Ethnicity in Ancient Western Asia during the Early Second Millennium B. C.: Archaeological Assessments and Ethnoarchaeological Prospectives

Abstract

The traditional account, as developed by Albright, Kenyon, and de Vaux (most recently discussed by Dever, 1977, with previous literature), has been labelled the hypothesis. It holds that migrating peoples, Amorites, Canaanites, and/or Hyksos, who were also responsible for culture change during this time in Mesopotamia and Egypt, orchestrated the destruction of the urbanized Early Bronze age culture in the Levant and subsequently the renascence of towns in the classical Middle Bronze period. Gerstenblith's recent critique of the Amorite hypothesis (1977 and above), however, denies that migrating peoples effected the cultural innovations of the early MB period, and argues that these changes can more effectively be attributed to linkage in an interregional trade network whereby Mesopotamian and North Syrian ideas and commodities influenced the Levant. In the course of a general discussion of the use of the term ethnicity in ancient Western Asia, we shall critically assess both of these theories. The first depends on a population movement of a (semi-) nomadic, tribally organized group and its Siedlungsgeschichte, while the latter denies not only such a population movement but also the very relevance of determining ethnicity in the archaeological record. Since these reconstructions of Syro-Palestinian culture history rely heavily on the interpretation of Mesopotamian textual data both to identify cultural contact from the east and to model social organization, our discussion will focus on the matter of ethnicity in Mesopotamia. Our review of Mesopotamian data and the various theories that have been employed to explain them will attempt to illustrate the problems of interpretation rather than attempt to present exhaustively any set of data or solve any particular historical problem of sociocultural integration. We do not regard matters of ethnicity in Mesopotamia as less ambiguous than they are in the Levant, nor do we regard textual data as inherently superior to unwritten data in every case. All classes of archaeological data (including texts) are complementary; none may be examined as if explanations of the interrelations among sociocultural phenomena may be generated directly from materials