seen already in the later part of the 13th century, but in the 12th century a wave of destructions affected numerous places in a wide area, from the Aegean to the southern Levant. Many Mycenaean, Syrian and Levantine centres, including Ugarit, were destroyed. The fall of the Hittite empire probably dates from roughly the same horizon of the late 12th and early 11th centuries. A large number of immigrants might have been moving from the Aegean world towards the Near East and Egypt, where they were allegedly defeated by Ramesses III. Explaining the divergent lines of development in a world of increasingly networked communities and cultures is a challenge. It requires a complex, and necessarily comparative approach, exploring both the unifying factors and the causes of variability. The present volume can, hopefully, shed some light on these and related questions. The chapters in this volume are varied and reflect different methodologies, viewpoints and conclusions. They explore the evolving trade networks and their impact on societies, the impulses for innovation, the spread of new technologies, and the variable lines of demographic, economic, social, ideological and political development. The volume covers a broad range of subjects concerning the post-collapse developments in a number of key regions of the Ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean worlds. The chapters illuminate the dynamics of political order and power ideologies in Mesopotamia and Syria, discuss the complex processes related to the crisis and subsequent polity formation in southern Levant, analyse the impact of the spread of technologies in the Mediterranean with Cypriots and Phoenicians playing a central role, consider in depth the development of various Aegean communities, and show how emerging political identities were manifested in southern Italy. It goes without saying that the chapters in this volume cannot and do not pretend to answer all the relevant questions. However, they offer updated, varied, and critical insights, and will, hopefully, inspire further discussions of power building as well as the limitations of power in the Ancient Mediterranean and Near East during the centuries after the 12th century collapse.
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