In the Bronze Age Mediterranean, trade was a key mechanism that defined the era’s political, social, and economic dynamism. This paper reviews recent methodological and empirical developments in the study of trade in the Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean, with a focus on the Late Bronze Age. The complexity of the relevant evidence presents nontrivial interpretative challenges, and a variety of schools of thought concerning the methods and approaches best suited for enlightening economic exchange through the study of archaeological remains co-exist. New insights based on empirical study of archaeological evidence have primarily coalesced around topics that have long been central to the study of trade, especially the sources and destinations of metal resources and the distribution of ceramic containers and their contents. Developing areas of emphasis, such as the roles of merchants and traders, have simultaneously emerged. Both novel methods and recent empirical insights highlight the difficulty inherent in attempts to relate artifacts to commercial exchange due to the variety of human and material mobilities apparent in the archaeological record. The path forward for understanding Bronze Age trade economies will require carefully tailoring research questions that may be answered in concrete ways with the evidence available and developing interpretative frameworks that can accommodate both bottom-up views emphasizing individual agency and generalizing models that facilitate comparison through space and time.

在地中海青铜时代，贸易是定义该时代政治、社会和经济活力的关键机制。本文回顾了青铜时代东地中海贸易研究的最新方法和实证进展，重点关注青铜时代晚期。相关证据的复杂性提出了重要的解释挑战，并且关于最适合通过考古遗迹研究启发经济交流的方法和途径的各种思想流派并存。基于考古证据实证研究的新见解主要围绕长期以来贸易研究的核心主题，特别是金属资源的来源和目的地以及陶瓷容器及其内容物的分布。诸如商人和贸易商的角色等重点发展领域也同时出现。新颖的方法和最近的实证见解都凸显了由于考古记录中明显的人力和物质流动性的多样性，试图将文物与商业交换联系起来所固有的困难。理解青铜时代贸易经济的前进道路将需要仔细定制研究问题，这些问题可以用现有证据以具体方式回答，并开发解释框架，既可以容纳强调个体机构的自下而上的观点，也可以促进通过空间和数据进行比较的概括模型。时间。