Aspectos del tribalismo político en el levante meridional durante la Edad del Bronce Tardío

Abstract: Can the politics of the Canaanite kings in their small urban centers, as reflected in the Amarna letters (mid-fourteenth cent. BCE), be called to some extent tribal? Beyond the (now old) anthropological discussion about “what is a tribe?,” can we see tribalism as a main factor in the Southern Levant’s politics? If we attend to the political scene of the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1550–1200 BCE), many of the activities of the local socio-political actors—even those settled and with an urban political life—do indeed match the rationale and expectations found in tribal situations and relationships, as documented in the modern ethnographic record of the Middle East: alliances and coalitions, personal subordination, political reciprocity, etc. The key matter in this interpretation is to transcend monolithic models like “tribe” or “city-state” and focus instead on the nature of the evidenced political practice, namely what the main actors do and how they behave to gain influence and prestige and to exert power and control over other political actors. In that way, there would be no need for expecting a mandatory presence of proper tribes in order to find tribal politics in action. This paper assesses the data in the Amarna archive from this perspective, noting the relevance of kinship, patrimonial structures and patron-client relationships in order to understand how local political communities were related to and interacted with the great powers of the period (particularly Egypt) which intervened in the land.

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Pfoh, Emanuel
Format: Artículo biblioteca
Language:spa
Published: Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentina. Facultad de Ciencias Sociales. Departamento de Historia. Centro de Estudios de Historia del Antiguo Oriente 2020
Subjects:TRIBUS, NOMADISMO, PARENTESCO, EDAD DE BRONCE, HISTORIA SOCIAL, HISTORIA POLITICA, EGIPTO,
Online Access:https://repositorio.uca.edu.ar/handle/123456789/11719
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Summary:Abstract: Can the politics of the Canaanite kings in their small urban centers, as reflected in the Amarna letters (mid-fourteenth cent. BCE), be called to some extent tribal? Beyond the (now old) anthropological discussion about “what is a tribe?,” can we see tribalism as a main factor in the Southern Levant’s politics? If we attend to the political scene of the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1550–1200 BCE), many of the activities of the local socio-political actors—even those settled and with an urban political life—do indeed match the rationale and expectations found in tribal situations and relationships, as documented in the modern ethnographic record of the Middle East: alliances and coalitions, personal subordination, political reciprocity, etc. The key matter in this interpretation is to transcend monolithic models like “tribe” or “city-state” and focus instead on the nature of the evidenced political practice, namely what the main actors do and how they behave to gain influence and prestige and to exert power and control over other political actors. In that way, there would be no need for expecting a mandatory presence of proper tribes in order to find tribal politics in action. This paper assesses the data in the Amarna archive from this perspective, noting the relevance of kinship, patrimonial structures and patron-client relationships in order to understand how local political communities were related to and interacted with the great powers of the period (particularly Egypt) which intervened in the land.