ABSTRACT
In common with most of Europe an alteration took place in the Bronze Age industries of Ireland around 1200 B.c. But the Irish and other European changes are only part of a series of wide transformations, not necessarily directly related, that affected practically the whole of the Old World. In many ways these changes repeat the events of a thousand years previously. It was a time of collapse in the ‘civilized’ regions but of progress in the ‘barbarian’ regions. But now over large tracts of western Asia and the Aegean there was a finality, for it was at this time that the Bronze Age came to a disastrous end. Practically the whole of the civilizations of the Near and Middle East which were centuries in the making collapsed (e.g. Troy, Blegen 1963; Boghazköy, Gurney 1954; Palestine, Kenyon 1960; Mycenae, Desborough 1964, Taylour 1964). Thus, around 1200 B.c. the pattern of civilization throughout eastern Mediterranean and Aegean lands changed and from the material culture point of view this is the time that the Late Bronze Age terminated and the Iron Age began.
