The Bronze Age Collapse
16 Jun, 2016
930 History of the Ancient World
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.
Guests
- John Bennet
2 episodes
Director of the British School at Athens and Professor of Aegean Archaeology at the University of Sheffield -
Linda Hulin No other episodes
Fellow of Harris Manchester College and Research Officer at the Oxford Centre for Maritime Archaeology at the University of Oxford -
Simon Stoddart No other episodes
Fellow of Magdalene College and Reader in Prehistory at the University of Cambridge
Reading list
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The Making of the Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean from the Beginning to the Emergence of the Classical World
Cyprian Broodbank (Thames & Hudson, 2013) Google Books → -
The Kingdom of the Hittites
Trevor Bryce (Oxford University Press, 2005) Google Books → -
The World of The Neo-Hittite Kingdoms: A Political and Military History
Trevor Bryce (Oxford University Press, 2012) Google Books → -
The Oxford Handbook of the Bronze Age Aegean
Eric H. Cline (ed.) (Oxford University Press, 2010) Google Books → -
1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed
Eric H. Cline (Princeton University Press, 2014) Google Books → -
Ramesses III: The Life and Times of Egypt's Last Hero
Eric H. Cline and David O'Connor (eds) (University of Michigan Press, 2012) Google Books → -
Ancient Greece: From the Mycenaean Palaces to the Age of Homer
Sigrid Deger-Jalkotzy and Irene S. Lemos (eds) (Edinburgh University Press, 2006) Google Books → -
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Jared M. Diamond (Penguin, 2006) Google Books → -
The Oxford Handbook of the European Bronze Age
A. F. Harding and H. Fokkens (eds.) (Oxford University Press, 2013) Google Books → -
European Societies in the Bronze Age
A. F. Harding (Cambridge University Press, 2000) Google Books → -
The Philistines and Other "Sea Peoples" in Text and Archaeology
Ann E. Killebrew and Gunnar Lehmann (eds) (Society of Biblical Literature, 2013) Google Books → -
Development and Decline in the Mediterranean Bronze Age
C. Mathers, and S. K. F. Stoddart (eds.) (John Collis Publication, 1994) Google Books → -
Questioning Collapse: Human Resilience, Ecological Vulnerability and the Aftermath of Empire
Patricia McAnany and Norman Yoffee (eds) (Cambridge University Press, 2010) Google Books → -
The Amarna Letters
William L. Moran (ed.) (John Hopkins University Press, 1992) Google Books → -
The Eastern Mediterranean in the Age of Ramesses II
Marc Van de Mieroop (Blackwell, 2007) Google Books → -
Brotherhood of Kings: How International Relations Shaped the Ancient Near East
Amanda H. Podany (Oxford University Press, 2010) Google Books → -
Seagoing Ships and Seamanship in the Bronze Age Levant
Shelley Wachsmann (Texas A&M University Press, 1998) Google Books → -
The City of Ugarit at Tell Ras Shamra
Marguerite Yon (Eisenbrauns, 2001) Google Books →
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Programme ID: b07fl5bh
Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07fl5bh
Auto-category: 930.1 (Archaeology of ancient civilizations)