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In this dissertation I explore how people in the eastern Mediterranean responded toimperial rule under the Achaemenid Persians (539-331 BCE) and Alexander the Greatand his Greco-Macedonian successors, the Ptolemies (c. 300-201 BCE) and Seleucids (c.201-104 BCE). To get an intimate perspective on these responses, I approach themthrough the recently excavated Persian and Hellenistic Administrative building (hereafterPHAB) at Tel Kedesh in the Upper Galilee of modern day Israel. The PHAB was in useunder the Persians, the Ptolemies, and the Seleucids before being abandoned after theSeleucids were defeated in a nearby battle against a Judean army led by JonathanMaccabee in 143 BCE. People moved north from the Central Hills a few years after thisbattle and inhabited the site of the semi-ruined building as squatters for a generation.From the vantage of the PHAB, it is possible to consider how economies andlifestyles changed against the dramatic historical backdrop of Alexander's conquest ofthe Persian Empire, the five Syrian Wars fought between his Ptolemaic and Seleucidsuccessors over the southern Levant in the 3rd century, and the Maccabean Revolt againstSeleucid rule in the mid 2nd century. In this dissertation I consider the largest body ofevidence for economic and cultural interconnections of the staff of the PHAB, thepottery, in a regional context in order to characterize the daily habits and tastes of theadministrators and squatters who lived at Kedesh. By considering changes in these tastesand habits over time as regimes and borders shifted, I show that people responded to thelimitations and opportunities presented by Persian, Ptolemaic, and Seleucid rule (and itsaftermath) in thoroughly local ways and at different paces according to politicalcircumstances, economic opportunity, and their own sense of taste and tradition.