The Syro-Anatolian City-States: An Iron Age Culture

This well-edited monograph, a volume in an academic book series on the archaeology of ancient states, fills in a gap: it offers a much-awaited synthesis on the dozens of polities that during the Iron Age occupied a vast geographical area, spanning from the northern Levant up to southern Anatolia and encompassing Upper Mesopotamia. All the conditions were in place to make such synthesis impossible: a vast and varied region (from the Mediterranean seashore to mountainous Cilicia and desertic inner Syria), multiple languages (one Indo-European Luwian, two Semitic Aramaean and Phoenician) and scripts (one hieroglyphic, two alphabetic), a complex and diverse history, an unbalanced documentary evidence mostly coming from old excavations of the colonial age, a recent history spread across several modern states and marred by political troubles and archaeological looting. The author, himself an archaeologist active in the field (in southern Turkey), acknowledges the difficulty, but he cleverly avoids the hurdle by advocating an original approach from the outset. The book does not intend to give a detailed account of supposedly static ancient states. It instead tackles a fluid, polymorphic, but also coherent Iron Age culture (labeled “the Syro-Anatolian culture complex”). The main purpose of the book is therefore to underline common features (artifacts and practices) and to define a common culture, while acknowledging geographical diversity and diachronic evolution. In a portrait-like approach, it gives a general overview and not a holistic compilation of evidence (a chronological historical table is conspicuously absent from the volume).Chapter 1 (“History and Historiography of the Syro-Anatolian Culture Complex”) sets out the framework. One crucial question concerns terminology. The author reasonably avoids linguistic, political and/or cultural terms (such as “Neo-Hittite” or “Syro-Hittite”) in favor of a neutral geographic one (“Syro-Anatolian”). He also argues convincingly for disruptions but also a certain cultural continuity between the Late Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age (which is evidenced i.a. by the genealogy of the kings of Carchemish).Chapter 2 considers the formative process of the Syro-Anatolian culture complex during the Iron Age I. Rather than examining the coeval appearance in this area of the Mediterranean of supposedly “Luwian” and “Aramaean” city-states as disconnected, the author considers the formation of Syro-Anatolian city-states as a regional and complex phenomenon, resulting from new settlement patterns and migrations following the dissolution of the Late Bronze Age kingdoms. In the Amuq valley, diagnostic pottery of the twelfth and eleventh centuries even suggests the arrival of a small group of people of Aegean and/or Cypriot origin. The evidence argues against ethnic crystallizations in nation-like states (one can note that this observation, on which the author insists throughout the volume, is valid for all premodern states).Chapter 3 deals with three major cultural traits of the Syro-Anatolian polities (all related to the ruling elite): the carving of monumental Phoenician inscriptions, the production and consumption of ivories, and the use of carved orthostats. The use of Phoenician (sometimes alone, sometimes in bilingual or even trilingual inscriptions) represents a perplexing problem, which cannot be solved only by the assumption that “genuine Phoenician speakers” (78) were part of the Syro-Anatolian compound. Likewise, Osborne's radical criticism regarding the identification of distinct stylistic ivory productions that can be ascribed to distinct cultural zones misses the point: there are distinct stylistic productions that are not state-sponsored or controlled (e.g., Greek pottery), and the suggestion that distinct stylistic groups correspond to distinct chronologies and not production centers marks a regression to old theories rather than an alternative hypothesis (to be compared with the now-outdated debate on Archaic Greek sculptural styles). Studying the carved orthostats, the author underlines that these monuments, though supposedly static, were frequently displaced and reused.The next chapter studies interactions with Assyria from a peripheric and not imperial-centered perspective. It puts the emphasis on hybrid productions, whose components are carefully and convincingly interpreted. Chapter 5 (entitled “Space and Power”) is an illuminating and in-depth study of land- and city-scapes that insists on the variability and malleability of settlement patterns. In his conclusion, the author defends the narrow path he took between a global approach (threatened by artificial homogenization) and a local one (fragmented), and he lists a series of features that can be considered characteristic of the Syro-Anatolian culture complex.While innovative, the proposed perspective still complies with conventional frames, which in turn make the volume a handbook: easily intelligible and useful (with rich and updated references and a—perhaps too limited—selection of relevant illustrations). The chronological limits are dictated by event-driven history: ca. 1200 BC corresponds to the “crisis years,” the collapse of ancient empires and kingdoms that marks the end of the Bronze Age and the inception of the Iron Age; and the eighth century BC corresponds to the period of the Assyrian conquest. The chapters, while thematic, still follow traditional periodization. Chapter 2 deals with the Iron Age I (ca. 1200–950 BC) and the origins of the Syro-Anatolian culture complex; Chapter 3 with artifacts, monuments, and inscriptions of the Iron Age II (ca. 950–700); Chapter 4 with the Assyrian takeover toward the end of the eighth century. The theoretical framework that informs each chapter is borrowed from other disciplines and cultural areas. All concepts are not equally illuminating, still they offer a decentered, fresh look at old problems.One main issue remains the geographical and chronological limits that delineate this “Syro-Anatolian culture complex”: cultural affinities appear stronger between the city-kingdom of Hamath and that of Sidon (excluded from the study) than between the former and that of Tabal (included), for example. Microregional connections escape the global approach. Moreover, the history of each of the city-kingdoms that composed this “Syro-Anatolian culture complex” has still to be written, as the author himself acknowledges. His book offers the big picture, which nevertheless manages to accommodate attention to common features and attention to local variability (a nuanced portrait by opposition to a globalizing model), a picture against which the singular trajectory of each polity can be drawn. As such, it is a most valuable and useful companion to researchers and students interested in Near Eastern history and archaeology.