Crisis and Collapse in Antiquity 'Early civilizations' from a comparative perspective (original) (raw)

Archaeological Evidence for Small Scale Crisis Hasanlu Between Destructions, in T. Cunningham and J. Driessen, eds, From Crisis to Collapse: Archaeology and the Breakdown of Social Order (Louvain la Nueve, Belgium: Aegis) 2017.

From Crisis to Collapse: Archaeology and the Breakdown of Social Order, 2017

In this paper I explore the materiality of life on the edge—on the edge of massive, expanding hegemonic states, and on the brink of non-existence1. The site of Hasanlu in Northwestern Iran is known for its spectacular and grisly destruction level (Fig. 1). Under attack by a marauding army, hundreds of citizens of this town gathered in and around the monumental buildings on its citadel where they died with their attackers, trapped in the conflagration and chaos as the burning buildings collapsed and crushed their bodies (Dyson and Muscarella 1989; Muscarella 1989) (Fig. 2). It is the general archaeological consensus that this destruction came at the hands of the Urartian army around the year 800 BC (e. g. Dyson 1989; Muscarella 1989; 2006; Danti 2014). The total destruction and subsequent abandonment of the site provide unequivocal evidence for the crisis and collapse of Hasanlu. This paper, however, will investigate evidence for crisis-related changes at the site in the period leading up to the catastrophe, arguing that the archaeological record of Period IVb (Iron II/1050-800 BC) (Fig. 3) shows the material impact of life under the threat of confrontation with powerful neighbours. In the larger scheme of the history of the ancient Near East and Mediterranean, the fraught existence and ultimate extermination of the citizens of a small town far from centres of regional power constitutes a crisis on a very small scale. The examination of Period IVb at Hasanlu, however, can provide an example of the way a single site responds to the ebb and flow of larger entities, with shifts in the archaeological record that perhaps express the instability and insecurity of life on the fringes of great empires.

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Millek, J. M. 2021. Dual Narratives: Collapse and Transition at the End of the Late Bronze Age. In: F. Manuelli and C. W. Hess (eds.), Bridging the Gap: Disciplines, Times, and Spaces in Dialogue. Volume 1. Oxford: Archaeopress, 252-264.

Bridging the Gap: Disciplines, Times, and Spaces in Dialogue. Volume 1: Sessions 1, 2, and 5 from the Conference Broadening Horizons 6 held at the Freie Universität Berlin, 24–28 June 2019, 2021