In our present context we need to adopt a broader perspective to connect larger regions
of the ancient world, such as North Africa, Western Asia, Anatolia and the entire
Mediterranean.
GATEWAY COMMUNITIESGateway communities emerge along the natural corridors of communication and trade
routes at those places that allow the best control over the movement of commodities.
They are typically not primary producers but intermediaries between areas of high
mineral, agricultural or craft productivity. They may have a high population density
with a high demand for scarce resources. They can also be situated at the interfaces
of different technologies or levels of socio-political complexity^7 or develop in response
to increased trade or sedentarisation in sparsely populated frontier regions.^8 Although
the gateway communities may function as the retributive central place within their
own physiographic region,^9 it is long-distance trade that creates the dendritic hinterland
and their dominant hierarchical position within it. Unlike central places, gateway
dendritic networks^10 are based upon the kinds of natural irregularities found in the
real world.^11
Larger gateway communities and their hinterlands serve the inter-regional and
international trade and the items exchanged are notably more exotic and luxurious,
and very seldom involve ordinary foodstuffs and small animals such as goats and
sheep. These communities serve as central points for further extensive trade. This
means that these communities needed abundant storage facilities for a certain period
until a comprehensive deal has been made with intermediates. These mediators were
well trained on the international sea and overland travel routes, knowing their products
and what they could be sold for. They could even be compared with the modern-day
auctioneers, except that in ancient times the risks incurred were much greater.
Existing gateways were linked to focal places or ‘eyes’^12 which concentrated trade
activities for a particular period. Research shows that these patterns were constantly
changing from one period to another. The search for the ‘eye’ for each period starts
as soon as the available evidence from all areas has been established. Certain elements
have to be present in order for a particular gateway to qualify for the ‘eye’ status of
a particular period, such as major or exceptional storage facilities. In searching for
the ‘eye’ of the Kassite Babylonian period there are several possibilities, from the
sixteenth to the thirteenth centuries BC. The Babylonians, Hittites and the Egyptians
seem to have special gateways, in addition to the peoples from the Levant, where
each of them played a tremendous role in enhancing the cultural achievements of the
period.
The so-called Kassite period in Babylonia has been roughly divided by scholars
into two broad categories, namely the ‘Dark Age’ and the ‘Golden Age’ each having
further subdivisions. During the so-called Mesopotamian Dark Age^13 of the sixteenth
and fifteenth centuries BCthe sites and cities in the vicinity of Middle Euphrates,
surrounding Carkemish, played crucial roles between the Levant and Babylonia, while
the focus of the ‘Golden Age’^14 during the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries BC
shifted somewhat westwards, to the Eastern Mediterranean coast, where ports such
as Ugarit and Byblos increased in strategic stature.
The period of the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries BCin the Levant has been
— P. S. Vermaak —