Middle Bronze Age Zincirli: The Date of “Hilani I” and the End of Middle Bronze II

Abstract

Zincirli Höyük in southern Turkey is best known as the Iron Age city of Samʾal, but recent excavations by the Chicago-Tübingen Expedition have discovered important remains of the Middle Bronze Age II, destroyed in a conflagration. This article presents two major interim results for Zincirli’s settlement history that also have implications for the architectural history and chronology of the Northern Levant. In addition to a wealth of material that gives new insight into local administration and production and interregional connections between Syria and Anatolia, the excavations have revealed that the monumental building Hilani I, though long assumed to be the earliest palace of the Iron Age, dates instead to the Middle Bronze Age. Contemporary parallels suggest that it was a broadroom temple rather than a bīt ḫilāni palace. Furthermore, radiocarbon analysis and ceramic evidence date the destruction to the mid- to late 17th century b.c.e. and thus suggest that the agent of the destruction was Ḫattušili I in his campaign against Zalwar (Zalpa), nearby Tilmen Höyük. Future research on the Middle Bronze Age at Zincirli promises to illuminate its connection to a little-known Syro-Anatolian exchange network, probably centered on Aleppo, which the rising Hittite kingdom may have hoped to disrupt or co-opt.