An Inter-Civilizational Bronze Age System: International Relations, Diplomacy, and Narrative Sociability, 1700–1200 bc

Previous attempts at explaining how geographically distant and disparate Bronze Age polities, like the chiefdoms of northern Europe and the urban states of the Mediterranean, were connected have focused on exchange networks. By combining insights from political science with archaeology, this article sets out to do two things. First, to reintroduce system thinking to model interconnectivities in the Bronze Age world, using an old trope in international relations studies as a lens and analytical tool. Second, to argue that diplomacy and war must be treated on a par with trade as institutions of such a system, of major importance for understanding international relations during the Bronze Age. The authors discuss the so-called Amarna system’s scope in time and space, exploring whether and how Bronze Age polities in the far north of Europe, as outsiders, can be plausibly construed as constitutive ‘others’.