The Archaeology of the Bronze Age Levant

A richly documented and illustrated survey of the archaeology of a crucible of world culture, covering the earliest urban cultures and the emergence of states. This book is a key resource for students of the ancient Near East and the Bronze Age Mediterranean, and a valuable reference work for scholars in related disciplines.

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The Levant - modern Lebanon, southern Syria, Jordan, Israel and Palestine - is one of the most intensively excavated regions of the world. This richly documented and illustrated survey offers a state-of-the-art description of the formative phase of Levantine societies, as they perfected the Mediterranean village economy and began to interact with neighboring civilizations in Egypt and Syria, on the way to establishing their first towns and city-state polities. Citing numerous finds and interpretive approaches, Greenberg offers a new narrative of social and cultural development, emulation, resistance and change, illustrating how Levantine communities translated broader movements of the Near Eastern and Mediterranean Bronze Age - the emergence of states, international trade, elite networks and imperial ambitions - into a uniquely Levantine idiom.