Mobility and the Syro-Anatolian Culture Complex During the Early First Millennium

This chapter explores how mobility and politics were intertwined in the Syro-Anatolian Culture Complex (SACC). Noting that politics and movement are always related, an insight drawn from the “new mobilities paradigm” in sociology and referred to here as kinopolitics, this chapter explores this dynamic in three places. The first is the troubling presence of Phoenician inscriptions and objects in SACC that have long been difficult to interpret historically. Here it is argued that mobile Phoenician speakers must have been part of the Syro-Anatolian sociopolitical landscape, likely involved in state-sponsored commercial trade. The second is one of SACC’s most famous cultural products, the finely worked ivories that were so sought after during the Iron Age. In this case, ivory and its producers were both highly mobile across SACC. The third, the engraved stone reliefs that lined the walls of monumental buildings, is the most counterintuitive. Despite appearances, evidence from nearly all cases where such reliefs have been found indicates that they were constantly being reused in new constructions, indicating that such movement was a cultural significant practice.