Exchange, Destruction, and a Transitioning Society. Interregional Exchange in the Southern Levant from the Late Bronze Age to the Iron I

Abstract

The end of the Late Bronze Age ca. 1200 BC in the Eastern Mediterranean is traditionally viewed as an end point. Great empires collapsed, prominent cities were destroyed, interregional exchange disappeared, and writing systems were all but lost in most of the Eastern Mediterranean. The goal of this volume is to examine one key aspect of the transition from the Late Bronze Age to the Iron I in the Southern Levant, the development and changes in interregional exchange both over time and regionally. Twelve non-local types of material culture were collected into a database in order to track the development of interregional exchange over the course of the LBA to the Iron I. With this data, this volume explores what affect, if any, did changes in interregional exchange have on the ‘collapse’ of the LBA societies in the Southern Levant. Another key aspect of this work is an examination of the supposed wave of destruction which took the Southern Levant by storm to see if these events might have affected trade and contributed to the transitions during the end of the LBA into the Iron I. In all this work seeks to understand what changes took place in interregional exchange, how might destruction have affected this, and was this the cause for the transition to the Iron I.