Before the cultural koinè. Contextualizing interculturality in the “Greater Levant” during the Late Early Bronze Age and the Early Middle Bronze Age

The relation between the socio-cultural complexes of the 3rd and 2nd millennia BCE is of great importance to understand the origin of the Middle Bronze Age society in the Levant. It is traditionally believed that a homogenised socio-cultural scenario appeared in the Near East only in the 19th century BCE, which is generally connected with the formation of Amorite kingdoms; however, there is growing evidence for interregional connections across the entire Near East starting several centuries before the so-called Amorite koinè, during Early Bronze IV and the early Middle Bronze I, and associated with increased human mobility in these periods. This paper focuses on the question of the origin of the Levantine Middle Bronze Age socio-cultural complex(es). The archaeological evidence of the northern and southern Levant will be reconsidered in order to investigate if certain elements of the material culture that typify the fully developed Middle Bronze Age tradition betray an ancestry in features and practices established in the late Early Bronze IV and early Middle Bronze I phases. It will be discussed whether the changes in the material culture might suggest that socio-cultural transformations considered typical of the Middle Bronze Age might have begun earlier, during the terminal phase of the Early Bronze Age. Endogenous and exogenous factors will be reevaluated, exploring the hypothesis that, between the end of the Early Bronze Age and the beginning of the Middle Bronze Age, socio-economic and socio-cultural factors might have favoured increased interregional interactions and crossregional mobility within the Levant and beyond. Moving from these insights, we will propose novel hypotheses on possible mechanisms influencing the formation of a common socio-cultural language used within the Levant and beyond, in the following, more developed phases of the Middle Bronze Age.