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The Middle Bronze Age is marked by the increasing internationalism in the Near East through the seizure of political control by Amorite kings. Various texts mention these nomadic tribes as threatening the political order of the Ur III dynasty in southern Mesopotamia at the end of 3rd millennium BC. With the beginning of the Middle Bronze Age, however, Amorite kingdoms were successfully established in large parts of the Near East. International contacts are also apparent from the Mari and Kültepe texts which document that rulers from Mesopotamia, the Levant and Minoan Crete were exchanging gifts and commodities among each other. While some of these texts mention long-distance trade of value-added commodities like olive oil and wine; they are not particularly descriptive of the production and processing stages of these products. In this paper, we present the joint results of the micro-botanical (phytoliths) and macro-botanical (seeds and fruits) remains from a Middle Bronze Age layer (ca. 1650 BCE) at Zincirli Höyük (Turkey). The study area was destroyed after a single conflagration event with several food processing installations and restorable vessels in-situ. In addition, the archaeological contexts were minimally disturbed by later sedimentary and anthropogenic activities. This preliminary contribution aims to comprehend the potential link between micro- and macro-botanical remains by focusing as to whether different crops have been stored and processed in different locations in the studied context.

EAA2021: Abstract

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