The socio-political structure of Western Anatolia during the (L)BA

Abstract

The socio-political structure of western Anatolia during the (Late) Bronze Age is the focus of this thesis. It is visible that the western Anatolian Bronze Age is relatively an understudied subject in comparison to Central Anatolia. One of the biggest problems of the Anatolian Bronze Age studies is that the relative works are either based on archaeological data or textual sources. This paper aims to use both archaeological data and textual sources to reach a broader understanding of the socio-political structure of the region during the (L)BA. To manage this, the text chapter studies different Hittite texts that provide insights about western Anatolia. Based on these texts, five different tables were created, and they present terms related to socio-political structure. These are geographical/political terms, terms related to residents of foreign lands, terms related to military power, terms related to administrative offices. The archaeology chapter studies the socio-political structure of the western Anatolian Bronze Age from a general to specific approach by starting with the settlement types and patterns, geographical and (material) cultural zones in the region, and continue with the case studies from different parts of western Anatolia as Beycesultan, Kaymakçı, Troy, and Bademgediği Tepe. By combining both textual and archaeological data, it is hoped that this thesis will bring attention to the western Anatolian Bronze Age and present a more comprehensive perspective on its socio-political structure.