The Bronze Age Collapse

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.

→ Listen on BBC Sounds website

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

• 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)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

Hello. In the 12th century BC, there was a dramatic change in the kingdoms and empires of the Mediterranean, a series of events known as the Bronze Age Collapse.