Ancient Western Asia Beyond the Paradigm of Collapse and Regeneration (1200-900 Bce): Proceedings of the Nyu-Psl International Colloquium, Paris Insti

New results and interpretations challenging the notion of a uniform, macroregional collapse throughout the Eastern Mediterranean

Ancient WesternAsia Beyond the Paradigm of Collapse and Regeneration (1200-900 BCE) presents select essays originating in a two-year research collaboration between New York University and Paris Sciences et Lettres. The contributions here offer new results and interpretations of the processes and outcomes of the transition from the Late Bronze Age to the Iron Age in three broad regions: Anatolia, northern Mesopotamia, and the Levant. Together, these challenge the notion of a uniform, macroregional collapse throughout the Eastern Mediterranean, followed by the regeneration of political powers. Current research on newly discovered or reinterpreted textual and material evidence from Western Asia instead suggests that this transition was characterized by a diversity of local responses emerging from diverse environmental settings and culture complexes, as evident in the case studies collected here in history, archaeology, and art history. The editors avoid particularism by adopting a regional organization, with the aim of identifying and tracing similar processes and outcomes emerging locally across the three regions. Ultimately, this volume reimagines the Late Bronze-Iron Age transition as the emergence of a set of recursive processes and outcomes nested firmly in the local cultural interactions of western Asia before the beginning of the new, unifying era of Assyrian imperialism.

Maria Grazia Masetti-Rouault (Editor)
Maria Grazia Masetti-Rouault is Chair of Religions of the Syro-Mesopotamian World, Section Sciences Religieuses at École Pratique des Hautes Études / Paris Sciences & Lettres University. Member of the team UMR 8167 Orient et Méditerranée of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, she is the director of the French archaeological mission at Qasr Shemamok (Kurdistan, Iraq), and of the Syro-French archaeological mission at Tell Masaikh /Terqa region (Syria).

Ilaria Calini (Editor)
Ilaria Calini is a postdoctoral researcher at the École Pratique des Hautes Études / Paris Sciences & Lettres University and works on cultural interactions in the Assyrian world and between Assyria and ancient Greece. Associate member of the team UMR 8210 - Anthropology and History of ancient worlds of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in France, she is a member of the French archaeological mission at Qasr Shemamok (Kurdistan, Iraq), and of the Syro-French archaeological mission at Tell Masaikh /Terqa region (Syria), in charge for the study and publication of ceramic material.

Robert Hawley (Editor)
Robert Hawley is a research fellow of the Orient & Méditerranée laboratory at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. He has published widely on Akkadian, Ugaritic, Syriac and Arabic. Hecurrently holds the Chair of Religions and Cultures of the Ancient Levant in the Religious Sciences Section of the École Pratique des Hautes Études.

Lorenzo d’Alfonso (Editor)
Lorenzo d’Alfonso is Professor of Western Asian Archaeology and History at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University and Chair of Archaeology and Art History of Ancient Western Asia at the University of Pavia. He has been leading archaeological research in south Cappadocia for more than fifteen years. His current research focus is on the archaeology of sovereignty applied to the Late Bronze and Iron Age in Anatolia and Syria.