After 1177 BCE: The Survival of Civilizations

This lecture will take place in person at ISAW. Registration is required.

This lecture coincides with the launch of Eric Cline's book, . This new book is the sequel to the award-winning . A pair of respondents, Sarah Morris (UCLA) and Nathan Lovejoy (Università Ca' Foscari Venezia), will lead a discussion following the lecture.

In the years after 1177 BCE, many of the Late Bronze Age civilizations of the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean lay in ruins, undone by invasion, revolt, natural disasters, famine, and the demise of international trade. Those that failed to adjust disappeared from the world stage, while others transformed themselves, resulting in a new world order that included Israelites, Philistines, Phoenicians, Neo-Hittites, Neo-Assyrians, Neo-Babylonians, and world-changing innovations such as the use of iron and standardization of the alphabet. It is now clear that this period, far from being the First Dark Age, was a new age with new inventions, new opportunities, and lessons for us today.

Eric H. Cline is Professor of Classics and Anthropology, former Chair of the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, and current Director of the Capitol Archaeological Institute at George Washington University, in Washington DC. A National Geographic Explorer, NEH Public Scholar, Getty Scholar, and Fulbright Scholar with degrees from Dartmouth, Yale, and the University of Pennsylvania, he is an active field archaeologist with more than 30 seasons of excavation and survey experience. He is the author or editor of twenty books and nearly one hundred articles; translations of his books have appeared in nineteen different languages.

A related workshop entitled The Survival of Civilizations will take place at NYU earlier in the day on May 7th. The workshop will present current research on different regions of the Eastern Mediterranean after 1177 BCE and will feature: Eric Cline, Lorenzo d'Alfonso, Kathryn Howley, Antonis Kotsonas, John Papadopoulos, and Assaf Yasur-Landau. Please visit this link for more information.

This lecture is cosponsored by ISAW and the NYU Center for Ancient Studies.

Please check isaw.nyu.edu for event updates.

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Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, NYU, 15 East 84th Street, New York, United States