Local responses to foreign military expansion. Melid between Assyria and Urartu in the Iron Age

In recent years, new data from current excavations at several sites in central and southern Anatolia have improved our knowledge of the cultural, socio-economic, and political dynamics investing that geographic area in the Early Iron Age. The collapse of the Late Bronze Age palatial system around 1200 BC marked a deep historical hiatus throughout the eastern Mediterranean area, but the process was uneven, resulting in profound regional diversity. In certain areas, such as south-eastern Anatolia, this process would probably be better conceptualized as a formative phase, rather than as a period of disruption and collapse. At Arslantepe, data from the recent excavations showed an uninterrupted occupational sequence testifying to the flourishing of an independent cantonal state, developing cultural, commercial, and political connections with a network of similar city/cantonal states already from the eleventh century BC. In the ninth and eighth centuries BC the area had to respond to threats represented by the expansionist campaigns of both Assyria and Urartu. Apparently, the strategy of the local ruling elite was successful enough to avoid destruction in the inner territory, at least up to the end of the eighth century BC. The town of Melid is characterized in this period by the development of a distinctive monumental architecture, marking the foundation of the fully established Neo-Hittite kingdom of Melid, which would face the end of its autonomy under the military attack of Sargon II.