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The Bronze Age Collapse

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Bronze Age collapse, the term used to describe what many perceive as sudden, chaotic change around 1200 BC, mainly in the eastern Mediterranean.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss The Bronze Age Collapse, the name given by many historians to what appears to have been a sudden, uncontrolled destruction of dominant civilizations around 1200 BC in the Aegean, Eastern Mediterranean and Anatolia. Among other areas, there were great changes in Minoan Crete, Egypt, the Hittite Empire, Mycenaean Greece and Syria. The reasons for the changes, and the extent of those changes, are open to debate and include droughts, rebellions, the breakdown of trade as copper became less desirable, earthquakes, invasions, volcanoes and the mysterious Sea Peoples.

With

John Bennet
Director of the British School at Athens and Professor of Aegean Archaeology at the University of Sheffield

Linda Hulin
Fellow of Harris Manchester College and Research Officer at the Oxford Centre for Maritime Archaeology at the University of Oxford

And

Simon Stoddart
Fellow of Magdalene College and Reader in Prehistory at the University of Cambridge

Producer: Simon Tillotson.

Available now

47 minutes

Last on

Thu 16 Jun 2016 21:30
91热爆 Radio 4

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LINKS AND FURTHER READING

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READING LIST:

Cyprian Broodbank, The Making of the Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean from the Beginning to the Emergence of the Classical World (Thames & Hudson, 2013)

Trevor Bryce, The Kingdom of the Hittites (Oxford University Press, 2005)

Trevor Bryce, The World of The Neo-Hittite Kingdoms: A Political and Military History (Oxford University Press, 2012)

Eric H. Cline (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Bronze Age Aegean (Oxford University Press, 2010)

Eric H. Cline, 1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed (Princeton University Press, 2014)

Eric H. Cline and David O'Connor (eds), Ramesses III: The Life and Times of Egypt's Last Hero (University of Michigan Press, 2012)

Sigrid Deger-Jalkotzy and Irene S. Lemos (eds), Ancient Greece: From the Mycenaean Palaces to the Age of 91热爆r (Edinburgh University Press, 2006)

Jared M. Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (Penguin, 2006)

A. F. Harding and H. Fokkens (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the European Bronze Age (Oxford University Press, 2013)

A. F. Harding, European Societies in the Bronze Age (Cambridge University Press, 2000)

Ann E. Killebrew and Gunnar Lehmann (eds), The Philistines and Other "Sea Peoples" in Text and Archaeology (Society of Biblical Literature, 2013)

C. Mathers, and S. K. F. Stoddart (eds.), Development and Decline in the Mediterranean Bronze Age (John Collis Publication, 1994)

Patricia McAnany and Norman Yoffee (eds), Questioning Collapse: Human Resilience, Ecological Vulnerability and the Aftermath of Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2010)

William L. Moran (ed.), The Amarna Letters (John Hopkins University Press, 1992)

Marc Van de Mieroop, The Eastern Mediterranean in the Age of Ramesses II (Blackwell, 2007)

Amanda H. Podany, Brotherhood of Kings: How International Relations Shaped the Ancient Near East (Oxford University Press, 2010)

Shelley Wachsmann, Seagoing Ships and Seamanship in the Bronze Age Levant (Texas A&M University Press, 1998)

Marguerite Yon, The City of Ugarit at Tell Ras Shamra (Eisenbrauns, 2001)

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Credits

Presenter Melvyn Bragg
Producer Simon Tillotson
Interviewed Guest John Bennet
Interviewed Guest Linda Hulin
Interviewed Guest Simon Stoddart

Broadcasts

  • Thu 16 Jun 2016 09:00
    91热爆 Radio 4
  • Thu 16 Jun 2016 21:30
    91热爆 Radio 4

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