"The early first millennium BCE marks one of the most culturally diverse periods in the history of the eastern Mediterranean. Surveying the region from Greece to Iraq, one finds a host of cultures and political formations, all distinct, yet all visibly connected in meaningful ways. These include the early polities of Geometric period Greece, the Phrygian kingdom of central Anatolia, the Syro-Anatolian city-states, the seafaring Phoenicians and the Biblical Israelites of the southern Levant, the Urartian kingdom of the eastern Anatolian highlands, and the expansionary Neo-Assyrian Empire of northern Mesopotamia. This volume explicitly adopts an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the social and political significance of how interregional networks operated within and between Mediterranean cultures during that era"--

An interdisciplinary consideration of how eastern Mediterranean cultures in the first millennium BCE were meaningfully connected. The early first millennium BCE marks one of the most culturally diverse periods in the history of the eastern Mediterranean. Surveying the region from Greece to Iraq, one finds a host of cultures and political formations, all distinct, yet all visibly connected in meaningful ways. These include the early polities of Geometric period Greece, the Phrygian kingdom of central Anatolia, the Syro-Anatolian city-states, the seafaring Phoenicians and the biblical Israelites of the southern Levant, Egypt’s Twenty-first through Twenty-fifth Dynasties, the Urartian kingdom of the eastern Anatolian highlands, and the expansionary Neo-Assyrian Empire of northern Mesopotamia. This volume adopts an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the social and political significance of how interregional networks operated within and between Mediterranean cultures during that era.

The Mediterranean's Iron Age period was one of its most dynamic eras. Stimulated by the movement of individuals and groups on an unprecedented scale, the first half of the first millennium BCE witnesses the development of Mediterranean-wide practices, including related writing systems, common features of urbanism, and shared artistic styles and techniques, alongside the evolution of wide-scale trade. Together, these created an engaged, interlinked and interactive Mediterranean. We can recognise this as the Mediterranean's first truly globalising era. This volume introduces students and scholars to contemporary evidence and theories surrounding the Mediterranean from the eleventh century until the end of the seventh century BCE to enable an integrated understanding of the multicultural and socially complex nature of this incredibly vibrant period.

The end of the Bronze Age and beginning of the Iron Age was the period of a historical turning point for the relationship of the Aegean and the Levant. THe two regions were closely related to each other and benefited mutually in this period. THe transmission of the alphabet from the East to Greece and the appearance of Mycenaean-style pottery in the East illustrate the cultural borrowings in both directions. The volume presents updated studies on both regions and questions of bilateral relationships regarding archaeological, historical and linguistic aspects. THese studies shed light on the pivotal periods of both regions: when Greek poleis were formed, with the culture related to it, and when the political and social situation in the Levant took its form, influencing the entire first millennium BCE. In the linguistic part, the volume includes papers showing possible linguistic relations and mutual borrowings in the triangle of Semitic, Greek and Anatolian languages. IN the archaeological and historical parts, the studies deal both with case studies from Anatolia, Greece and Palestine and the synthetic issues regarding the 'big' questions. THe book also presents the possible benefits of the usage of scientific methods in historical reconstruction - analysis of isotopes and ancient DNA samples. THese new techniques offer a useful tool, expanding our way of exploring the past.

"This book presents a new model for the cluster of ancient kingdoms that clustered around the northeast corner of the Mediterranean Sea during the Iron age, ca. 1200-600 BCE. Rather than presenting them as ancient versions of the modern nation-state, characterized by homogenous ethnolinguistic communities like "the Aramaeans" or "the Luwians" living in neatly bounded territories, this book sees these polities as being fundamentally diverse and variable, distinguished by demographic fluidity and cultural mobility. This conclusion is reached via an examination of a host of evidentiary sources, including site plans, settlement patterns, visual arts, and historical sources. Together, these lines of evidence lead to the awareness that this time and place consists of a complex fusion of cultural traditions that is nevertheless distinctly recognizable unto itself. This book thus proposes a new term to encapsulate that diversity: the Syro-Anatolian Culture Complex"--

