Bronze Age

The Bronze Age is the middle stage of the three-age system (Stone, Bronze, Iron) developed by Danish antiquarian Christian Jürgensen Thomsen in the 1830s to organize prehistoric artifacts. It denotes the era when societies smelted copper with tin (or arsenic) to produce bronze, a harder and more durable alloy than pure copper. Dates vary by region: in the Near East it runs roughly from 3300 to 1200 BCE, in the Aegean from about 3000 to 1100 BCE, and in China conventionally from the Erlitou culture (c. 1900 BCE) through the Shang and into the Zhou dynasty. Sub-Saharan Africa and the Americas largely skipped a distinct bronze phase.

The period is associated with the emergence of the first state-level societies, monumental architecture, codified law, and writing systems including Sumerian cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphs, Linear A and B, and Chinese oracle-bone script. Major Bronze Age civilizations include Sumer, Akkad, Old and Middle Kingdom Egypt, the Indus Valley (Harappan) civilization, Minoan Crete, Mycenaean Greece, the Hittite Empire, and Shang China.

A defining feature was an integrated eastern Mediterranean trade system linking Egypt, the Levant, Anatolia, Cyprus, and the Aegean, evidenced by finds such as the Uluburun shipwreck (c. 1300 BCE) off the Turkish coast, which carried copper, tin, glass, and luxury goods from at least seven cultures. Diplomatic correspondence like the Amarna letters (14th century BCE) documents the era's "great kings" system.

The Late Bronze Age Collapse around 1200–1150 BCE brought the destruction of Mycenaean palaces, the fall of the Hittite Empire, and disruptions linked to the so-called Sea Peoples, drought, and systemic fragility. For IR researchers, the period is often cited as an early case study in interdependence, systemic collapse, and the diffusion of military and administrative technologies.