en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Bronze_Age_collapse
1 correction found
These sites in Syria show evidence of the collapse: Alalakh, Aleppo, Emar, Hama, Kadesh, Qatna, Tell Sukas, and Ugarit.
This list is overinclusive. Recent reassessments find that several named Syrian sites here do not have archaeological evidence for a destruction around 1200 BCE.
Full reasoning
Recent scholarship does not support treating all of these Syrian sites as Late Bronze Age collapse destructions.
Jesse Millek's ASOR/ANE Today reassessment says the "complete list of false destructions" includes Aleppo, Alalakh, Hama, Qatna, [and] Kadesh. In other words, those sites should not be listed as destroyed in the collapse horizon around 1200 BCE. A separate Syria-focused reassessment likewise states that at Alalakh, Hama, and Qatna there is no evidence for an end-of-Late-Bronze-Age destruction.
That means this sentence is inaccurate as written: while sites such as Ugarit and Emar do have destruction evidence, several of the other sites named in the same list do not. Presenting the whole list as sites that "show evidence of the collapse" blurs a major distinction that the current literature explicitly makes.
2 sources
- The Fall of the Bronze Age and the Destruction that Wasn't - The Ancient Near East Today
"The complete list of false destructions includes other notable sites such as: Lefkandi, Orchomenos, Athens, Knossos, Alassa, Carchemish, Aleppo, Alalakh, Hama, Qatna, Kadesh, Tell Tweini, Byblos, Tyre, Sidon, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Beth-Shean, Tell Dier Alla, and many more."
- Destruction at the End of the Late Bronze Age in Syria: A Reassessment
Search snippet: "At Alalakh, Hama, and Qatna there also is no evidence to ..."