Aegean Interactions

The third century BC was a troubled period of ancient Greek history, not least due to the power struggles raging in the Aegean. This volume explores the history of interaction in the region, focusing on the island of Delos and drawing on material evidence to show how active networks of political, religious, and cultural interaction were formed

This book offers insight into the relationship between prehistoric and protohistoric human populations and the world around them. It reconstructs key aspects of the palaeoenvironment – from large-scale drivers of environmental conditions, such as climate, to more regional variables such as vegetation cover and faunal communities. The volume underscores how computational archaeology is leading the way in the study of past human-environment interactions across spatial and chronological scales. With the increased availability of high-resolution climate models, agent-based modelling, palaeoecological proxies and the mature use of Geographic Information System in ecological modelling, archaeologists working in interdisciplinary settings are well-positioned to explore the intersection of human systems and environmental affordances and constraints. These methodological advancements provide a better understanding of the role humans played in past ecosystems – both in terms of their impact upon the environment and, in return, the impact of environmental conditions on human systems. They may also allow us to infer past ecological knowledge and land-use patterns that are historically contingent, rather than environmentally determined. This volume gathers contributions that combine reconstructions of past environments and archeological data with a view to exploring their complex interactions at different scales and invites scholars from varying disciplines and backgrounds to present and compare different modelling approaches.

Interaction and mobility have attracted much interest in research within scholarly fields as different as archaeology, history, and more broadly the humanities. Critically assessing some of the most widespread views on interaction and its social impact, this book proposes an innovative perspective which combines radical social theory and currently burgeoning network methodologies. Through an in-depth analysis of a wealth of data often difficult to access, and illustrated by many diagrams and maps, the book highlights connections and their social implications at different scales ranging from the individual settlement to the Mediterranean. The resulting diachronic narrative explores social and economic trajectories over some seven centuries and sheds new light on the broad historical trends affecting the life of people living around the Middle Sea. The Bronze Age is the first period of intense interaction between early state societies of the Eastern Mediterranean and the small-scale communities to the west of Greece, with people and goods moving at a scale previously unprecedented. This encounter is explored from the vantage point of one of its main foci: Apulia, located in the southern Adriatic, at the junction between East and West and the entryway of one of the major routes for the resource-rich European continent.

In this study, Assaf Yasur-Landau examines the early history of the biblical Philistines who were among the 'Sea Peoples' who migrated from the Aegean area to the Levant during the early twelfth century BC. Creating an archaeological narrative of the migration of the Philistines, he combines an innovative theoretical framework on the archaeology of migration with new data from excavations in Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, Syria, Lebanon, and Israel and thereby reconstructs the social history of the Aegean migration to the southern Levant. The author follows the story of the migrants from the conditions that caused the Philistines to leave their Aegean homes, to their movement eastward along the sea and land routes, to their formation of a migrant society in Philistia and their interaction with local populations in the Levant. Based on the most up-to-date evidence, this book offers a new and fresh understanding of the arrival of the Philistines in the Levant.

A Companion that examines together two pivotal periods of Greek archaeology and offers a rich analysis of early Greek culture A Companion to the Archaeology of Early Greece and the Mediterranean offers an original and inclusive review of two key periods of Greek archaeology, which are typically treated separately—the Late Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age. It presents an in-depth exploration of the society and material culture of Greece and the Mediterranean, from the 14th to the early 7th centuries BC. The two-volume companion sets Aegean developments within their broader geographic and cultural context, and presents the wide-ranging interactions with the Mediterranean. The companion bridges the gap that typically exists between Prehistoric and Classical Archaeology and examines material culture and social practice across Greece and the Mediterranean. A number of specialists examine the environment and demography, and analyze a range of textual and archaeological evidence to shed light on socio-political and cultural developments. The companion also emphasizes regionalism in the archaeology of early Greece and examines the responses of different regions to major phenomena such as state formation, literacy, migration and colonization. Comprehensive in scope, this important companion: Outlines major developments in the two key phases of early Greece, the Late Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age Includes studies of the geography, chronology and demography of early Greece Explores the development of early Greek state and society and examines economy, religion, art and material culture Sets Aegean developments within their Mediterranean context Written for students, and scholars interested in the material culture of the era, A Companion to the Archaeology of Early Greece and the Mediterranean offers a comprehensive and authoritative guide that bridges the gap between the Late Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age.

Balkan ceramic studies is an emerging field within archaeology. This book brings together diverse studies by leading researchers and upcoming scholars, capturing the variety of current archaeological, ethnographic, experimental and scientific studies on Balkan ceramic production, distribution and use.

A comprehensive treatment of the history and components of Kings represents a departure from standard single-authored commentaries on it. Focusing on composition, sources, literary techniques, peoples and characters in the text, and on later transmission and reception of it affords students of the Books with a new resource, and sound bibliography.

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.