The Bronze Age collapse is the name given by those historians who see the transition from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age, as violent, sudden and culturally disruptive, expressed by the collapse of palace economies of the Aegean and Anatolia, which are replaced after a hiatus by the isolated village cultures of the Dark Age period of history of the Ancient Middle East.

The Bronze Age collapse may be seen in the context of a technological history that sees the slow, comparatively continuous spread of iron-working technology in the region, beginning with precocious iron-working in what is now Romania in the 13th and 12th centuries.

The cultural collapse of the Mycenaean kingdoms, the Hittite Empire in Anatolia and Syria, and the Egyptian Empire in Syria and Palestine, bringing the scission of long-distance trade contacts and sudden eclipse of literacy, occurs between 1206 and 1150 BCE.

In the first phase of this period, almost every city between Troy and Gaza is violently destroyed, and often left unoccupied thereafter (for example, Hattusas, Mycenae, Ugarit).The gradual end of the Dark Age that ensues will see the rise of settled Neo-Hittite Aramaean kingdoms of the mid-10th century BCE, and the rise of the Neo-Assyrian Empire.