Archaeological research is flourishing in Syria. Over the past thirty years,
the amount of information made available to scholars has risen exponentially.
Scores of sites, thousands of cunicform tablets, hundreds of thousand of
artefacts have been excavated. This gave rise to a number of exhibitions and
conferences that offer a panorama of the most important among recent
discoveries. Much attention has been paid, in this effort, to the Early Bronze
Age. Later periods, and especially the Iron Age have attracted less attention.
This is all the more surprising as the iron age was one of the most prosperous
periods of Syria´s history. Syria became the main target of Assyrian expansion;
it also became an intermediary between the Asian and Mediterranean world. This
book represents a thorough exploration of Syria during this important period
for its cultural and historical development. It collects a wealth of writing
covering Syria´s political system, linguistic development, textile industry,
regional power centres and settlement patterns.
