Download or read book Bronze Age Bureaucracy written by Nicholas Postgate and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-01-13 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book describes ten different government archives of cuneiform tablets from Assyria, using them to analyze the social and economic character of the Middle Assyrian state, as well as the roles and practices of writing. The tablets, many of which have not been edited or translated, were excavated at the capital, Assur, and in the provinces, and they give vivid details to illuminate issues such as offerings to the national shrine, the economy and political role of elite households, palace etiquette, and state-run agriculture. This book concentrates particularly on how the Assyrian use of written documentation affected the nature and ethos of government, and compares this to contemporary practices in other palatial administrations at Nuzi, Alalah, Ugarit, and in Greece.
Download or read book Bronze Age Bureaucracy written by J. N. Postgate and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Political Machine written by Adam T. Smith and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-08-04 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Political Machine investigates the essential role that material culture plays in the practices and maintenance of political sovereignty. Through an archaeological exploration of the Bronze Age Caucasus, Adam Smith demonstrates that beyond assemblies of people, polities are just as importantly assemblages of things—from ballots and bullets to crowns, regalia, and licenses. Smith looks at the ways that these assemblages help to forge cohesive publics, separate sovereigns from a wider social mass, and formalize governance—and he considers how these developments continue to shape politics today. Smith shows that the formation of polities is as much about the process of manufacturing assemblages as it is about disciplining subjects, and that these material objects or "machines" sustain communities, orders, and institutions. The sensibilities, senses, and sentiments connecting people to things enabled political authority during the Bronze Age and fortify political power even in the contemporary world. Smith provides a detailed account of the transformation of communities in the Caucasus, from small-scale early Bronze Age villages committed to egalitarianism, to Late Bronze Age polities predicated on radical inequality, organized violence, and a centralized apparatus of rule. From Bronze Age traditions of mortuary ritual and divination to current controversies over flag pins and Predator drones, The Political Machine sheds new light on how material goods authorize and defend political order.
Download or read book The Archaeology of the Bronze Age Levant written by Raphael Greenberg and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-11-07 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An up-to-date, systematic depiction of Bronze Age societies of the Levant, their evolution, and their interactions and entanglements with neighboring regions.
Download or read book Bronze Age Economics written by Timothy Earle and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-02-13 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Timothy Earle has set out to offer the most comprehensive view now available of the economic foundations of early societies, and it may well be that he has succeeded. Bronze Age Economics is a pioneering contribution to archaeological theory." —Colin Renfrew, University of Cambridge
Download or read book The Economic History of China written by Richard von Glahn and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-03-07 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: China's extraordinary rise as an economic powerhouse in the past two decades poses a challenge to many long-held assumptions about the relationship between political institutions and economic development. Economic prosperity also was vitally important to the longevity of the Chinese Empire throughout the preindustrial era. Before the eighteenth century, China's economy shared some of the features, such as highly productive agriculture and sophisticated markets, found in the most advanced regions of Europe. But in many respects, from the central importance of irrigated rice farming to family structure, property rights, the status of merchants, the monetary system, and the imperial state's fiscal and economic policies, China's preindustrial economy diverged from the Western path of development. In this comprehensive but accessible study, Richard von Glahn examines the institutional foundations, continuities and discontinuities in China's economic development over three millennia, from the Bronze Age to the early twentieth century.
Download or read book Bureaucracy and the State in Early China written by Feng Li and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2008-12-11 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This ook redefines the bureaucracy of Ancient Chinese society during the Western Zhou period. The analysis is based on inscriptions of royal edicts from the period carved into bronze vessels. The inscriptions clarify the political and social construction of the Western Zhou and the ways in which it exercised its authority.
Download or read book A Companion to Ancient Agriculture written by David Hollander and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2020-11-10 with total page 736 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first book-length overview of agricultural development in the ancient world A Companion to Ancient Agriculture is an authoritative overview of the history and development of agriculture in the ancient world. Focusing primarily on the Near East and Mediterranean regions, this unique text explores the cultivation of the soil and rearing of animals through centuries of human civilization—from the Neolithic beginnings of agriculture to Late Antiquity. Chapters written by the leading scholars in their fields present a multidisciplinary examination of the agricultural methods and influences that have enabled humans to survive and prosper. Consisting of thirty-one chapters, the Companion presents essays on a range of topics that include economic-political, anthropological, zooarchaeological, ethnobotanical, and archaeobotanical investigation of ancient agriculture. Chronologically-organized chapters offer in-depth discussions of agriculture in Bronze Age Egypt and Mesopotamia, Hellenistic Greece and Imperial Rome, Iran and Central Asia, and other regions. Sections on comparative agricultural history discuss agriculture in the Indian subcontinent and prehistoric China while an insightful concluding section helps readers understand ancient agriculture from a modern perspective. Fills the need for a full-length biophysical and social overview of ancient agriculture Provides clear accounts of the current state of research written by experts in their respective areas Places ancient Mediterranean agriculture in conversation with contemporary practice in Eastern and Southern Asia Includes coverage of analysis of stable isotopes in ancient agricultural cultivation Offers plentiful illustrations, references, case studies, and further reading suggestions A Companion to Ancient Agriculture is a much-needed resource for advanced students, instructors, scholars, and researchers in fields such as agricultural history, ancient economics, and in broader disciplines including classics, archaeology, and ancient history.
