The Dawn and Demise of Imperial Impact - Tell Atchana vs. Arslantepe in the Framework of the Hittite Expansion and Dissolution

Despite the differences in their geographical locations and cultural contexts, the sites ofAlalakh and Arslantepe were both involved in the interaction network of the Late Bronze Agekingdoms and early empires. The historical events that affected the regions of south andsoutheastern Anatolia during the second half of the second millennium BC have especially lefttheir imprint in the archaeological record of the two sites. This paper presents an overview offortification systems and settlement management, luxury goods and iconography, as well aspottery production and glyptic material from Alalakh Periods 3-0 and Arslantepe IV-III, inorder to analyse how these sites reacted to the impact of the expansion of the Hittite Empireand also how they developed after the collapse of the centralised polity, during a time framestretching between 1400 and 1100 BC. The comparison offers new insights into the complexityof cross-cultural relations in the framework of imperial expansion and demise