Review Article: Seals and Sealing Practices: The Ancient Near East and Bronze Age Aegean

Investigating how different forms of inequality arose and were sustained through time is key to understanding the emergence of complex social systems. Due to its long-term perspective, archaeology has much to contribute to this discussion. However, comparing inequality in different societies through time, especially in prehistory, is difficult because comparable metrics of value are not available. Here we use a recently developed technique which assumes a correlation between household size and household wealth to investigate inequality in the ancient Near East. If this assumption is correct, our results show that inequality increased from the Neolithic to the Iron Age, and we link this increase to changing forms of social and political organization. We see a step change in levels of inequality around the time of the emergence of urban sites at the beginning of the Bronze Age. However, urban and rural sites were similarly unequal, suggesting that outside the elite, the inhabitants of each encompassed a similar range of wealth levels. The situation changes during the Iron Age, when inequality in urban environments increases and rural sites become more equal.

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Some Remarks on Patronage in Syria-Palestine During the Late Bronze Age

Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient ◽

10.1163/156852009x458197 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 52 (3) ◽

pp. 363-381 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Emanuel Pfoh

Keyword(s):

Bronze Age ◽

Near East ◽

Ancient Near East ◽

Late Bronze Age ◽

Critical Questions ◽

The Subject ◽

Amarna Letters ◽

Kinship Ties

AbstractFollowing the discussion presented in an article by R. Westbrook on patronage in the ancient Near East (JESHO 48/2, 2005), the aim of this paper is to continue with the discussion as well as to address some of the views on the topic regarding Syria-Palestine during the Late Bronze Age, using examples from the Amarna letters and Hittite treaties. Some of the critical questions that should be addressed in further discussions on the subject are related to the socio-political nature of patronage and its relationship to kinship ties in society, and why and how patronage relationships are established in society. Après l'étude du R. Westbrook sur l'évidence du patronage dans le Proche-Orient ancien, publié dans ce journal (JESHO 48/2, 2005), on veut continuer avec la discussion du thème mais donner aussi quelques révisions pour la Syrie-Palestine du l'âge du Bronce Récent à partir de exemples dans les lettres d'Amarna et les traités hittites. Questions fondamentales qu'on doit traiter sont: la nature socio-politique du patronage et son rapport avec la parenté dans la société; et pourquoi et comment les liens de patronage sont établis dans la société.

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Urartian Irrigation Works.

Anatolian Studies ◽

10.2307/3642562 ◽

1972 ◽

Vol 22 ◽

pp. 179-186 ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

Charles Burney

Keyword(s):

Bronze Age ◽

Near East ◽

Common Factor ◽

Ancient Near East ◽

Eastern Anatolia ◽

Archaeological Survey ◽

Space And Time ◽

The Bronze Age

If there is one aspect of life in the ancient Near East which may be taken as a common factor between lands and cities so far removed in space and time as Sumer and Urartu, Eridu and Van, it is irrigation. This is a subject crying out for more research, especially on the ground. Here too is a link between Seton Lloyd's excavations at Eridu and in the Diyala region, his publication of Sennacherib's acqueduct and his later interest in Urartu. The writer can claim first-hand knowledge only of the last. Without Seton Lloyd's encouragement in the Institute at Ankara and likewise during the weeks spent as an assistant during the first season's excavations at Beycesultan, the writer would scarcely have set out on his first archaeological survey in northern Anatolia, followed by that in the Pontic region of Tokat and Amasya (1955). These two surveys were but the prelude to those of 1956 and 1957 in eastern Anatolia. These, undertaken initially in the expectation of discovering mounds of the Bronze Age and earlier periods, became instead largely a revelation of the great number of Urartian sites, including numerous fortresses recognizable as such from their surface remains.

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Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer: Bronze Age Cities in Iron Age Context

Vetus Testamentum ◽

10.1163/15685330-bja10051 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-17

Author(s):

Yosef Garfinkel ◽

Michael Pietsch

Keyword(s):

Bronze Age ◽

Iron Age ◽

Near East ◽

Point Of View ◽

Ancient Near East ◽

Royal Ideology ◽

The City

Abstract The historical King Solomon has been discussed and debated by many scholars over the years. It is interesting, however, to see that the historicity of the city list of Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer has been accepted by traditional and more radical scholars alike, who have suggested historical contexts in the 10th, 9th, or 8th century BCE for it. In this article we examine the list from a primarily literary point of view, placing it in the broader context of royal ideology in the ancient Near East and arguing that it may preserve memories of great cities from the Canaanite era.

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Late Bronze Age Writing-Boards and their Uses: textual evidence from Anatolia and Syria

Anatolian Studies ◽

10.2307/3642934 ◽

1991 ◽

Vol 41 ◽

pp. 111-123 ◽

Cited By ~ 15

Author(s):

Dorit Symington

Keyword(s):

Bronze Age ◽

Near East ◽

Ancient Near East ◽

Late Bronze Age ◽

Textual Evidence ◽

First Millennium ◽

The Subject

It has been known from textual sources for some time that besides clay tablets, the traditional writing material in the Ancient Near East, wooden writing-boards were also used by the scribes.M. San Nicolò first drew attention to the fact that writing-boards were widely employed in temple and palace administration in Mesopotamia in the first millennium B.C. and the textual evidence gathered by him was soon to be confirmed archaeologically by the discovery of several such writing-boards at Nimrud. Equally, the existence of wooden writing material in Hittite context has long been established, but no example has ever been found. It is generally thought that private and economic records which are almost totally lacking in the archives at Boǧazköy must have been written on perishable material.The elusive nature of wooden writing-boards manifests itself not only archaeologically by the unlikelihood of their survival but also by the fact that, as a rule, they deserved little mention in the cuneiform texts. Consequently, the quantity of wooden writing material that may have been in use and did not survive is impossible to gauge. Similarly, it would be unwarranted to deduce that centres whose archives have not contributed to the subject, were unfamiliar with writing on wood.

