This volume presents the outcomes of the European Science Foundation workshop Sea Peoples
Up-to-Date. New Research on Transformations in the Eastern Mediterranean in the 13th-11th
Centuries BCE which took place in November 2014 at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna.
It offers up-to-date research on the Sea Peoples phenomenon during the so called crisis years
at the end of the Bronze Age. This period encompasses dramatic changes in the political and
cultural landscape of mainly the Eastern Mediterranean around 1200 BCE and most of the 12th
century BCE. In geographical terms these changes are noticeable in a vast area stretching from
the Italian peninsula over the Balkans the Aegean Anatolia and Cyprus to the Levant and
Egypt. The term Sea Peoples phenomenon should be considered as an encompassing term which - in
addition to the written records on hostile activities of various ethnic groups in the Eastern
Mediterranean - is synonymous with the effect of this turbulent period as reflected in the
material remains. As a consequence these events ended the Late Bronze Age the first period of
internationalism in human history. The papers are presented in five sections: Overviews: From
Italy to the Levant Climate and Radiocarbon Theoretical Approaches on Destruction Migration
and Transformation of Cultures Case Studies: Cyprus Cilicia and the Northern and Southern
Levant and Material Studies. The reader of this volume gains insights into very complex
changes during this period. It will become clear that these changes manifest themselves over
decades and not years and include numerous underlying factors: One single wave of migration
one general military campaign and other simple explanations should be dismissed. The breakdown
of Late Bronze Age societies and the transformative processes that followed in its wake
occurred in a vast area but they are mirrored in differing ways at local level.
