The End of the Bronze Age 6th Print Edition

by Robert Drews (Author)

32 customer reviews

ISBN-13: 978-0691025919

ISBN-10: 0691025916

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The Bronze Age came to a close early in the twelfth century b.c. with one of the worst calamities in history: over a period of several decades, destruction descended upon key cities throughout the Eastern Mediterranean, bringing to an end the Levantine, Hittite, Trojan, and Mycenaean kingdoms and plunging some lands into a dark age that would last more than four hundred years. In his attempt to account for this destruction, Robert Drews rejects the traditional explanations and proposes a military one instead.

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Editorial Reviews

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[The End of the Bronze Age] provides a concise overview of the problem and the present state of our knowledge.... Drews has produced a thought-provoking work with an intriguing thesis, informative and thorough in its scholarship, sound and imaginative in its arguments.---J. P. Karras, The Journal of Military History

[Drews] has differentiated between evidence and speculation so that those who will continue to debate the Catastrophe can use the book effectively. What is more important is that he has laid to rest some archaeological factoids which in their turn were based on no more than guesswork.---David W. J. Gill, Bryn Mawr Classical Review

Unusually sophisticated.... Well argued and learned.---A. M. Snodgrass, The Times Literary Supplement

From the Back Cover

The Bronze Age came to a close early in the twelfth century B.C. with one of the worst calamities in history: over a period of several decades, destruction descended upon key cities throughout the Eastern Mediterranean, bringing to an end the Levantine, Hittite, Trojan, and Mycenaean kingdoms and plunging some lands into a dark age that would last more than four hundred years. In his attempt to account for this destruction, Robert Drews rejects the traditional explanations - earthquakes, migrations, drought, systems collapse - and proposes a military one instead. Combining fascinating archaeological facts with vivid descriptions of military tactics, Drews presents the transition from chariot to infantry warfare as the primary cause of the Great Kingdoms' downfall. Late in the thirteenth century B.C. the barbarians who until then had been little cause for concern to the Great Kingdoms, and who had served the kings as mercenary "runners" in support of the chariots, awoke to the fact that en masse they could destroy a chariot army. There followed an orgy of slaughter, looting, and destruction. From the ashes arose the city-states of Greece and the tribal confederacy of Israel, communities that depended on massed formations of infantrymen. In making these arguments, the author uses textual and archaeological evidence to reconstruct what actually happened in the Bronze Age chariot battles, as well as the combat that characterized the Catastrophe.

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Product details

Paperback: 264 pages
Publisher: Princeton University Press; 6th Print edition (December 22, 1995)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0691025916
ISBN-13: 978-0691025919
Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.6 x 9.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 32 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #387,941 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #83 in Books > History > Ancient Civilizations > Prehistory
- #432 in Books > History > Ancient Civilizations > Greece
- #593 in Books > Textbooks > Humanities > History > Ancient

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Elucidates the catastrophe of 1250 BC very nicely. A seafaring sword and shield armed infantry defeated ...

August 6, 2017

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

Elucidates the catastrophe of 1250 BC very nicely. A seafaring sword and shield armed infantry defeated and destroyed cities, armies and civilizations based on chariots. Stopped only in the marshes of Egypt, where they were assimilated into the Egyptian army and settled along the coasts of The Levant. The author doesn't comment on how this parallels very similar events in 800 AD, where the sword and shield armed troops are the Vikings; and the mounted opponents are the Carolingians.

The weakness in the book is that it doesn't exactly explain how a loose order infantry could defeat chariots in the open. Most men run away when someone on a horse threatens to ride them down. And how does a man with a sword actually kill a man on a chariot? I also felt that the issue of whether the Sea Peoples weapons, iron versus bronze, was poorly addressed. If the Sea Peoples were not using iron weapons, then who did bring iron weapons to global prominence in this period?

Also, an alternative theory on the end of the Bronze Age is that the Trojan war was real; the Sea Peoples were the Greeks who sacked Troy, who then went on a Med wide rampage and eventually settled as the Philistines. Would like to have seen this theory addressed.....Stimulating work, may need an update.

