One of the most exciting developments in Mediterranean archaeology of the past decade has been a reevaluation of how the Near Eastern world interacted with its Aegean neighbors and contemporaries during the Iron Age (ca. 1200-600 BCE). For the late second millennium, there is now accumulating evidence that members of the so-called “Sea Peoples,” who famously migrated to Israel and became the biblical Philistines, also settled in Cilicia and the Amuq Valley of southern Turkey, greatly transforming our understanding of this migration event. Meanwhile, for the early first millennium BCE, archaeologists have begun to realize just how influential the Syro-Anatolian city-states of the east were on the cultural development of the classical world to the west, which is becoming more and clear with new excavations and fresh interpretations of old finds.

Short bibliography and/or website on lecture topic:

Lane Fox, Robin. 2008. Travelling Heroes in the Epic Age of Homer. New York: Vintage Books.

Aruz, Joan, Sarah B. Graff, and Yelena Rakic, eds. 2014. Assyria to Iberia at the Dawn of the Classical Age. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.