Knowra Late Bronze Age Late Bronze Age The final phase of the Bronze Age, marked across the eastern Mediterranean by palace states, specialized production, and extensive long-distance exchange.
Bronze Age : A prehistoric and historical period characterized by widespread use of bronze tools and weapons. The Late Bronze Age is the final regional phase of this broader period.
Uluburun shipwreck : A fourteenth-century BCE merchant shipwreck off southern Turkey carrying copper, tin, glass, and luxury goods. Its cargo reveals the range and scale of exchange across the Late Bronze Age Mediterranean.
Knossos : A major archaeological site on Crete associated with Minoan palaces and earlier Aegean civilization. Its continued importance connects Late Bronze Age Crete with older palace traditions.
Late Bronze Age collapse : The widespread destruction and political disruption of eastern Mediterranean palace societies around 1200 BCE. It marks the abrupt end of many systems that defined the Late Bronze Age.
Palace economy : An economic system in which a central palace organizes production, storage, labor, and redistribution. Palaces concentrated resources and coordinated production in many eastern Mediterranean states.
Amarna letters : A collection of diplomatic correspondence between Egypt and other Near Eastern rulers, written mainly in Akkadian cuneiform. The letters show rulers negotiating alliances, gifts, marriages, and trade across long distances.
Ugarit : A Late Bronze Age port city on the Syrian coast, destroyed around 1200 BCE and preserved archaeologically. Its archives and destruction provide unusually detailed evidence for a coastal kingdom's final years.
Greek Dark Ages : The period of reduced urbanism and literacy in Greece after the collapse of Mycenaean palace society. Its societies emerged from the disruptions that ended Bronze Age palace rule in Greece.
Linear B : A syllabic script used to write an early form of Greek, preserved mainly on Mycenaean administrative tablets. Its tablets record palace administration and commodity accounting in Mycenaean centers.
Akkadian language : A Semitic language written in cuneiform and widely used for administration and diplomacy in the ancient Near East. It served as a shared diplomatic language among courts with different spoken languages.
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