Bronze Age collapse

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The Bronze Age collapse is the name of the period of history of the Ancient Middle East extending between the collapse of the Hittite and Egyptian Empires in Anatolia, Syria and Palestine between 1206 and 1150 BCE, down to the rise of settled Aramaean kingdoms of the mid 10th century BCE, and the rise of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. In the first phase of this period, almost every city between Troy and Gaza was destroyed, and often left unoccupied thereafter (eg Troy, Hattusas, Mycenae, Ugarit etc). Others continued but with a more local sphere of influence, limited evidence of trade and an impoverished culture.

As part of the Late Bronze Age-Early Iron Age Dark Ages, it was a period associated with the collapse of central authorities, a general depopulation, particulary of highly urban areas, the loss of literacy in Anatolia and the Aegean, and its restriction elsewhere, the disappearance of established paterns of long-distance international trade, increasingly vicious intra-elite struggles for power, and reduced options for the elite if not for the general mass of population.

There are various theories put forward to explain the situation of collapse.

earthquakes: [Amos Nur]Nur, Amos and Cline, Eric; (2000) "Poseidon's Horses: Plate Tectonics and Earthquake Storms in the Late Bronze Age Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean", Journ. of Archael. Sc. No 27 pps.43-63 shows how earthquakes tend to occur in "sequences" or "storms" where a major Earthquake above 6.5 on the Richter scale can in later months or years set off second or subsequent Earthquakes along the weakened fault line. He shows that when a map of Earthquake occurrence is superimposed on a map of the sites destroyed in the Late Bronze Age, there is a very close correspondence.
migrations,
ironworking: Leslie Palmer suggested that iron, whilst inferior to bronze weapons, was in more plentiful supply and so allowed larger armies of iron users to overwhelm the smaller armies of bronze using maryannu chariotry. This argument has been weakened of late with the finding that the shift to iron occurred after the collapse, not before. It now seems that the direuption of long distance trade cut easy supplies of tin, making bronze impossible to make. Older implements were recycled and thhen iron substitutes were used.
drought: Barry Weiss Weiss, Barry: (1982) "The decline of Late Bronze Age civilization as a possible response to climatic change" in Climatic Change ISSN: 0165-0009 (Paper) 1573-1480 (Online), Volume 4, Number 2, June 1982, pps 173 - 198, using the Palmer Drought Index for 35 Greek, Turkish, and Middle Eastern weather stations showed that a drought of the kinds that persisted from January 1972 would have affected all of the sites associated with the Late Bronze Age collapse.
general systems collapse: a general systems collapse has been put forward as an explanation for the reversals in culture that occurred between the Urnfield period of the 12-13th centuries BCE and the rise of the Celtic Haalstadt culture in the 9th and 10th centuries BCE. [See http://www.iol.ie/~edmo/linktoprehistory.html]
raiders

References

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