Transitions, Urbanism, and Collapse in the Bronze Age - Essays in Honor of Suzanne Richard - Jesse C. Long, Jr.

Transitions, Urbanism, and Collapse in the Bronze Age - Essays in Honor of Suzanne Richard - Jesse C. Long, Jr.

3. Urbanism, Collapse and Transitions: Considerations on the EB III/IV and the EB IV/MB I Nexuses in the Southern Levant

Transitions, Urbanism, and Collapse in the Bronze Age - Essays in Honor of Suzanne Richard - Jesse C. Long, Jr.

Marta D'Andrea [+-]
Sapienza University of Rome
Marta D’Andrea is an Italian archaeologist with a PhD degree from Sapienza University of Rome. She has excavated in Italy, Palestine, and Syria and taken part in numerous Italian and international excavations and research projects in Jordan. Currently, she is a co-director of the Madaba Regional Archaeological Museum Project (MRAMP) and of the excavations at Khirbat Iskandar (Jordan) and a senior staff member of the Italian Archaeological Expedition to Ebla (Syria). Her research interests include the processes of formation, crisis or collapse, and regeneration of urbanization in the Levant in the Early and Middle Bronze Ages, Levantine pottery, ancient technologies, interconnectivity, interculturality, construction of social identities, trade and exchange in antiquity, and, more recently, public archaeology and cultural heritage safeguarding strategies. She has participated in several international congresses, conferences, and symposia on the archaeology of the ancient Near East. She has authored or co-authored 52 published works, including articles in peer-reviewed journals, reviews, a research monograph (The Southern Levant in Early Bronze IV. Issues and Perspective, Rome 2014), and two co-edited books (Ebla and Beyond, Wiesbaden 2018; Pearls of the Past, Münster 2019).

Description

This paper reviews past and current interpretations of urbanism, collapse, and transitions in the Early Bronze Age and the beginning of the Middle Bronze Age in the southern Levant in order to reanalyse the critical Early Bronze III/IV and Early Bronze IV/Middle Bronze I nexuses. Current interpretive constructs of the southern Levantine society during Early Bronze II-III are discussed to reappraise the question of early urbanization in this region, as well as of how it came to an end and transitioned to the non-urban Early Bronze IV period. Likewise, the nature of the early Middle Bronze Age society and the question of continuity and discontinuity with Early Bronze IV are re-evaluated considering archaeological correlates and chronological issues. All through the paper, the evidence from Khirbat Iskandar is discussed within its regional context in order to re-investigate those intricate phenomena.

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Citation

D'Andrea, Marta. 3. Urbanism, Collapse and Transitions: Considerations on the EB III/IV and the EB IV/MB I Nexuses in the Southern Levant. Transitions, Urbanism, and Collapse in the Bronze Age - Essays in Honor of Suzanne Richard. Equinox eBooks Publishing, United Kingdom. p. 27-50 Nov 2021. ISBN 9781781797204. https://www.equinoxpub.com/home/view-chapter/?id=37731. Date accessed: 29 Apr 2024 doi: 10.1558/equinox.37731. Nov 2021

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