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Scott H. Irving

The Best Explantion for the Bronze Age collapse!

August 5, 2017

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

This was my favorite book on the Bronze Age collapse. I bought and Read Eric Cline's book on this, too. And Cline's offers all possibilities for the collpas, but Drews really showed the huge change in warfare that really brought the Braonxe age to its knees. His evidence was so rigorous and precise that you don't need another book if you got this one. But I think Cline's book is also very much worth a read wide the wide scope of issues. But Drews has the real solution,

Even in our day, we see the changes in industry that revolutionized life and markets. Solid circuits, chips, computer for home, the beginning of flight to routine air travel. From soda and milk in glass bottles to plastic for everything. Robert Drews is a credit to h is profession. The best I have read on the subject.

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A Very Good Book

June 1, 2013

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

I have over 800 military books in my personal library, and I am a member of the Board of Directors of one of the State's military museums. In addition, I've been studying military history for the past 50 years. Also, I have an extensive personal collection of ancient Greek and Roman bronze arms that has taken many decades to assemble. I found this book an excellent read. It is certainly a very difficult proposition to determine what happened over 3,000 years ago. Robert Drews takes an excellent stab at this, and provided me with many new perspectives. Possibly there are many parallels between the fall of the Eastern Roman empire and what happened in the Eastern Mediterranean around 1200 BC. One such parallel is the use of foreign mercenaries in both times. Another example applicable to our times is the effect of many generations of relative peace before 1200 BC that may have been a factor in the local population's military abilities, particularly when there was limited capability to write down military practices, doctrine, tactics and techniques to pass down 100 years later when their use was really required.

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Peter G. Tsouras

September 20, 2012

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

This is one of those books that brings light to a distant but formative stage in history when the seemingly stable world of the late near eastern bronze age collapsed suddenly. The author makes good sense of the fragments of information that have survived. He pieces together the systemic collapse of the Mycenaean world and the forces that it unleashed against the already weakened Hititte Empire and sent like a growing storm to devaste the region from Anatolia to Canaan only to dash itself against the last might of Egypt. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the Greek Bronze Age as well as the other contempory cultures of the eastern mediterranean as well as to anyone interested in the evolution of the art of war.

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Excellent Analysis of the End of the Bronze Age

July 15, 2004

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Towards the end of the bronze age in the eastern mediterranean, around 1200 BC, most of the great cities of the region were destroyed. In this excellent book, Robert Drews summarizes the facts of and existing theories for this catastrophe, and proposes a new theory of his own: that new weapons and accompanying military doctrine resulted in the defeat of the agricultural city states and empires of the time. Only when they reached Egypt were the aggressive "sea peoples" finally defeated.
The book opens with a description of the catastrophe at the end of the bronze age, listing 44 cities throughout Greece, Asia Minor, Syria and the Levant that were destroyed - including some very well known ones like Troy and Mycenae - and describing the general pattern of destruction. Drews then continues by summarizing the existing theories for this catastrophe - earthquakes, migrations, ironworking, drought, systems collapse, and raiders - and convincingly demonstrates why none of these explanations is sufficient to explain the scope and details of the catastrophe.
Drews then sets the stage for his own military explanation of the catastrophe by describing both bronze age warfare dominated by elite chariot troops with spear armed infantry in a defensive supporting role, and the later iron age warfare dominated by infantry with mounted cavalry in support. He then presents his own theory: that use of infantry in a more active role, with javelins and heavier slashing swords, enabled "barbarians" to defeat the chariot armies of the great agricultural civilizations in the area and sack their cities.
Drews presents a lot of good evidence and cogent argument in support of his theories. The book does have a few flaws - Drews sometimes uses French and German quotations without translation, and he does not always examine the evidence for his own arguments as critically as he does the evidence for competing explanations - but these flaws are minor and do not really detract from the value of the work. Whether or not one ultimately accepts Drews' explanation as true, the book as a whole is an excellent analysis of the events of this important chapter history.

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