An assessment of the social organization through material culture in the late Bronze Age Western Anatolia

A vast literature has been created as a result of many excavation and survey projects associated with Late Bronze Age Western Anatolia (1650-1200 BC). However, there has been no direct interest in the political, economic and ideological organizations of Late Bronze Age (LBA) societies in the literature, and these aspects of social organization have not become a primary field of investigation. Especially, the "social" dimension of archaeology has been ignored due to the dominance of object-oriented approaches on a culture-historical basis and the use of theoretical frameworks based on historical narratives outside the region in the 20th century. This study aims to investigate the social organization of LBA societies in western Anatolia by the recent approaches in archaeology, cross-cultural comparisons, and Geographic Information Systems. A detailed historical framework compiled from data inside and outside of the region will be used to review the place of western Anatolia in the Eastern Mediterranean inter-regional interaction networks during LBA. Establishing a regionally applicable chronology, studying material culture within the context of social organization to conduct in-depth analysis is central to the thesis. Keywords: Late Bronze Age, Social Organization, Western Anatolia, Eastern Mediterranean, Chiefdom.