Aspects of Late Helladic sea trade

Abstract

The trade mechanisms joining the Mycenaean Aegean to the greater Levant have intrigued and eluded Bronze Age scholarship since the earliest discoveries of foreign objects in Mycenaean burials. In the past decade, topics of interregional trade in the eastern Mediterranean have enjoyed renewed discussions, inspired in no small part by the excavation of the Uluburun shipwreck. Data generated from the shipwreck is amounting to an extraordinary body of evidence for contact between the Aegean and the Near East. The proposed Mycenaean presence on board the Uluburun ship requires that the sum of evidence and hypotheses for trade between the two regions be re-examined. By attempting to demonstrate the role the Mycenaeans had performed on the last journey of the Uluburun ship, an important mechanism of trade may be revealed between the Aegean and Semitic worlds.