Late Bronze Age Painted Pottery Traditions at the Margins of the Hittite State is the result of a workshop organized by the editors at the 11th ICAANE held in Munich in 2018 with additional contributions presented by renowned scholars working on this topic. The Late Bronze Age in the Ancient Near East is generally marked by a massive decline in the occurrence of painted pottery and a clear dominance of plain ceramics. This is especially evident when looking at Anatolia. Here, the presence of simple undecorated ceramics is considered as the main distinguishing trait of the dominance of the Hittite State and its material culture. Nevertheless, at the margins of the empire, especially in Southern and South-Eastern as well as Northern Anatolia, painted ceramics are frequently attested and, during recent years, new findings have come to light from a number of excavations. However, a comprehensive analysis of this material has not yet been accomplished. The intent of this volume is to break through the boundaries usually imposed by the study of 2nd millennium BC pottery production in Anatolia and to reconstruct a comprehensive scenario concerning the appearance, evolution, and related historical meanings of these painted pottery traditions. To this end, 12 papers of leading specialists working on relevant material have been collected in this book offering, for the first time, the possibility of a deeper understanding of the phenomenon of painted pottery in the 2nd millennium BC.

The intent of this volume is to break through the boundaries usually imposed by the study of 2nd millennium BC pottery production in Anatolia. 12 papers of leading specialists working on relevant material offer, for the first time, the possibility of a deeper understanding of the phenomenon of painted pottery in the 2nd millennium BC.

In Kizzuwatna, Andrea Trameri presents a history of the kingdom of Kizzuwatna, located in Cilicia (southern Anatolia), from its origins to the fall of the Hittite Empire. Encompassing both philological and archaeological evidence in the discussion, this book is the first comprehensive historical study of interdisciplinary scope dedicated to Kizzuwatna and the region of Cilicia in the second millennium BC. The book presents and re-analyses a diverse array of sources and data, providing an updated overview of various topics of interest beyond political history – including historical geography, culture and religion, population and language. Some new findings and proposals further contribute to an improved understanding of the history of the Hittite kingdom and other neighboring regions in the Middle and Late Bronze Age (ca. 2000-1200 BC).

New results and interpretations challenging the notion of a uniform, macroregional collapse throughout the Late Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean Ancient Western Asia Beyond the Paradigm of Collapse and Regeneration (1200–900 BCE) presents select essays originating in a two-year research collaboration between New York University and Paris Sciences et Lettres. The contributions here offer new results and interpretations of the processes and outcomes of the transition from the Late Bronze Age to the Iron Age in three broad regions: Anatolia, northern Mesopotamia, and the Levant. Together, these challenge the notion of a uniform, macroregional collapse throughout the Eastern Mediterranean, followed by the regeneration of political powers. Current research on newly discovered or reinterpreted textual and material evidence from Western Asia instead suggests that this transition was characterized by a diversity of local responses emerging from diverse environmental settings and culture complexes, as evident in the case studies collected here in history, archaeology, and art history. The editors avoid particularism by adopting a regional organization, with the aim of identifying and tracing similar processes and outcomes emerging locally across the three regions. Ultimately, this volume reimagines the Late Bronze–Iron Age transition as the emergence of a set of recursive processes and outcomes nested firmly in the local cultural interactions of western Asia before the beginning of the new, unifying era of Assyrian imperialism.

This volume focuses on contacts between Anatolian languages within and outside Anatolia. The selected essays, written by members of ongoing research projects on Anatolian languages, present case studies from both the first and second millennia. These include etymological and morphophonological investigations within the framework of Graeco-Anatolian contacts, as well as a critical essay on the possible Anatolian-Etruscan contacts. Alongside strictly linguistic analysis, the essays cover different aspects of cultural contacts (the origin of the word for ‘salt’ in Luwian), toponyms (in Lycia), and religion (the god called King of Kaunos), and are introduced with a detailed overview of the origins of the Anatolian linguistic landscape.

This book reconsiders the concept of empire and examines the processes of imperial making and undoing in Hittite Anatolia (c. 1600-1180 BCE).

An up-to-date, systematic depiction of Bronze Age societies of the Levant, their evolution, and their interactions and entanglements with neighboring regions.

Known from the Old Testament as one of the tribes occupying the Promised Land, the Hittities were in reality a powerful neighbouring kingdom: highly advanced in political organization, administration of justice and military genius; with a literature inscribed in cuneiform writing on clay tablets; and with a rugged and individual figurative art ... Newly revised and updated, this classic account reconstructs a complete and balanced picture of Hittite civilization, using both established and more recent sources.

By the 13th century BC, the Syrian city of Ugarit hosted an extremely diverse range of writing practices. As well as two main scripts – alphabetic and logographic cuneiform - the site has also produced inscriptions in a wide range of scripts and languages, including Hurrian, Sumerian, Hittite, Egyptian hieroglyphs, Luwian hieroglyphs and Cypro-Minoan. This variety in script and language is accompanied by writing practices that blend influences from Mesopotamian, Anatolian and Levantine traditions together with what seem to be distinctive local innovations. Script and Society: The Social Context of Writing Practices in Late Bronze Age Ugarit explores the social and cultural context of these complex writing traditions from the perspective of writing as a social practice. It combines archaeology, epigraphy, history and anthropology to present a highly interdisciplinary exploration of social questions relating to writing at the site, including matters of gender, ethnicity, status and other forms of identity, the relationship between writing and place, and the complex relationships between inscribed and uninscribed objects. This forms a case- study for a wider discussion of interdisciplinary approaches to the study of writing practices in the ancient world.

Based on a conference, named In Search of the Golden Fleece: Linguistic and Cultural Interactions between Greece and the Ancient Near East and hosted at the University of Oxford on January 27-28, 2017.