Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in the context of "Middle Bronze Age"

The Bronze Age is an archaeological and anthropological term defining a phase in the development of material culture among ancient societies in Asia, the Near East and Europe. An ancient civilisation is deemed to be part of the Bronze Age if it either produced bronze by smelting its own copper and alloying it with tin, arsenic, or other metals, or traded other items for bronze from producing areas elsewhere. The Bronze Age is the middle principal period of the three-age system, following the Stone Age and preceding the Iron Age. Conceived as a global era, the Bronze Age follows the Neolithic ("New Stone") period, with a transition period between the two known as the Chalcolithic ("copper-Stone") Age. These technical developments took place at different times in different places, and therefore each region's history is framed by a different chronological system.

Bronze Age cultures were the first to develop writing. According to archaeological evidence, cultures in Mesopotamia, which used cuneiform script, and Egypt, which used hieroglyphs, developed the earliest practical writing systems. In the archaeology of the Americas, a five-period system is conventionally used instead, which does not include a Bronze Age, though some cultures there did smelt copper and bronze. No evidence of metalworking has been found on the Australian continent prior to the establishment of European settlements in 1788.

Agriculture in West Asia can be traced back to the early Neolithic in the Near East, between 10,000 and 8,000 BC, when a series of domestications by human communities took place, primarily involving a few plants (cereals and legumes) and animals (sheep, goats, bos, and pigs). In these regions, this gradually led to the introduction of agriculture and animal husbandry and their expansion to other parts of the world. The Neolithic is commonly defined as the transition from a "predatory" economy of hunter-gatherers (or "collectors") to a "productive" economy of farmer-breeders, which places the question of plant and animal domestication at the heart of the upheavals brought about by this period.

Farming and livestock breeding appeared in areas of rich biological diversity, where domesticated plants and animals were found in the wild. These regions also contain a large number of food resources in their natural state. Before their domestication, domesticated plants and animals were exploited in the form of gathering and hunting, with the methods and techniques required for domestication already known at the end of the Palaeolithic. Between 9500 and 8500 B.C., "pre-domestic" forms of agriculture were introduced; plants still had a wild character, but their reproduction was controlled by humans. Control of wild animals also began in the same period. These practices gradually led to the emergence of domesticated plant and animal species, which are distinct from the wild forms from which they derive. From a biological point of view, these domesticated species undergo a transition from natural selection to artificial selection by humans. This indicates the conclusion of the domestication process in the period between 8500 BC and 8000 BC. From this point onwards, village communities relied more on the "agro-pastoral" system, combining agriculture and animal husbandry, and less on hunting, fishing, and gathering practices.

The Herakleia head is the portrait of a probable Achaemenid Satrap of Asia Minor of the late 6th century, found in Heraclea, in Bithynia, modern Turkey. The head is now located in the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara.

Tudḫaliya IV was a king of the Hittite Empire (New kingdom), and the younger son of Ḫattušili III. He reigned c. 1245–1215 BC. His mother was the great queen, Puduḫepa.

The Seated Woman of Çatalhöyük (also Çatal Höyük) is a baked-clay nude female form seated between feline-headed arm-rests. The figurine is 17 centimeters (6.7 inches) long, 11 centimeters (4.3 inches) wide, 12 centimeters (4.7 inches) high, and weighs 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds). It is generally thought to depict a corpulent and fertile Mother goddess in the process of giving birth while seated on her throne, which has two hand rests in the form of feline (lioness, leopard, or panther) heads in a Mistress of Animals motif. The statuette, one of several iconographically similar ones found at the site, is similar to other corpulent prehistoric goddess figures, of which the most famous is the Venus of Willendorf.

It is a Neolithic sculpture shaped by an unknown artist, and was completed around 6000 BC. It was unearthed by archaeologist James Mellaart in 1961 at Çatalhöyük, Turkey. When it was found, its head and hand rest of the right side were missing. The current head and one hand rest are modern replacements. The sculpture is at the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara, Turkey. Mellaart claimed that the figure represented a fertility goddess worshipped by the people of Çatalhöyük.