Diary

Location: Old Library

The first lecture provides the historical and scholarly background for the entire lecture series. It first outlines the main characteristics of Late Bronze Age socio-political infrastructures, describing their collapse after the crisis of 1200 BC, and identifying general patterns in the reorganization of societies across Greece, Anatolia, and the Levant during the Iron Age. It then revises the models currently adopted to study and classify Iron Age Eastern Mediterranean political systems and asks whether they provide valid heuristic tools…

Location: Old Library

Location: Wharton Room

The third lecture examines socio-political transformations in Iron Age Anatolia. It takes the case of Gurgum (modern-day Kahramanmaraş), exceptionally documented by a series of local inscriptions, as a representative microcosm for a broader analysis. The inscriptional evidence left by local political leaders illuminates not only the peculiar path to rulership walked by Gurgum’s ruling dynasty, but, most importantly, the changing and manifold nature of political leadership in Iron Age Anatolia as a whole. Key aspects include the rise of…

Location: Old Library

Location: Old Library

The fifth, and final, lecture brings together the conclusions reached in the previous lectures of the series. It draws a big-picture interpretation of political development in the three selected regions based on common features observed across the three case studies, casting light on shared structural factors that underpinned socio-political transformations in Greece, Anatolia, and the Levant during the Iron Age. Detected common features span from the social profiles of the new political actors to the fluidity of socio-political hierarchies, and include…