Politics and Urban Design in the Mediterranean Levant: Three Cases from the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age (1300–900 BC).

This archaeologically and historically-architecturally oriented contribution sheds light on where and how could people in the Levant during the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages gather for political and civic purposes. Urban design proves to be a condition for the possibility of politics, while the spatial turn reflects a theoretical question of political theory, following in the footsteps of Henri Lefebvre. The contribution's specific focus is on open spaces within larger fortified cities, for which a methodological approach to functional analysis is presented. This method is applied to the three examples of Ugarit, Ekalte, and Carchemish. In conclusion, the contribution challenges the traditional Eurocentric view, which regarded urban forums and gathering places as more or less exclusively rooted in the Greco-Roman world, and aligns with newer perspectives influenced by Heterarchy Theory and Collective Action Theory, which seek and find places of politics further east as well.