Download or read book The Pax Assyriaca The Historical Evolution of Civilisations and Archaeology of Empires written by Benjamin Toro and published by Archaeopress Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2022-02-24 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study of the evolutionary process of ancient civilisations stresses the complementarity between theoretical principles and the relevant historical and archaeological evidence. Taking its approach from World Systems Theory, it focuses on the origin, development and collapse of the first, ‘Near Eastern’, stage of the ‘Central Civilisation’.
Download or read book The Dynamics of Ancient Empires written by Ian Morris and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-01-13 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The world's first known empires took shape in Mesopotamia between the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf, beginning around 2350 BCE. The next 2,500 years witnessed sustained imperial growth, bringing a growing share of humanity under the control of ever-fewer states. Two thousand years ago, just four major powers--the Roman, Parthian, Kushan, and Han empires--ruled perhaps two-thirds of the earth's entire population. Yet despite empires' prominence in the early history of civilization, there have been surprisingly few attempts to study the dynamics of ancient empires in the western Old World comparatively. Such grand comparisons were popular in the eighteenth century, but scholars then had only Greek and Latin literature and the Hebrew Bible as evidence, and necessarily framed the problem in different, more limited, terms. Near Eastern texts, and knowledge of their languages, only appeared in large amounts in the later nineteenth century. Neither Karl Marx nor Max Weber could make much use of this material, and not until the 1920s were there enough archaeological data to make syntheses of early European and west Asian history possible. But one consequence of the increase in empirical knowledge was that twentieth-century scholars generally defined the disciplinary and geographical boundaries of their specialties more narrowly than their Enlightenment predecessors had done, shying away from large questions and cross-cultural comparisons. As a result, Greek and Roman empires have largely been studied in isolation from those of the Near East. This volume is designed to address these deficits and encourage dialogue across disciplinary boundaries by examining the fundamental features of the successive and partly overlapping imperial states that dominated much of the Near East and the Mediterranean in the first millennia BCE and CE. A substantial introductory discussion of recent thought on the mechanisms of imperial state formation prefaces the five newly commissioned case studies of the Neo-Assyrian, Achaemenid Persian, Athenian, Roman, and Byzantine empires. A final chapter draws on the findings of evolutionary psychology to improve our understanding of ultimate causation in imperial predation and exploitation in a wide range of historical systems from all over the globe. Contributors include John Haldon, Jack Goldstone, Peter Bedford, Josef Wiesehöfer, Ian Morris, Walter Scheidel, and Keith Hopkins, whose essay on Roman political economy was completed just before his death in 2004.
Download or read book The Neo Assyrian Empire in the Southwest written by Avraham Faust and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-01-18 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Neo-Assyrian empire — the first large empire of the ancient world — has attracted a great deal of public attention ever since the spectacular discoveries of its impressive remains in the 19th century. The southwestern part of this empire, located in the lands of the Bible, is archaeologically speaking the best known region in the world, and its history is described in a plethora of texts, including the Hebrew Bible. Using a bottom-up approach, Avraham Faust utilises this unparalleled information to reconstruct the outcomes of the Assyrian conquest of the region and how it impacted the diverse political units and ecological zones that comprised it. In doing so, he draws close attention to the transformations the imperial take-over brought in its wake. His analysis reveals the marginality of the annexed territories in the southwest as the empire focused its activities in small border areas facing its prospering clients. A comparison of this surprising picture to the information available from other parts of the empire suggests that the distance of these provinces from the imperial core is responsible for their fate. This sheds new light on factors influencing imperial expansion, the considerations leading to annexation, and the imperial methods of control, challenging old conventions about the development of the Assyrian empire and its rule. Faust also examines the Assyrian empire within the broader context of ancient Near Eastern imperialism to answer larger questions on the nature of Assyrian domination, the reasons for its harsh treatment of the distant provinces, and the factors influencing the limits of its reach. His findings highlight the historical development of imperial control in antiquity and the ways in which later empires were able to overcome similar limitations, paving the way to much larger and longer-lasting polities.