The Cambridge Prehistory of the Bronze and Iron Age Mediterranean offers new insights into the material and social practices of many different Mediterranean peoples during the Bronze and Iron Ages, presenting in particular those features that both connect and distinguish them. Contributors discuss in depth a range of topics that motivate and structure Mediterranean archaeology today, including insularity and connectivity; mobility, migration, and colonization; hybridization and cultural encounters; materiality, memory, and identity; community and household; life and death; and ritual and ideology. The volume's broad coverage of different approaches and contemporary archaeological practices will help practitioners of Mediterranean archaeology to move the subject forward in new and dynamic ways. Together, the essays in this volume shed new light on the people, ideas, and materials that make up the world of Mediterranean archaeology today, beyond the borders that separate Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.

This book reconstructs the origins and spread of precious metal money in the Iron Age eastern Mediterranean (1200-600 BCE).

"In The Open Sea, J. G. Manning offers a major new history of economic life in the Mediterranean world in the Iron Age, from Phoenician trading down to the Hellenistic era and the beginning of Rome's imperial supremacy. Drawing on a wide range of ancient sources and the latest social theory, Manning suggests that a search for an illusory single "ancient economy" has obscured the diversity of lived experience in the Mediterranean world, including both changes in political economies over time and differences in cultural conceptions of property and money. At the same time, he shows how the region's economies became increasingly interconnected during this period." -- Publisher's description

Over a 1000 tiny bronze artefacts were found alongside the remains of a man in a Dutch barrow that was excavated in laboratory conditions. The objects had been dismantled and taken apart, all to be destroyed by fire in what appears to have been a pars pro toto burial. In essence, a person and a place were being transformed through destruction. Based on the meticulous excavation and a range of specialist and comprehensive studies of finds, a prehistoric burial ritual now can be brought to life in surprising detail. This Iron Age community used extraordinary objects that find their closest counterpart in the elite graves of the Hallstatt culture in Central Europe.

Recently, complex interpretations of socio-cultural change in the ancientMediterranean world have emerged that challenge earlier models. Influenced bytoday’s hyper-connected age, scholars no longer perceive the Mediterranean as astatic place where “Greco-Roman” culture was dominant, but rather see it as adynamic and connected sea where fragmentation and uncertainty, along with mobilityand networking, were the norm. Hence, a current theoretical approach to studyingancient culture has been that of globalization. Certain eras of Mediterranean history (e.g., the Roman empire) known for their increased connectivity have thus beenanalyzed from a globalized perspective that examines rhizomal networking, culturaldiversity, and multiple processes of social change. Archaeology has proven a usefuldiscipline for investigating ancient “globalization” because of its recent focus on howidentity is expressed through material culture negotiated between both local andglobal influences when levels of connectivity are altered. One form of identity that has been inadequately explored in relation to globalizationtheory is insularity. Insularity, or the socially recognized differences expressed bypeople living on islands, is a form of self-identification created within a particularspace and time. Insularity, as a unique social identity affected by “global” forces,should be viewed as an important research paradigm for archaeologies concerned with re-examining cultural change. The purpose of this volume is to explore how comparative archaeologies of insularitycan contribute to discourse on ancient Mediterranean “globalization.” The volume’s theme stems from a colloquium session that was chaired by the volume’s co-editors atthe Annual Meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America in January 2017. Given the current state of the field for globalization studies in Mediterranean archaeology,this volume aims to bring together for the first time archaeologists working ondifferent islands and a range of material culture types to examine diachronically how Mediterranean insularities changed during eras when connectivity increased, such asthe Late Bronze Age, the era of Greek and Phoenician colonization, the Classicalperiod, and during the High and Late Roman imperial eras. Each chapter aims tosituate a specific island or island group within the context of the globalizing forces and networks that conditioned a particular period, and utilizes archaeological material toreveal how islanders shaped their insular identities, or notions of insularity, at thenexus of local and global influences.