Great Collapses Codexery

The Bronze Age Collapse

A period of widespread societal collapse in the late Bronze Age.

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The Bronze Age Collapse

Colchester Museums, Laura McLean, 2008-08-12 14:28:42 · CC BY-SA 4.0

The Bronze Age Collapse refers to the decline of major Mediterranean civilizations in the 13th–12th centuries BCE.[1] Recent scholarship suggests the collapse was more limited in scale than previously thought.[2]

Quick Facts

Affected civilizations
  • Egypt
  • Anatolia
  • Aegean
  • Balkans

Facts from the source article.

Key facts and history

The German historian Arnold Hermann Ludwig Heeren first dated the collapse to 1200 BC in an 1817 history of Ancient Greece.[3] The Hittite Empire was fragmenting by 1200 BC under famine, plague, and civil war.[4] Many Anatolian sites were destroyed, and the area underwent extreme political decentralization.[4] The Mycenaean palaces of Greece did not survive the collapse, with Thebes sacked repeatedly between 1300 and 1200 BC.[5]

Up to 90% of small sites in the Peloponnese were abandoned, suggesting major depopulation.[6] Following the collapse, gradual changes in metallurgic technology led to the Iron Age across Europe, Asia, and Africa.[2] The period known as the Late Bronze Age (roughly 1550–1200 BC) was marked by sophisticated societies that participated in extensive trading networks.[7] Egypt's presence in the Southern Levant ended gradually over roughly a century, a process that was probably driven by internal political instability within Egypt itself.[8]

What the cited sources add

Millek showed that trade in Cypriot pottery ended by 1300 BC and Mycenaean pottery by 1250 BC, before the collapse period.[9] Archaeometallurgical studies indicate that tin trade neither stopped nor decreased after 1200 BC.[9] The excavator of Kition, Vassos Karageorghis, stated there was no evidence of violent destruction there, only cultural continuity.[10] Millek noted that the only settlement on Cyprus with clear destruction evidence around 1200 BC was Maa Palaeokastro.[11]

At the close of the 13th century, the Egyptian military post at Aphek was destroyed as a result of combat.[12]

References

  1. Mark, "Bronze Age Collapse", World History Encyclopedia, 20 September 2019. facts only, no text reused. worldhistory.org
  2. Wikipedia, "Late Bronze Age collapse" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Millek, "Destruction and Its Impact on Ancient Societies at the End of the Bronze Age", Lockwood Press, 2023; Middleton, "Getting closer to the Late Bronze Age collapse in the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean, c. 1200 BC", Antiquity, 25 February 2024, p. 260–263; Jung, "Synchronizing the Destructions of the Mycenaean Palaces", Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, 2022 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  3. Wikipedia, "Late Bronze Age collapse" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: S. Richard, "Archaeological sources for the history of Palestine: The Early Bronze Age: The rise and collapse of urbanism", The Biblical Archaeologist (1987); Crawford, "Chronology", Sage, 2006, p. xxix (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  4. Wikipedia, "Late Bronze Age collapse" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Seeher, "Die Zerstörung der Stadt Hattusa, in: G. Wilhelm (Hrsg.), Akten des IV. Internationalen Kongresses für Hethitologie. Studien zu den Boğazköy-Texten 45 (Wiesbaden 2001) 623–634", Akten des IV. Internationalen Kon; Seeher, "Ipamati Kistamati Pari Tumatimis: Luwian and Hittite Studies Presented to J. David Hawkins on the Occasion of his 70th Birthday", Institute of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University, 2010, p. 221; Drews, "The End of the Bronze Age: Changes in Warfare and the Catastrophe Ca. 1200 B.C.", Princeton University en.wikipedia.org
  5. Wikipedia, "Late Bronze Age collapse" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Drews 1993, p. 22 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  6. Wikipedia, "Late Bronze Age collapse" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Demand, "The Mediterranean Context of Early Greek History", Wiley-Blackwell, 2011, p. 198 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  7. Wikipedia, "Late Bronze Age collapse" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Orphanides, "Late Bronze Age Socio-Economic and Political Organization, and the Hellenization of Cyprus", Athens Journal of History, January 2017, p. 7–20; Mark, "Bronze Age Collapse", World History Encyclopedia, 20 September 2019; Orphanides, "Late Bronze Age Socio-Economic and Political Organization, and the Hellenization of Cyprus", Athens Journal of History, January 2017, p. 7–20; Mark, "Bronze Age Collapse", World History Encyclopedia, 20 September 2019; de Blois, "An Introduction to the Ancient World", Routledge, 1997, p. en.wikipedia.org
  8. Millek, "Destruction and the Fall of Egyptian Hegemony Over the Southern Levant", Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections, 2018, p. 11–15. facts only, no text reused. journals.librarypublishing.arizona.edu
  9. Wikipedia, "Late Bronze Age collapse" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Millek 2019b, p. 147–188; Millek, "Jerusalem and the Coastal Plain in the Iron Age and Persian Periods: New Studies on Jerusalem's Relations with the Southern Coastal Plain of Israel/Palestine (c. 1200–300 BCE)", Mohr Siebeck, 2022, p. 39–60; Millek 2019b, p. 147–188; Yahalom-Mack, "New Insights to Levantine Copper Trade: Analysis of Ingots from the Bronze and Iron Ages in Israel", Journal of Archaeological Science, 2014, p. 159–177; Ashkenazi, "Archaeometallurgical Investigation of Thirteenth-Twelfth Centuries BCE Bronze Objec en.wikipedia.org
  10. Millek, "The Fall of the Bronze Age and the Destruction that Wasn't: The Ancient Near East Today", ANE Today, 20 December 2022. facts only, no text reused. anetoday.org
  11. Wikipedia, "Late Bronze Age collapse" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Millek 2021b, p. 74–77; Millek 2021b, p. 74–77; Millek 2021b, p. 74–77; Karageorghis, "Excavations at Maa-Palaeokastro 1979–1986", Cyprus Department of Antiquities, 1988, p. 266 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  12. Wikipedia, "Late Bronze Age collapse" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Millek, ""Sea Peoples" Up-to-Date: New Research on Transformation in the Eastern Mediterranean in 13th–11th Centuries BCE, 113–140", Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, 2017, p. 120–122; "Burke et al. 2017 Excavations of the New Kingdom Fortress in Jaffa, 2011–2014: Traces of Resistance to Egyptian Rule in Canaan", American Journal of Archaeology, January 2017, p. 85–133; Millek, "Destruction and the Fall of Egyptian Hegemony Over the Southern Levant", Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections, 2018, p. 11–15 (we also read t en.wikipedia.org

Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Late Bronze Age collapse (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.

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Named in this entry

AnatoliaAegean Sea

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Sources

Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.

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