Jesse Michael Millek is an ancient historian and archaeologist specializing in the history and cultures of the Eastern Mediterranean during the Late Bronze Age. He received his PhD from the University of Tubingen in 2017, and his dissertation was published as the Open Access book, “Exchange, Destruction, and a Transitioning Society: Interregional Exchange in the Southern Levant from the Late Bronze Age to the Iron I.” Millek has written numerous articles on the archaeology of destruction, the Sea Peoples and their effect on the Eastern Mediterranean, trade during the Late Bronze Age, Egyptian hegemony over the southern Levant, and what actually occurred in various regions ca. 1200 BCE based on a reanalysis of the archaeological and historical records.
His most recent book, “Destruction and Its Impact on Ancient Societies at the End of the Bronze Age” examined all of the destructions commonly associated with the end of the Late Bronze Age in the Eastern Mediterranean demonstrating that earthquakes, warfare, and destruction all played a much smaller role in this period than the literature of the past several decades has claimed, and that the end of the Bronze Age was a far less dramatic and more protracted process than is generally believed.
During his time as a Visiting Fellow at the NINO, Millek will examine how disasters affected ancient societies by combining current sociological and political science theory with archaeological methods. He plans on publishing several articles on the subject while collaborating with other scholars studying modern disasters.
