Bronze Age

Bronze Age
Bronze Age
c. 3000 BC – c. 1200 BC
Copper Age	Iron Age
	Diffusion of metallurgy in Europe and Asia Minor—the darkest areas are the oldest.
Location	Asia; Near East; Europe; North Africa;
Key events	Extensive bronze metallurgy; Late Bronze Age collapse; Development of writing; Development of the chariot;

The Bronze Age is an archaeological and anthropological term defining a phase in the development of material culture among ancient societies in Asia, the Near East and Europe. An ancient civilisation or culture is deemed part of the Bronze Age if it either produced bronze by smelting its own copper and alloying it with tin, arsenic, or other metals, or traded other items for bronze from producing areas elsewhere. The Bronze Age is the middle principal period of the three-age system, following the Stone Age and preceding the Iron Age. Conceived as a global era, the Bronze Age follows the Neolithic ("New Stone") period, with a transition period between the two known as the Chalcolithic ("copper-Stone") Age. These technical developments took place at different times in different places, and therefore each region's history is framed by a different chronological system, but the Bronze Age had begun in much of the Old World by 3,000 BC.^[1]^[2]

Bronze Age cultures were the first to develop writing. According to archaeological evidence, cultures in Mesopotamia, which used cuneiform script, and Egypt, which used hieroglyphs, developed the earliest practical writing systems. In a particular region, whichever comes first of the arrival of the Iron Age, or the development of writing, is usually taken to mark the end of the Bronze Age, as history replaces prehistory; this is not always the case in the earliest areas to develop writing. In the archaeology of the Americas, a five-period system is conventionally used instead, which does not include a Bronze Age, though some cultures there did smelt copper and bronze. No evidence of metalworking has been found on the Australian continent prior to the establishment of European settlements in 1788.

In many areas bronze continued to be rare and expensive, mainly because of difficulties in obtaining enough tin, which occurs in relatively few places, unlike the very common copper. It is likely that the earliest tin deposits were alluvial and perhaps exploited by the same methods used for panning gold in placer deposits.^[3] Some societies appear to have gone through much of the Bronze Age using bronze only for weapons or elite art, such as Chinese ritual bronzes, with ordinary farmers largely still using stone tools. However, this is hard to assess as the rarity of bronze meant it was keenly recycled.

Metal use

Bronze Age civilisations gained a technological advantage due to bronze's harder and more durable properties than other metals available at the time. While terrestrial iron is naturally abundant, the higher temperature required for smelting, 1,250 °C (2,280 °F), in addition to the greater difficulty of working with it, placed it out of reach of common use until the end of the 2nd millennium BC.^[4] Tin's lower melting point of 232 °C (450 °F) and copper's moderate melting point of 1,085 °C (1,985 °F) placed both these metals within the capabilities of Neolithic pottery kilns, which date to 6000 BC and were able to produce temperatures of at least 900 °C (1,650 °F).^[4]

The Bronze Age is characterised by the widespread use of bronze, though the introduction and development of bronze technology were not universally synchronous. Bronze was independently discovered in the Maykop culture of the North Caucasus as early as the mid-4th millennium BC, which makes them the producers of the oldest-known bronze. However, the Maykop culture only had arsenical bronze. Other regions developed bronze and its associated technology at different periods. Tin bronze technology requires systematic techniques: tin must be mined (mainly as the tin ore cassiterite) and smelted separately, then added to hot copper to make bronze alloy. The Bronze Age was a time of extensive use of metals and the development of trade networks.^[5]

A 2013 report suggests that the earliest tin-alloy bronze was a foil dated to the mid-5th millennium BC from a Vinča culture site in Pločnik, Serbia, although this culture is not conventionally considered part of the Bronze Age;^[6] however, the dating of the foil has been disputed.^[7]^[8]

Near East

West Asia and the Near East were the first regions to enter the Bronze Age, beginning with the rise of the Mesopotamian civilization of Sumer in the mid-4th millennium BC. Cultures in the ancient Near East practised intensive year-round agriculture; developed writing systems; invented the potter's wheel, created centralised governments (usually in the form of hereditary monarchies), formulated written law codes, developed city-states, nation-states and empires; embarked on advanced architectural projects; and introduced social stratification, economic and civil administration, slavery, and practised organised warfare, medicine, and religion. Societies in the region laid the foundations for astronomy, mathematics, and astrology.

The following dates are approximate.

Near East Bronze Age divisions

The Bronze Age in the Near East can be divided into Early, Middle and Late periods. The dates and phases below apply solely to the Near East, not universally.^[9]^[10]^[11] However, some archaeologists propose a "high chronology", which extends periods such as the Intermediate Bronze Age by 300 to 500–600 years, based on material analysis of the southern Levant in cities such as Hazor, Jericho, and Beit She'an.^[12]

Early Bronze Age (EBA or EB): 3300–2100 BC
- 3300–3000: EBA I
- 3000–2700: EBA II
- 2700–2200: EBA III
- 2200–2100: EBA IV
Middle Bronze Age (MBA or MB) or Intermediate Bronze Age (IBA or IB): 2100–1550 BC
- 2100–2000: MBA I
- 2000–1750: MBA II A
- 1750–1650: MBA II B
- 1650–1550: MBA II C
Late Bronze Age (LBA or LB): 1550–1200 BC
- 1550–1400: LBA I
- 1400–1300: LBA II A
- 1300–1200: LBA II B (Late Bronze Age collapse)

Anatolia

The Hittite Empire was established during the 18th century BC in Hattusa, northern Anatolia. At its height in the 14th century BC, the Hittite Kingdom encompassed central Anatolia, southwestern Syria as far as Ugarit, and upper Mesopotamia. After 1180 BC, amid general turmoil in the Levant, which is conjectured to have been associated with the sudden arrival of the Sea Peoples,^[13]^[14] the kingdom disintegrated into several independent "Neo-Hittite" city-states, some of which survived into the 8th century BC.

