Hi everybody, from Wondery, welcome to another episode of Tides of History.

I'm Patrick Weiman, thanks for joining me.

The Bronze Age Near East was a complicated place.

For modern scholars and even more so the authors of high school textbooks, the work is usually

that of simplification.

Following the stories of key figures like Sargon of Akad and Hammurabi of Babylon, cities

like Uruk and states like that of the Assyrians.

Maybe if we're lucky we get some references to linguistic and ethnic diversity or the

divide between the settled world of cities and farmers and that of wandering pastoralists

in the Semidezer.

But the reality of the Bronze Age Near East was much messier and harder to understand

than a straightforward story of city states, empires and kings.

Not ethno-linguistic groups, lifestyles, dynasties of would-be rulers, migrating mercenaries

and ephemeral states were all essential pieces of the fabric of that world and their

pieces that don't fit neatly into simplified accounts.

To help us get a better grip on that complex and confusing Bronze Age reality, we've got

a fantastic guest today.

Aaron Burke is professor of Near Eastern Archaeology and the Kershaw Chair of Ancient Eastern

Mediterranean Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he's also

a member of the Kostin Institute of Archaeology.

Professionally he's the co-director of the Jaffa Heritage Project and is the author of a

ton of scholarly articles along with several books, the most recent of which is The Amorites

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