Tides of History

When assigning blame for the Bronze Age Collapse, the most common culprits are said to be the Sea Peoples: nomadic raiders and sackers of cities who plied the sea-lanes of the late Bronze Age world an...

Mycenaean Greece was one of the glittering jewels of the late Bronze Age world, but it fell to pieces in dramatic fashion: burned palaces, abandoned settlements, and the end of a centuries-old politic...

We're often told that trade was central to the interconnected world of the late Bronze Age, but what were people really trading? Why did trade matter so much? And what happened when that trade disappe...

The term "Bronze Age Collapse" is by now common, but what do we actually mean when we talk about "collapse?" Is it a matter of political reorganization or something rather more drastic? In the case of...

The late Bronze Age was a time of powerful empires and intense competition between them. Never before had true states covered such a large area, or had such resources to devote to politicking and figh...

What was it like to be a regular person in ancient Egypt? What did people do when they got sick or injured? Professor Anne Austin is an Egyptologist and bioarchaeologist who studies health and disease...

We know the late Bronze Age world eventually collapsed, but what made it a world in the first place? The answer lies in the intense connections - trade, politics, and culture - that tied together a va...

When we think about ancient Egypt, the vast majority of our attention goes to its elite: pharaohs, queens, priests, and nobles. But the elite made up only the tiniest portion of the population. What a...

If we know one thing about the Bronze Age world, we know that it collapsed. But what made it a world? And why did it fall apart? There's nobody better to ask than Professor Eric Cline, who literally w...

Kings are one of the constants of ancient Egypt's long history. But what, exactly, were kings supposed to do, and how did ancient Egyptians understand the role of their king? Professor Laurel Bestock ...