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A tale of three cities: urban and cultural resilience and heritage between the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age in the eastern Mediterranean

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 August 2020

Guy D. Middleton Open the ORCID record for Guy D. Middleton [Opens in a new window]
Guy D. Middleton*
Affiliation:
Czech Institute of Egyptology, Charles University, nám. Jana Palacha 2, 116 38 Prague 1, Czech Republic
*
*Corresponding author. Email: gdmiddletonphd@gmail.com
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Abstract

The turbulent years around c. 1200 BC in the eastern Mediterranean are known as a period of the collapse of states and empires. Yet by zooming in on three important royal cities, Tiryns, Hattusa and Carchemish, we can question this collapse narrative whilst at the same time exploring the now popular concept of resilience, in this case urban and cultural resilience. First these ancient cities are presented as interactive and meaningful spaces in which architecture and art were used to shape people's experience of them and the world in which they lived, before their urban fabric and functions are examined in turn. It will become clear that they had radically different fates through c. 1200 BC. Some of the difficulties in applying ideas from resilience thinking and how it might or might not be useful as an approach in studying these and other examples are then discussed.

Type
Survey and Speculation
Information
Urban History , Volume 48 , Issue 4 , November 2021 , pp. 724 - 748
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press.

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Footnotes

†

I would like to dedicate this article to the memory of Professor Ludá Klusáková, who organized the Resilience of Heritage in Resilient Cities workshop at Charles University, Prague (15–16 November 2018) at which the ideas herein were presented. She will be greatly missed. This work was supported by the European Regional Development Fund-Project ‘Creativity and Adaptability as Conditions of the Success of Europe in an Interrelated World’ (no. CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_019/0000734) (Project KREAS). I am also grateful to the reviewers of this article and the editors for their helpful comments.

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