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Painted Wares Between Middle and Late Bronze Age: What can the Continuity of Material Culture Tell Us About Identity?

BERTI, Bianca Eugenia

Material culture - in the absence of textual sources and in the context of limited iconographic manifestations such as those of the Middle Bronze Age southern Levant - is a valuable tool for understanding how people in past societies constructed identities and forged connections across space and time. But at the same time it can also be a challenge for archaeologists trying to reconstruct non-tangible aspects a posteriori. In order to highlight some of the critical issues, this paper will focus on some painted wares (Red, White and Blue Ware, Chocolate-on-White Ware and Bichrome Ware) of the Middle Bronze Age and question what we can say about the “Canaanites” of the second millennium BC. In particular, it will investigate the role of imported goods in Levantine communities and the continuity between the Middle and Late Bronze Ages. Despite major upheavals like the destruction at the end of the Middle Bronze Age III and subsequent Egyptian rule, material culture showed remarkable continuity. By analysing these aspects, the paper aims to understand them and to propose some explanations of their meaning in terms of culture and identity against the background of political transformation.

Session 4. Crafting Identity and Clusters through Material Culture, Iconography and Texts [info]