Premium
POST‐COLLAPSE: THE RE‐EMERGENCE OF POLITY IN IRON AGE BOĞAZKÖY, CENTRAL ANATOLIA
Author(s) -
KEALHOFER L.,
GRAVE P.,
GENZ H.,
MARSH B.
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
oxford journal of archaeology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.382
H-Index - 31
eISSN - 1468-0092
pISSN - 0262-5253
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-0092.2009.00329.x
Subject(s) - polity , hittite language , bronze age , iron age , politics , ancient history , empire , history , archaeology , period (music) , economic history , political science , law , art , aesthetics
Summary How communities reorganize after collapse is drawing increasing attention across a wide spectrum of disciplines. Iron Age Boğazköy provides an archaeological case study of urban and political regeneration after the widespread collapse of eastern Mediterranean Late Bronze Age empires in the early twelfth century BC. Recent work at Boğazköy has significantly expanded our understanding of long‐term occupation in north central Anatolia. This work counters previous suggestions that Boğazköy was abandoned after the collapse of the Hittite Empire during the Early Iron Age. In this paper, we focus on the Iron Age occupations at the site to show how growth in the scale and complexity of ceramic production and trade during this period provides another line of evidence for economic and political re‐emergence. Based on the increasing diversity of non‐local ceramics and ceramic emulations during the Iron Age, we suggest that only in the Late Iron Age, 500–700 years after Hittite collapse, did Boğazköy re‐emerge as a significant polity in central Anatolia.