Rhodes and the Evolution of the Eastern Trade Networks, c. 1700 BC - 1200 BC

The ancient Mediterranean was sustained by maritime networks that connected diverse civilisations in a proto-globalised economy. Rhodes occupied a strategic position within this system. Situated at the southeastern edge of the Aegean, just off the coast of Anatolia, the island linked the Aegean with the Levant, Egypt, and Cyprus (Broodbank, 2013). By around 1700 BC, at the transition into the Late Bronze Age, Trianda had already emerged as one of the island’s principal maritime centres, drawing Rhodes into expanding Aegean and Near Eastern exchange networks.

Through ports such as Trianda, copper, tin, and other commodities moved along routes linked to the palace economies of Crete and beyond (Haskell, 1985; Manning, 2022). From this early role in Minoan trading circuits to its later emergence as a Hellenistic naval power, Rhodes offers a valuable case study in the movement of goods, technologies, and cultural influences across the eastern Mediterranean.

Before Rhodes developed a centralised capital, its maritime strength rested on a network of ports and anchorages distributed around the island. Rather than relying on a single dominant harbour, it operated through a connected coastal system. The most important Bronze Age harbour was Trianda, near modern Ialysos on the northern coast.

Archaeological evidence shows that Trianda was heavily influenced by Minoan culture, with Cretan-style architecture and administrative tools that indicate Rhodes’s integration into the wider eastern Mediterranean trade network (Weis, 2010). When Mycenaean Greece came to dominate the Aegean in the 14th century BC, Rhodes appears to have shifted smoothly into this new sphere of influence.

In this period, ports such as Trianda acted as staging posts for exchange between the Aegean and the Levant:

Aegean ceramics and perfumed oils moved eastward.
Cypriot copper and tin returned westward as essential metallurgical resources.
This position made Rhodes an important intermediary in long-distance trade (Shelmerdine, 2008; Cline, 2014).

These exchange systems were severely tested at the turn of the 12th century BC. In the period conventionally described as the Late Bronze Age Collapse, the palace societies of mainland Greece, including Mycenae, Tiryns, and Pylos, were destroyed or abandoned. At the same time, the Hittite Empire fragmented and major Levantine centres were attacked, developments that Egyptian records associated with the so-called ‘Sea Peoples’ (Dickinson, 2006). The integrated trade world of the Bronze Age was thus thrown into crisis.

Against this wider pattern of disruption, Rhodes stands out as an exception. Rather than sharing fully in the destruction that affected many mainland centres, the island appears to have entered a phase of demographic and economic vitality.

The story of Rhodes during the Iron Age, after the collapse of the Bronze Age civilisations, can be read here: Rhodes during the Iron Age

Broodbank, C. (2013) The Making of the Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean from the Beginning to the Emergence of the Classical World. London: Thames & Hudson.

Cline, E.H. (2014) 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Dickinson, O. (2006) The Aegean from Bronze Age to Iron Age: Continuity and Change Between the Twelfth and Eighth Centuries BC. London: Routledge.

Haskell, H.W. (1985) ‘The origin of the Aegean stirrup jar and its earliest evolution and distribution (MB III–LBI)’, American Journal of Archaeology, 89(2), pp. 221–229.

Manning, S.W. (2022) ‘Second Intermediate Period date for the Thera (Santorini) eruption and historical implications’, PLOS ONE, 17(9), e0274835.

Shelmerdine, C.W. (ed.) (2008) The Cambridge Companion to the Aegean Bronze Age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Weis, L. (2010) Ialysos in the Late Bronze Age Mediterranean. Massachusetts: Olin College (The Phoenix Files).