Download or read book Of God s Trees Kings and Scholars written by Mikko Luukko and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Studies in the Iconography of Northwest Semitic Inscribed Seals written by Benjamin Sass and published by Saint-Paul. This book was released on 1993 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Interweaving Worlds written by Toby C. Wilkinson and published by Oxbow Books Limited. This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do we understand the systemic interactions that took place in and between different regions of prehistoric Eurasia and their consequences for individuals, groups and regions on both a theoretical and empirical basis? Such interactions helped create economic and cultural spheres that were mutually dependent yet distinct. This volume, emerging from a conference hosted in memory of Professor Andrew Sherratt in Sheffield in April 2008 and in honour of his contributions to large-scale economic history, presents some diverse archaeological responses to this problem. These range from from "world-systems" through "ritual economies" to "textile rivalries" and address the challenge of documenting, explaining and understanding the progressively more interwoven worlds of prehistoric Eurasia.
Download or read book Aramaic Incantation Texts from Nippur written by James Alan Montgomery and published by University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology. This book was released on 1913 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.
Download or read book The Emergence of Civilization written by Charles Keith Maisels and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-12-16 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Emergence of Civilisation is a major contribution to our understanding of the development of urban culture and social stratification in the Near Eastern region. Charles Maisels argues that our present assumptions about state formation, based on nineteenth century speculations, are wrong. His investigation illuminates the changes in scale, complexity and hierarchy which accompany the development of civilisation. The book draws conclusions about the dynamics of social change and the processes of social evolution in general, applying those concepts to the rise of Greece and Rome, and to the collapse of the classical Mediterranean world.
Download or read book Early Neo Assyrian State Ideology written by Mattias Karlsson and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The great gods were imagined as the masters and the conquerors of the foreign lands. The Assyrian king presented himself as the representative, priest, servant, master builder, and warrior of the great gods. The great gods had ordered the Assyrian king to implement their world dominion. On this divine mission, the Assyrian king was confronted by various hinderances such as the wild foreign landscape and its wild animals. By the act of conquering, the named chaotic elements of Otherness became a part of Order. The relationship between the Assyrian king and the foreign deities was portrayed as characterized by mutual respect. The religious imperialism of the two kings was not of an iconoclastic character. The foreign elites and people had the choice to submit and pay tribute and then be shepherded, or to resist and then be annihilated or enslaved. In times of confrontation, polarizations and dichotomies centred social classes ("elites") and not nations or nationalities
Download or read book The Philistines and Other Sea Peoples in Text and Archaeology written by Ann E. Killebrew and published by Society of Biblical Lit. This book was released on 2013-04-21 with total page 773 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The search for the biblical Philistines, one of ancient Israel’s most storied enemies, has long intrigued both scholars and the public. Archaeological and textual evidence examined in its broader eastern Mediterranean context reveals that the Philistines, well-known from biblical and extrabiblical texts, together with other related groups of “Sea Peoples,” played a transformative role in the development of new ethnic groups and polities that emerged from the ruins of the Late Bronze Age empires. The essays in this book, representing recent research in the fields of archaeology, Bible, and history, reassess the origins, identity, material culture, and impact of the Philistines and other Sea Peoples on the Iron Age cultures and peoples of the eastern Mediterranean. The contributors are Matthew J. Adams, Michal Artzy, Tristan J. Barako, David Ben-Shlomo, Mario Benzi, Margaret E. Cohen, Anat Cohen-Weinberger, Trude Dothan, Elizabeth French, Marie-Henriette Gates, Hermann Genz, Ayelet Gilboa, Maria Iacovou, Ann E. Killebrew, Sabine Laemmel, Gunnar Lehmann, Aren M. Maeir, Amihai Mazar, Linda Meiberg, Penelope A. Mountjoy, Hermann Michael Niemann, Jeremy B. Rutter, Ilan Sharon, Susan Sherratt, Neil Asher Silberman, and Itamar Singer.
