The Last Kingdom Standing in the Bronze Age Collapse

This video essay from the channel Dig. examines the chronology of the Late Bronze Age collapse across the eastern Mediterranean and argues that Cyprus, known as Alashiya, was the last polity of the region to fall, surviving until c. 1100 BC. The first six minutes review archaeological dating methods and trace destruction and abandonment between c. 1225 and the 1130s BC in Hittite Anatolia, Troy, the Mycenaean Aegean, Ugarit, the Levant, Egypt and Mesopotamia.

In the section beginning at 0:06:08, the narrator turns to Cyprus, which reached its urban peak during Late Cypriot II (c. 1450 to 1200 BC). It remains uncertain whether Alashiya was ruled by one figure or by a patchwork of polities presenting a unified front abroad, though the extraction, refining and export of copper underpinned the state.

From 0:07:42 the video details disruptions around 1200 BC: the abandonment of Alassa, Episkopi-Bamboula, Kalavasos-Ayios Dhimitrios, Maroni-Vournes and Morphou-Toumba tou Skourou, alongside violence at Sinda, Enkomi and Hala Sultan Tekke. The Late Cypriot IIIA period (1200 to 1100 BC) saw rebuilding at Enkomi, occupation at Kition and Palaepaphos, and short-lived settlements at Maa-Palaeokastro and Pyla-Kokkinokremos. Once interpreted as Aegean refugee settlements, these two sites are presented as outposts of Palaepaphos and Kition established to control copper deposits.

From 0:09:18 the narrator places the end of the Cypriot Bronze Age in Late Cypriot IIIB around 1100 BC, arguing that vanishing foreign copper markets and a modest influx of settlers brought down the Alashiyan system and led into the Iron Age network of city-kingdoms.