Arzawa, in Western Anatolia, during the second half of the 2nd millennium BC, likely extended along southern Anatolia in a belt from near the Turkish Lakes region to the Aegean coast. Arzawa was the western neighbour of the Middle and New Hittite Kingdoms, at times a rival and, at other times, a vassal.

The Assuwa league was a confederation of states in western Anatolia defeated by the Hittites under the earlier Tudhaliya I c. 1400 BC. Arzawa has been associated with the more obscure Assuwa generally located to its north. It probably bordered it, and may have been an alternative term for it during some periods.

Egypt

Early Bronze dynasties

In Ancient Egypt, the Bronze Age began in the Protodynastic Period c. 3150 BC. The archaic Early Bronze Age of Egypt, known as the Early Dynastic Period of Egypt,^[15]^[16] immediately followed the unification of Lower and Upper Egypt, c. 3100 BC. It is generally taken to include the First and Second dynasties, lasting from the Protodynastic Period until c. 2686 BC, or the beginning of the Old Kingdom. With the First Dynasty, the capital moved from Abydos to Memphis with a unified Egypt ruled by an Egyptian god-king. Abydos remained the major holy land in the south. The hallmarks of ancient Egyptian civilization, such as art, architecture and religion, took shape in the Early Dynastic Period. Memphis, in the Early Bronze Age, was the largest city of the time. The Old Kingdom of the regional Bronze Age^[15] is the name given to the period in the 3rd millennium BC when Egyptian civilization attained its first continuous peak of complexity and achievement—the first of three "Kingdom" periods which marked the high points of civilization in the lower Nile Valley (the others being the Middle Kingdom and New Kingdom).

The First Intermediate Period of Egypt,^[17] often described as a "dark period" in ancient Egyptian history, spanned about 100 years after the end of the Old Kingdom from about 2181 to 2055 BC. Very little monumental evidence survives from this period, especially from the early part of it. The First Intermediate Period was a dynamic time when the rule of Egypt was roughly divided between two areas: Heracleopolis in Lower Egypt and Thebes in Upper Egypt. These two kingdoms eventually came into conflict, and the Theban kings conquered the north, reunifying Egypt under a single ruler during the second part of the Eleventh Dynasty.

Nubia

The Bronze Age in Nubia started as early as 2300 BC.^[18] Egyptians introduced copper smelting to the Nubian city of Meroë in present-day Sudan c. 2600 BC.^[19] A furnace for bronze casting found in Kerma has been dated to 2300–1900 BC.^[18]

Middle Bronze dynasties

The Middle Kingdom of Egypt spanned between 2055 and 1650 BC. During this period, the Osiris funerary cult rose to dominate popular Ancient Egyptian religion. The period comprises two phases: the Eleventh Dynasty, which ruled from Thebes, and the Twelfth^[20] and Thirteenth dynasties, centred on el-Lisht. The unified kingdom was previously considered to comprise the Eleventh and Twelfth Dynasties, but historians now consider part of the Thirteenth Dynasty to have belonged to the Middle Kingdom.

During the Second Intermediate Period,^[21] Ancient Egypt fell into disarray a second time between the end of the Middle Kingdom and the start of the New Kingdom, best known for the Hyksos, whose reign comprised the Fifteenth and Sixteenth dynasties. The Hyksos first appeared in Egypt during the Eleventh Dynasty, began their climb to power in the Thirteenth Dynasty, and emerged from the Second Intermediate Period in control of Avaris and the Nile Delta. By the Fifteenth Dynasty, they ruled lower Egypt. They were expelled at the end of the Seventeenth Dynasty.

Late Bronze dynasties

The New Kingdom of Egypt, also referred to as the Egyptian Empire, existed during the 16th–11th centuries BC. The New Kingdom followed the Second Intermediate Period and was succeeded by the Third Intermediate Period. It was Egypt's most prosperous time and marked the peak of Egypt's power. The later New Kingdom, comprising the Nineteenth and Twentieth dynasties (1292–1069 BC), is also known as the Ramesside period, after the eleven pharaohs who took the name of Ramesses.

Iranian plateau

Elam was a pre-Iranian ancient civilization located east of Mesopotamia. In the Middle Bronze Age, Elam consisted of kingdoms on the Iranian plateau, centred in Anshan. From the mid-2nd millennium BC, Elam was centered in Susa in the Khuzestan lowlands. Its culture played a crucial role in both the Gutian Empire and the Iranian Achaemenid dynasty that succeeded it.

The Oxus civilization^[22] was a Bronze Age Central Asian culture dated c. 2300–1700 BC and centred on the upper

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