Zooarchaeology of the Late Bronze Age Fortified Settlements in Lithuania

Environmental Roots of the Late Bronze Age Crisis

The Late Bronze Age world of the Eastern Mediterranean, a rich linkage of Aegean, Egyptian, Syro-Palestinian, and Hittite civilizations, collapsed famously 3200 years ago and has remained one of the mysteries of the ancient world since the event's retrieval began in the late 19(th) century AD/CE. Iconic Egyptian bas-reliefs and graphic hieroglyphic and cuneiform texts portray the proximate caus...

The Many Ways between Late Bronze Age Aegeans and Levants

Chronology for the Aegean Late Bronze Age 1700-1400 B.C.

Radiocarbon (carbon-14) data from the Aegean Bronze Age 1700-1400 B.C. show that the Santorini (Thera) eruption must have occurred in the late 17th century B.C. By using carbon-14 dates from the surrounding region, cultural phases, and Bayesian statistical analysis, we established a chronology for the initial Aegean Late Bronze Age cultural phases (Late Minoan IA, IB, and II). This chronology c...

Dating the Aegean Late Bronze Age with Radiocarbon*

When Cadogan wrote ‘Dating the Aegean Bronze Age without radiocarbon’ (1978), this writer agreed completely with the view that the absolute dating of the Aegean Late Bronze Age was already established. Correlations with Egypt and other parts of the eastern Mediterranean seemed secure, and virtually all Aegean prehistorians felt that radiocarbon dates could be ‘tested’ by comparison with the Aeg...

Cycles of Rise and Fall, Upsweeps and Collapses: Changes in the scale of settlements and polities since the Bronze Age

This paper uses estimates of the sizes of settlements and polities to examine patterns thatneed to be understood in order to explain the growing scale of human socio-cultural in-