Wednesday, 16 March 2005
Carol Bell (Institute of Archaeology, UCL)
TIN, POTS AND DONKEYS: A NEW LOOK AT LATE BRONZE AGE TRADE IN THE LEVANT
(Joint lecture with Palestine Exploration Fund)
Advances in the study of ancient trade, together with new archaeological and textual evidence from the Levant, make a review of Late Bronze Age trade in this region timely. During the Late Bronze Age, international trade grew to unprecedented levels in the Eastern Mediterranean region and port cities in the Levant, especially Ugarit, played a crucial role at the nexus long-distance overland trade routes and maritime circuits in the East Mediterranean. Tin, an essential component of bronze, was one of the strategic commodities that arrived by donkey caravan at Ugarit for shipment west to the foundries of cities such as Enkomi in Cyprus and to other Levantine harbours. Meanwhile, Mycenaean and Cypriote pots arrived in large quantities along the length of the Levant coast.
This lecture will present a picture of the nature of this trade by comparing evidence from different ports along the length of the Levant littoral. A picture emerges of regional variation, rather than uniformity, in relationships with Cyprus and the Aegean in cities on different parts of the coast of Syro-Palestine. The possibility will be raised that this variation may have influenced what happened next, in the early decades of the Iron Age, as a new order began to emerge from the ashes of the destructive events that marked the end of the Late Bronze Age from Anatolian Plateau to Gaza and from the Argolid to the Euphrates.
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