Commercial Landscapes of Long-distance Contacts in Western Asia, C. 3200 – 1600 BC: Perspectives from Material Culture

Abstract

To our knowledge, the dataset described in this paper represents the largest existing repository of archaeological material culture data for Anatolia, northern Mesopotamia, and northern Levant during the Early and Middle Bronze Age (ca. 3,200-1,600 BC). Here we present four types of objects (lapis lazuli and ivory artefacts, Syrian bottles, and balance pan weights) that can be analysed as tracers of long-distance contacts for assessing what exchange patterns and socioeconomic dynamics (e.g. gifts, trade, marriage alliances, tribute, market profit, reciprocity, etc.) are responsible for the allocation and distribution of these materials in the Near East.

The economic and institutional determinants of trade expansion in Bronze Age Greater Mesopotamia

“…To construct Trade-Expansion, we have, first, recorded on-site occurrences of the selected materials and their positions within the local stratigraphy (Massa and Palmisano, 2018b: 66). This information is available from Massa and Palmisano (2018a), Quenet (2008) and the polity-specific secondary sources listed in the Internet Appendix. Next, we have harmonized local archaeological phasing through regional chrono-stratigraphic synchronizations (e.g., Lebeau, 2011Lebeau, , 2018Rova, 2019;Finkbeiner et al, 2015) and we have assigned absolute dates to the sampled assemblages.…”

Organic residue analysis of Iron Age ceramics from the archaeological site of Kani‐zirin, western Iran

“…), developing a cultural and political network of communication in the northern lands of Mesopotamia (Wilkinson , ; Sheikhi et al . ; Massa and Palmisano ). Although the shift that occurred from bronze to iron changed markedly the crafts and technological processing of materials during the Iron Age, it is not clearly known by how much these changes affected the diets of people living in the area.…”