Getting closer to the Late Bronze Age collapse in the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean, c. 1200 BC

Abstract

‘The collapse c. 1200 BC’ in the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean—which saw the end of the Mycenaean kingdoms, the Hittite state and its empire and the kingdom of Ugarit—has intrigued archaeologists for decades. As Jesse Millek points out in Destruction and its impact, the idea of a swathe of near-synchronous destructions across the eastern Mediterranean is central to the narrative of the Late Bronze Age collapse: “destruction stands as the physical manifestation of the end of the Bronze Age” (p.6). Yet whether there was a single collapse marked by a widespread destruction horizon is up for debate. The two books reviewed here successfully reassess the simplistic and catastrophist characterisation of the end of the Late Bronze Age in the eastern Mediterranean and help provide a more nuanced picture.