Fremdes in Anatolien: Importguter aus dem Ostmittelmeerraum und Mesopotamien als Indikator fur spatbronzezeitliche Handels- und Kulturkontakte.

• Author: Kelder, Jorrit M.
• Position: Book review

Fremdes in Anatolien: Importguter aus dem Ostmittelmeerraum und Mesopotamien als Indikator fur spatbronzezeitliche Handels- und Kulturkontakte. By EKIN KOZAL. Schriften zur Vorderasiatischen Archaologie, vol. 11. Wiesbaden: HARRASSOWITZ VERLAG, 2017. Pp. 261, illus. [euro]84.

The book under review aims to provide an overview of the relations between Late Bronze Age (ca. 1600-1100 BCE) Anatolia and other regions of the Eastern Mediterranean, including the Aegean, Cyprus, the Levant, and Egypt, as well as Mesopotamia. This is an important task, for we know from contemporary texts that the kingdom of the Hittites (which dominated most of Anatolia and northern Syria throughout the larger part of this era) and, during the Amanta period (ca. 1350-1330 BCE), the kingdom of Arzawa (with its core in western Anatolia), played a prominent role in international diplomacy and related trade and gift exchange.

Yet despite the apparent involvement of these Anatolian states in long-distance trade, only very few Anatolian objects have been found abroad, whereas foreign imports in Anatolia are only known from excavation reports or, at best, regional studies, thus hampering our understanding of trade routes, the nature of foreign contacts, and the means by which exchange took place. Kozal presents us, for the first time, with a catalogue of foreign imports found throughout Late Bronze Age Anatolia, and discusses how these objects could be interpreted as markers of trade, the intensity of contacts between various regions, or whether they might reflect other types of interaction, such as the payment of tribute.

Five chapters begin with an introduction, in which the main research questions are laid out and the geographical and chronological framework is explained. There are a few oddities in this chapter. This includes the chronological framework of the book, which turns out to be rather larger than the title suggests: the Late Bronze Age is normally thought to span the sixteenth to the twelfth centuries BCE, but Kozal's starting point appears to be the twentieth century--and thus includes the (Middle Bronze Age) fow-Mm-period. In addition, the geographical scope is restricted to the Anatolian mainland; finds from the numerous islands off the west coast are not included.

One has to wonder whether Kozal's motivation for this exclusion--"they belong to a different 'Kulturraum'" (p. 17)--is entirely valid, seeing that various sites on the Anatolian west coast...