Download or read book Evolution of a Taboo written by Max D. Price and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2021-01-07 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "From their domestication to their taboo, the role of pigs in the ancient Near East is one of the most complicated topics in archaeology. Rejecting monocausal explanations, this book adopts an evolutionary approach and uses zooarchaeology and texts to unravel the cultural significance of swine from the Paleolithic to today. Five major themes emerge: The domestication of the pig from wild boar in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic, the unique roles that pigs developed in agricultural economies before and after the development of complex societies, the raising of swine in cities, the shifting ritual roles of pigs, and the formation and development of the pork taboo in Judaism and, later, Islam. The development of this taboo has inspired much academic debate. I argue that the well-known taboo described in Leviticus reflects the intention of the Biblical writers to develop an image of a glorious pastoral ancestry for a heroic Israelite past, something they achieved by tying together existing food traditions. These included a taboo on pigs, which was developed early in the Iron Age during conflicts between Israelites and Philistines and was revitalized by the Biblical writers. The taboo persisted and mutated, gaining strength over the next two and a half millennia. In particular, the pig taboo became a point of contention in the ethno-political struggles between Jewish and Greco-Roman cultures in the Levant. Ultimately, it was this continued evolution within the context of ethnic and religious politics that gave the pig taboo the strength it has today"--
Download or read book The Ancient Greek Economy written by Edward M. Harris and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 489 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Markets, Households and City-States in the Ancient Greek Economy brings together sixteen essays by leading scholars of the ancient Greek economy. The essays investigate the role of market-exchange in the economy of the ancient Greek world in the Classical and Hellenistic periods.
Download or read book The Arjan Tomb written by Javier Álvarez-Mon and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 1150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Arj n Tomb written by Javier Álvarez-Mon and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is based on a study of the archaeological evidence deriving from the Arjan tomb, an undisturbed elite burial found in 1982 near the town of Behbahan in south-western Iran. The fact that this burial can be confidently dated to ca. 600-550 BC presents an exceptional opportunity to reassess former views regarding the survival of Elamite traditions and the emergence of the Persian Empire. It is within this general framework that the fortuitous discovery of the Arjan tomb emerges as potentially one of the major archaeological discoveries of recent times. The present study offers a comprehensive analysis of the artistic and historical characteristics of the late Neo-Elamite period, and, by the same token, provides a new foundation for the genesis of the art of the Achaemenid Persian Empire.
Download or read book Jewelry from the Iron Age II Levant written by Amir Golani and published by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jewelry has always had an irresistible allure yet in the past also had a significance and function within society that went far beyond ornamentation. Jewelry is an important, if often forgotten facet of material culture. Its study is inter-disciplinary, involving archaeology, anthropology, art history, historical/textual studies, and research of materials and manufacturing techniques. While the renowned jewelry from regions such as Egypt and Mesopotamia has been studied, that of the southern Levant has received only limited attention, yet research of its archaeological/contextual, technological and socio-cultural perspectives is illuminating. The book is a final publication of the author's doctoral dissertation made available to the archaeological and academic community at large. The book is geared to be a working tool for archaeologists dealing in this period and region and to scholars who study its arts and crafts. It provides a handy typological structure for jewelry classification as well as a comprehensive and useful catalogue for research in this and related fields. In addition, the book illustrates the significance, meaning and functions of jewelry and the development of the jeweler's craft in the southern Levant during the first and second millennia BCE.
Download or read book Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From written by William G. Dever and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2006-03-31 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A respected archaeologist's engaging, revealing take on ancient Israel. A thorough yet readable examination of a much-debated subject -- of relevance also to the current Israeli-Palestinian situation -- this book is sure to reinvigorate discussion of the origins of ancient Israel.
Download or read book The Threshold Covenant written by H. Clay Trumbull and published by Legare Street Press. This book was released on 2022-10-26 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
