Diaspora and the Origins of the Syro-Anatolian Culture Complex

This chapter proposes a model for how the Syro-Anatolian Culture Complex (SACC) arose during the Late Bronze–Iron Age transition at the end of the second millennium and start of the first millennium BCE. It presents SACC as a case study for diaspora studies in the tradition of Paul Gilroy and James Clifford. A series of demographic transformations took place at this time, including small-scale migrations from central Anatolia and the Aegean into southeastern Anatolia, as well as a ruralization of the local settlement patterns from previous major urban centers. Together, these transformations brought several different populations into close contact with one another, resulting in a diverse ethnolinguistic landscape reminiscent of certain contemporary situations of diaspora. It is precisely these mixed cultural origins that have led SACC to be so difficult for scholars to characterize, leading as it did to multiple affiliation groups sharing cultural and political traditions.

Conclusion

This chapter provides a summary of the preceding chapters’ two primary arguments: first, that the Syro-Anatolian Culture Complex (SACC) was a critical player in the political and cultural world of the Iron Age; and, second, that a new model needs to be used to describe it, one that celebrates diversity, mobility, fluidity, and hybridity. A preliminary list of attributes that characterizes SACC is offered. Finally, the chapter closes with a consideration of those aspects of SACC that require additional research, especially its Late Bronze Age antecedents and its interaction with other neighbors and contemporaries.

Space and Power in the Syro-Anatolian Culture Complex

This chapter develops insights from recent social theory in space and place that emphasizes the socially contingent nature of the built environment and its perception by those who dwell within it. Spatial analysis of settlement patterns within the Syro-Anatolian Culture Complex illustrates that rather than being evenly distributed across the landscape, as per the vision of territoriality in the modern nation-state, power at the regional scale was highly variable and swift to change, a phenomenon referred to as malleable territoriality. Each kingdom’s capital city was a tightly coordinated nexus of symbols that celebrated royal authority to pedestrians in such a way that no matter where one turned, as one moved through the city, the legitimacy of the royal figure was constantly being reinforced. Yet as soon as one moved into a settlement lower on the settlement hierarchy, one sees that the political is far less evident, even absent. And even in the capital cities themselves, those indicators of royal power are frequently found smashed into pieces. Spatial analysis therefore indicates that not only was power expressed and experienced differently depending on one’s location in the built environment, it was also something that could be contested.

On the Edge of Empire

This chapter borrows from middle-ground studies and related hybridity theory to argue that the Syro-Anatolian Culture Complex (SACC) was on an equal cultural footing with its much more politically powerful neighbor, the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Although Assyria would come to conquer most of SACC by about 700 BCE, for several centuries the two entities influenced one another culturally, an influence that is visible in their cultural products like wall reliefs and monumental statuary. In several cases, these reliefs and statues deliberately fused elements from both places to produce newly significant products, often in ways that emphasized Syro-Anatolian cultural priority even in the face of political domination. Beyond the fusion of iconographic tropes in isolated artworks, this chapter surveys the archaeological record of Syro-Anatolian cities that continued in use past the Assyrian conquest, demonstrating that in nearly all cases these cities’ architectural traditions were unmolested even while new Assyrian buildings were constructed, such that these cities themselves became hybrid entities of Assyrian and Syro-Anatolian cultural production.

Mobility and the Syro-Anatolian Culture Complex During the Early First Millennium

This chapter explores how mobility and politics were intertwined in the Syro-Anatolian Culture Complex (SACC). Noting that politics and movement are always related, an insight drawn from the “new mobilities paradigm” in sociology and referred to here as kinopolitics, this chapter explores this dynamic in three places. The first is the troubling presence of Phoenician inscriptions and objects in SACC that have long been difficult to interpret historically. Here it is argued that mobile Phoenician speakers must have been part of the Syro-Anatolian sociopolitical landscape, likely involved in state-sponsored commercial trade. The second is one of SACC’s most famous cultural products, the finely worked ivories that were so sought after during the Iron Age. In this case, ivory and its producers were both highly mobile across SACC. The third, the engraved stone reliefs that lined the walls of monumental buildings, is the most counterintuitive. Despite appearances, evidence from nearly all cases where such reliefs have been found indicates that they were constantly being reused in new constructions, indicating that such movement was a cultural significant practice.

Introduction

This chapter presents the overall argument and structure of the book. In today’s understanding of the ancient Near East, the Iron Age kingdoms of southeastern Anatolia and northern Syria are often seen as a cultural backwater, peripheral to the concerns of larger and more powerful contemporaries. Instead, one of the book’s main arguments is the Syro-Anatolian Culture Complex (SACC)’s hitherto underappreciated significance in antiquity. Part of the reason for this lack of scholarly recognition is the tacit application of an inappropriate model of the state, the nation-state, which is wholly inaccurate in this context. This chapter reviews how this model manifests in archaeological, art historical, and philological Iron Age research. It then surveys the historical trajectory of SACC across the Iron Age and overviews the region’s geographical context.