Coping with the Effects of War Refugees in the Levant during the Bronze and Iron Ages AARON A. BURKE 1. Introduction The study of “crisis management” in antiquity has focused predominantly on state responses to crises. Such studies have usefully revealed that re- gimes that have been able to successfully navigate crises often underwent processes of centralization. 1 Missing, however, from these discussions are the less formal, but no less significant responses of individuals and house- holds to crises. Indeed, the social organization of Ancient Near Eastern households have been studied intensively only more closely during the past two decades, 2 and yet studies of “crisis management” remain limited to lar- ger social and political organizations such as states. In difference to state responses, individual and household responses to crises are less predictable and less conspicuous for the very reason that res- ponses often include flight from crises as a viable option. Households and the individuals that comprise them must not only assess the direct impact of the onset of a crisis but they must also consider the potentially negative changes that may be brought about by rulers and regimes seeking to strengthen their control over a wide range of institutions in their efforts to address crises. Thus a dichotomy is apparent between “crisis management” strategies for the state and households or individuals: the state in order to maintain its legitimacy must almost always remain bound to a traditional territory to survive, while households and individuals can usefully exploit flight as an expedient survival strategy adapting as necessary to new socio- economic, as well as political, conditions without necessarily undermining their existence. Unfortunately, the flight process has made the identifica- tion of refugees in all but historical contexts difficult in the Ancient Near East, and yet the phenomenon is a fundamental element of the study of an- cient societies and their responses to crisis, war being among them. 1 Cf. OLIVER-SMITH, Anthropological Research, 309f. 2 Cf. e.g., SCHLOEN, The House; STONE, Nippur; YASUR-LANDAU, Under the Shadow.