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The Bronze Age in the Near East: A Review Article [Part II]

American Journal of Archaeology ◽

10.2307/500835 ◽

1952 ◽

Vol 56 (1) ◽

pp. 27 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

George M. A. Hanfmann ◽

Claude F. A. Schaeffer

Keyword(s):

Bronze Age ◽

Near East ◽

Review Article ◽

The Bronze Age

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Metric Analysis of Permanent and Deciduous Teeth from Bronze Age Tell Leilan, Syria

Dental Anthropology Journal ◽

10.26575/daj.v16i3.155 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 16 (3) ◽

pp. 73-80 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Scott Haddow ◽

Nancy C. Lovell

Keyword(s):

Bronze Age ◽

Near East ◽

Size Variation ◽

Ancient Near East ◽

Deciduous Teeth ◽

Crown Area ◽

Dental Reduction ◽

History Of ◽

Tell Leilan ◽

Crown Dimensions

Between 1979 and 1989 the skeletal remains of 21 adults and 38 children, yielding 317 permanent and 134 deciduous teeth, were recovered at Tell Leilan, Syria, the site of a major urban center during the emergence of complex state society in northern Mesopotamia in the mid-third millennium BC. Tooth crown dimensions (faciolingual and mesiodistal diameters, total crown area, and molar crown area) are presented and the last two serve as the primary units of comparison for a diachronic interpretation of tooth size variation in the ancient Near East. Both permanent and deciduous dental data support the pattern of dental reduction since the Middle Paleolithic that has been documented for Asia and Europe. The total crown areas for the permanent and deciduous dental samples, 1189 mm2 and 497 mm2 respectively, place this archaeological population at the smaller end of the crown area scale for the Near East; smaller in size than nearby Paleolithic and Neolithic populations. Given the paucity of odontological data for this area, this study contributes to the odontometric history of Mesopotamia and as a summary compilation and comparison of previously conducted odontometric work as it relates to the phenomenon of dental reduction within the ancient Near East.

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Burials of Domesticated Animals in the Middle Bronze Age Rampart at Tel ‘Akko in Light of Archaeological Finds in the Levant and Ceremonies from the Ancient Near East

Nomads of the Mediterranean: Trade and Contact in the Bronze and Iron Ages ◽

10.1163/9789004430112_006 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 54-68

Keyword(s):

Bronze Age ◽

Near East ◽

Ancient Near East ◽

Domesticated Animals ◽

Middle Bronze Age

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The Ancient Near East

The Donkey in Human History ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198749233.003.0010 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Peter Mitchell

Keyword(s):

Bronze Age ◽

Near East ◽

Political Organization ◽

Ancient Near East ◽

Persian Empire ◽

Wild Ass ◽

City States ◽

Third Dynasty Of Ur ◽

City State ◽

Key Aspects

The donkey was domesticated from the African wild ass in Northeast Africa some 7–6,000 years ago. This chapter looks at what happened when donkeys turned right and exited Africa into Asia. Though tracking their movement as far as India and China, its principal focus lies in the Ancient Near East, the region stretching from Israel north to Turkey and eastward into Iraq and Iran that is often termed the ‘Fertile Crescent’. Within this vast area, donkeys were used in daily life, including the agricultural cycle, just as they were in Egypt. But like there they also acquired other, more specialized uses and associations. Thus, after tracing the donkey’s spread I look at its role in three key aspects of the Near East’s earliest civilizations: the organization of trade; the legitimization of kingship; and religion. By 3500 BC the earliest cities had already emerged in Mesopotamia, the ‘land between the rivers’ Euphrates and Tigris. Over the course of the next 1,500 years, urbanization gathered pace across Palestine and Syria in the west, northward in Turkey, and east through Iran. Within Mesopotamia the independent Sumerian city-states of the south developed increasingly monarchical forms of government, seeing brief unity under the kings of Akkad and the Third Dynasty of Ur in the late third millennium BC. Then and later a city-state pattern of political organization also held in northern Mesopotamia (for example, at Aššur and its neighbour Mari) and in the Levant. In the mid-second millennium bc, however, much larger kingdoms emerged: the Hittites in central Turkey, Assyria in northern Mesopotamia, and Babylonia in its south. The Hittites, in particular, competed with Egypt for control of Syrian and Palestinian cities like Ugarit. When these Bronze Age powers collapsed around 1200 BC, their disappearance opened a window for smaller states like Israel to flourish briefly in their wake. Subsequently, however, first Assyria (911–612 BC) and then Babylon (612–539 BC) established much more centralized and extensive empires across the Near East before being subsumed within the Persian Empire of Cyrus the Great and his successors.

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