Presenter(s): Alice Harding
Faculty Mentor(s): Lindsey Mazurek
Oral Session 1 SW
This project (serving as an undergraduate thesis) will explore migration in the Bronze Age Near East. It will focus specifically on times in which migrants emphasized their own “foreignness,” arguing that this most often occurred when such difference would be beneficial. The Amarna letters—correspondence between the rulers of several Bronze Age kingdoms, notably Egypt and Babylonia—mention the movement of people such as craftsmen and royal women to other polities, illustrating the importance of migration for international relations. Despite these mentions, most scholarship focuses exclusively on Bronze Age kings and their priorities. This project aims to combine archaeology with literature to offer a new, more holistic approach. It will focus on four types of migrants often omitted from previous works: craftsmen, brides, forced migration (as of captives), and even gods.
These people’s perspectives differ noticeably from those of the kings—the elite male view, in other words—that is most often discussed in relation to the world of the Amarna letters. The case studies can reframe our understandings of these groups: rather than being those making decisions and deciding their own movements, these groups were most often controlled by those with power. This project thus aims to re-examine narratives of Near Eastern mobility during the Bronze Age through these groups and their migrations, and offer new perspectives that complement existing histories.