Sea Peoples

Despite a broad temporal presence in Egyptian records, the association of the Sherden with another ‘Sea Peoples’ group, the more well-known and better archaeologically attested Philistines, has led to several assumptions about this group, its members’ origin, and their role both in the events that marked the transition from the Late Bronze to the Early Iron Age and in Egyptian society as a whole. This study separates the Sherden from the Aegean migration and greater ‘Sea Peoples’ phenomenon of the Late Bronze–Early Iron Age transition in an effort to challenge long-held assumptions about their initial encounter with Ramesses II in the early years of his rule, their role in the famous land battle and naumachia of Ramesses III’s eighth year, their participation in the migrations that marked the end of the Late Bronze Age, and their status as foreigners to the Levant whose main function was to serve as mercenary soldiers and pirates. Through a close reading of the extant literary and pictorial evidence from the New Kingdom and beyond, this paper traces the role of the Sherden within Egyptian society from its adversarial origin, through a phase of combined military cooperation and social exclusion, to a final, multigenerational period that was marked by rapid and enduring acculturation and assimilation into Egyptian society.

The aim of the paper is to review the value and usefulness of the ethnic-markers of ancient societies, based on the assumption that certain populations practice certain eating and drinking habits. In other words, the conviction that some food and drink habits may be used as reliable tools for determining the ethnicities of ancient societies, will be questioned. This argument is applied to the case of the Philistines, a population of Aegean or Aegeo-Anatolian origin, who settled in Palestine in the early twelfth century BCE.

Mycenae culture became due to its own merits, the most important one in continental Greece for more than four centuries all along the II Millennium B.C. Its commercial importance due to the fact they took advantage of the minoans exchange routes and their own economic interests made them reach far regions even in Central Mediterranean and the Near East. But all of that must’ve been difficult if they hadn’t encountered a powerful army who support their colonial and commercial adventures. Numerous Lineal B writings, pictorial and archaeological remains are witness to the importance the military world provides to those former Mycenaean. Therefore, in this article we will try to show the diverse aspects related to the Mycenaean army who supported its power in continental Greece in spite of this, neither the reforms taken in 13th century B.C. got that mycenaeans culture survival, when their settlements were destroyed.

In this paper we treat changes in weaponry and armament, which occurred in the Aegean and Levantine regions between the late 14th and the early 12th century BC. We aim at reconstructing these changes in a sequence as fine-phased as possible and try to identify the regions in which they originated. As a case study we use a sword of Naue II type found at Ugarit. As it has no clearly stratified context, we try to fix its chronology on one hand by reference to the overall stratigraphy of the site, and on the other by discussing better datable archaeological evidence from the Aegean and Cyprus. Swords of the Naue II group belong to new weapon types introduced to the eastern Mediterranean a few decades before the breakdown of many palace states around 1200 BC. There are different reasons that lead us to believe that these new weapon types arrived together with their users and producers from the central Mediterranean and cannot be seen as a result of goods exchange.

""For the reconstruction of the military Mycenaean world scarcely
we possess the information extracted from diverse slats written in Linear B, as well as the remains of some pictorial representations and scanty archaeological remains extracted from warriors' diverse tombs. It is for it that the reconstruction of this important aspect inside the Mycenaean culture is not simple, and in this respect it turns out very interesting to manage to raise approximations as the one that occupies us. Across the analysis of few remains which we possess,It occupies. Across the analysis of few remains which we possess, authors of John Chadwick's taya have proposed interesting theories on the Mycenaean systems of defense and, in this case, we will try to approach each other the system that could be used in Pilo's accession.""

""Mycenaean Greece and Bronze Age Italy: cooperation, trade or war?
The interactions between Italy and Greece from the late 14th to the 11th century BC are the subject of this paper. During that particular period, new bronze types such as Naue II swords, spearheads with cast socket, different implements and dress accessories belonging to the metallurgical koine spread to the Mediterranean world. Available typological research explains little and thus leaves the processes leading to the distribution of koine goods only insufficiently understood. We therefore pursue an integrated approach combining archaeometallurgical analyses with the technological and typological classification of artefacts found in different Aegean and Italian regions in order to solve the problem. As a result, a number of bronzes from late Mycenaean contexts can be identified as imports from Italy. Furthermore, our research supports the theory that the local production of Italian-type impasto pottery and the introduction of bronze types of the metallurgical koine were two related phenomena in the Late Palatial and Post-palatial Aegean societies.


