ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how applying agency theory to the Early Bronze Age (EBA) of the southern Levant may lead us to more compelling understandings of ancient life. It also focuses on the culture history of the southern Levantine EBA and elaborate on systems and evolutionary theory, which have been the dominant approaches used to date. The southern Levantine EBA has attracted research efforts over the last century precisely because it offers just such an example of major social change. A broad outline of the EBA includes changes in the number of people living in a settlement and the duration of occupation, set against a backdrop of material culture similarities that are sufficient to include all four periods within one archaeological era. Evolutionary theory and hierarchical approaches have strongly influenced scholarly work on southern Levantine complex societies. One example is a focus on elites in models that seek to explain the aggregation of the EBA population.
