The late MBA and LBA pottery horizons at Qatna

This volume is the result of a detailed analysis of the Middle and Late Bronze Age pottery from the excavations of the Italian Mission of the University of Udine on the site of ancient Qatna. The book provides an exhaustive characterization of the ceramic horizon of Qatna, based on stratigraphic data correlated with C14 datings, from which the author has established a complete sequence of ceramic diagnostic types for the late MBA and the LBA. These results inform the discussion of a series of ceramic-related issues; in particular, the author has redefined the boundaries of the ceramic regions existing in Western Syria during the mid and late second millennium BC and the partition of the relative chronology in use in the Northern Levant. The latter has been modified on the basis of the new data from Qatna and a new subdivision of the final Middle and initial Late Bronze Age phases has been proposed. An analysis of production techniques combined with palaeoenvironmental and archaeological data has allowed the extension of these conclusions to other research areas indirectly linked to the ceramic horizon, such as the socio-economic changes undergone by Qatna during the Middle and Late Bronze Age and settlement continuity or discontinuity in Central Western Syria.