Kontakte zwischen dem mykenischen Griechenland und dem bronzezeitlichen Italien: Kooperation, Handel oder Krieg?
Die Interaktionen zwischen Italien und Griechenland vom 14. bis zum 11. Jahrhundert v. Chr. sind der Gegenstand des vorliegenden Beitrags. Während dieses Zeitraumes können wir die Ausbreitung spezifischer archäologischer Typen, wie etwa der Naue II-Schwerter, der Lanzenspitzen mit gegossener Tülle, verschiedener Gerätschaften oder spezieller Kleidungsaccessoires, die zur metallurgischen Koine gehören, in den Mittelmeerraum beobachten. Die Prozesse, die zur Ausbreitung dieser Urnenfelderbronzen fuhrten, können zurzeit nur teilweise erklärt werden, da die zur Verfugung stehenden typologischen Studien nur von begrenzter Aussagekraft sind. Daher wird ein interdisziplinärer Lösungsansatz vorgestellt, bei dem archäometallurgische Analysen mit der technischen und typologischen Klassifikation von Objekten, die in verschiedenen Regionen der Ägäis sowie Italiens gefunden wurden, kombiniert werden. Als ein wichtiges Ergebnis dieser Studie kann eine Reihe von Bronzeartefakten aus spatmykenischen Kontexten als Importstucke aus Italien angesprochen werden. Darüber hinaus liefern diese Forschungserkenntnisse Argumente dafür, dass die Phänomene der lokalen Produktion von Impastokeramik italienischen Typs und der Übernahme von Bronzeformen der metallurgischen Koine in den spatpalastzeitlichen und nachpalastzeitlichen Gesellschaften der Ägäis miteinander in Beziehung standen.
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"This paper examines the changes in settlement patterns, internal trade relations and material culture that occurred in Philistia and the Shephelah during the Iron I–II transition. It appears that the Philistines were hegemonic during the Iron Age I. They lived in large fortified settlements, accompanied by smaller settlements
in the coastal areas. The Shephelah was only sparsely settled at the time, probably as a result of Philistine policy. Since it was to their advantage to maintain high boundaries with their neighbours, the Philistines increased their use of ‘foreign’ elements in their material culture. The Philistines were significantly weakened during the transition to the Iron Age IIA, with many sites becoming
significantly smaller and others abandoned. As the Philistines withdrew westward, the Shephelah was gradually filled with new Israelite/Judahite settlements. In tandem with their weakening, the Philistines changed their boundary maintenance strategy, and in a quick process of cultural change, abandoned many of the foreign traits that previously characterised them. Instead, they adopted a local material vocabulary, symbolising that they had become ‘one of the neighbours’. The city of Gath is an exception: Philistine identity was negotiated there differently than in other sites in  Philistia."

Recent scholarship has featured interesting debates around whether it is possible to differentiate between ethnicities solely from the material culture used by ancient societies. The earlier beliefs in the close relationship between material culture and ethnic identity are being called into question. The paper tries to explore some theoretical issues dealt with in the research on the Philistines (e.g. the use of Mycenaean-style pottery as ethnic markers). The primary focus of the paper is the new proposals regarding the history of the Philistines and Judah in Iron Age I. The archaeological data will be compared with the historical data, in order to obtain a coherent view of the early history of Judah.

The association of the Sherden with their fellow “Sea Peoples,” the more well-known and better-attested Philistines, has led to several assumptions about this group, its members’ origin, and their role in the events that marked the end of the Late Bronze Age and the transition to the Iron Age. Despite a broad temporal presence in ancient Near Eastern records, there exists limited information about who these Sherden were and where they came from, the circumstances of their entry into the Egyptian and Ugaritic records in which they appear, and where they eventually settled. Further, addressing these questions in traditional fashion relies on the assumption that they were a homogeneous ethnic group with a single shared culture, point of origin, and geographic destination. This study separates the Sherden from the Aegean migration and greater “Sea Peoples” phenomenon of the Late Bronze–Early Iron Age transition in an effort to challenge long-held assumptions about their initial encounter with Ramesses II in the early years of his rule, their role in the famous land battle and naumachia of Ramesses III’s eighth year, their participation in the migrations that marked the end of the Late Bronze Age, and their status as foreigners to the Levant whose main function was to serve as mercenary soldiers and pirates. Through a close reading of the extant material and literary evidence from the Amarna and Ramesside periods in Egypt, and with support from relevant Ugaritic texts, the role of the Sherden within broader Near Eastern society in general, and Ramesside Egypt in particular, is shown to be very different from that of the more famous Philistines: one of initial, small-scale intrusion of heterogeneous warriors who originated elsewhere within the eastern Mediterranean world, followed by relative geographic stability over multigenerational periods that was marked by rapid and enduring acculturation and assimilation into Egyptian society.

This paper examines Hugo Grotius’ ideas on the freedom of navigation on the high seas and Southeast Asian maritime practices in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. In the past Charles H. Alexandrowicz (and closely following him Ram Prakash Anand) had argued that Grotius’ position – which was admittedly unusual in a European legal context at that point in time – had been influenced by early Dutch experiences in the island world of Southeast Asia. Recent Grotius research, however, has debunked these positions as both speculative and false. At the time of writing or revising his treatise Mare Liberum for the press (ca.1604-9), Grotius possessed only a very shallow knowledge of Asian maritime practices. This paper aims to take the analysis a crucial step further: Did the polities of insular Southeast Asia really pursue a policy of Mare Liberum as has been generally surmised by some legal historians and IR theorists? What concepts of maritime space prevailed, and how do they compare with Grotius and some of his contemporaries? A careful scrutiny and comparison of key concepts will yield some unexpected results.