Download or read book Ancient Kanesh written by Mogens Trolle Larsen and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-09-17 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ancient Anatolian city of Kanesh (present-day Kültepe, Turkey) was a continuously inhabited site from the early Bronze Age through Roman times. The city flourished c.2000–1750 BCE as an Old Assyrian trade outpost and the earliest attested commercial society in world history. More than 23,000 elaborate clay tablets from private merchant houses provide a detailed description of a system of long-distance trade that reached from central Asia to the Black Sea region and the Aegean. The texts record common activities such as trade between Kanesh and the city state of Assur, and between Assyrian merchants and local people. The tablets tell us about the economy as well as the culture, language, religion, and private lives of individuals we can identify by name, occupation, and sometimes even personality. This book presents an in-depth account of this vibrant Bronze Age Anatolian society, revealing the daily lives of its inhabitants.
Download or read book The History of the End of Bronze Age Written by the Very Actors New and Rich Discoveries of the Archives of Ugarit Diplomatic Economic Royal and Bureaucratic written by Claude Schaeffer and published by . This book was released on 1954 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Making of Bronze Age Eurasia written by Philip L. Kohl and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-01-22 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides an overview of Bronze Age societies of Western Eurasia through an investigation of the archaeological record. The Making of Bronze Age Eurasia outlines the long-term processes and patterns of interaction that link these groups together in a shared historical trajectory of development. Interactions took the form of the exchange of raw materials and finished goods, the spread and sharing of technologies, and the movements of peoples from one region to another. Kohl reconstructs economic activities from subsistence practices to the production and exchange of metals and other materials. Kohl also argues forcefully that the main task of the archaeologist should be to write culture-history on a spatially and temporally grand scale in an effort to detect large, macrohistorical processes of interaction and shared development.
Download or read book Collapse and Transformation written by Guy D. Middleton and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2020-04-09 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The years c. 1250 to 1150 BC in Greece and the Aegean are often characterised as a time of crisis and collapse. A critical period in the long history of the region and its people and culture, they witnessed the end of the Mycenaean kingdoms, with their palaces and Linear B records, and, through the Postpalatial period, the transition into the Early Iron Age. But, on closer examination, it has become increasingly clear that the period as a whole, across the region, defies simple characterisation – there was success and splendour, resilience and continuity, and novelty and innovation, actively driven by the people of these lands through this transformative century. The story of the Aegean at this time has frequently been incorporated into narratives focused on the wider eastern Mediterranean, and most infamously the ‘Sea Peoples’ of the Egyptian texts. In twenty-five chapters written by 25 specialists, Collapse and Transformation instead offers a tight focus on the Aegean itself, providing an up-to date picture of the archaeology ‘before’ and ‘after’ ‘the collapse’ of c. 1200 BC. It will be essential reading for students and scholars of the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean regions, as well as providing data and a range of interpretations to those studying collapse and resilience more widely and engaging in comparative studies. Introductory chapters discuss notions of collapse, and provide overviews of the Minoan and Mycenaean collapses. These are followed by twelve chapters, which review the evidence from the major regions of the Aegean, including the Argolid, Messenia, and Boeotia, Crete, and the Aegean islands. Six chapters then address key themes: the economy, funerary practices, the Mycenaean pottery of the mainland and the wider Aegean and eastern Mediterranean region, religion, and the extent to which later Greek myth can be drawn upon as evidence or taken to reflect any historical reality. The final four chapters provide a wider context for the Aegean story, surveying the eastern Mediterranean, including Cyprus and the Levant, and the themes of subsistence and warfare.
Download or read book Bronze Age Egypt and Globalisation written by David A. Warburton and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2023-01-05 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The state and the city were born in fourth millennium BC Mesopotamia, leading the way to trade routes and empires, awakening the lands around it. Around 3000 BC, Egypt created the first territorial nation state in human history, consisting of the Nile Valley north of the first cataract and the Nile Delta on the shores of the Mediterranean. The whole area was governed by a king whose lineage created kingship, while building up a bureaucracy managing the country so that, in the late second millennium BC, Egypt was the greatest of the great powers when international politics were born. This volume hints at the political context of these earliest international relations, and examines how the system functioned. It also explores what can be said of ancient Egyptian society – and stresses the contributions that Egypt made to our own contemporary world. As one of the two earliest major civilisations, Egypt contributed to the birth of warfare, literature, art, science, economics, ideology, love poetry and much more.
Download or read book The Textile Revolution in Bronze Age Europe written by Serena Sabatini and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-11-21 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discusses both the revolutionary cultural, social, and economic impact of Bronze Age textile production in Europe and innovative methodologies for future studies.
Download or read book The Role of the Religious Sector in the Economy of Late Bronze Age Mycenaean Greece written by Susan M. Lupack and published by BAR International Series. This book was released on 2008 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study examines the relationship between the Mycenaean palatial administration and the relgious sector, asking whether the religious sector should be considered as a subsidiary part of the central administration, or with, in fact it had its own power and economic independence.
Download or read book Officials and Administration in the Hittite World written by Tayfun Bilgin and published by ISSN. This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is an investigation of the administrative organization of the Hittite state throughout its history (c.1650-1180 BCE) with particular emphasis on the state offices and their officials. It is comprised of a prosopographical study of all kn
Download or read book Non scribal Communication Media in the Bronze Age Aegean and Surrounding Areas written by Anna Margherita Jasink and published by Firenze University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-08 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is intended to be the first in a series that will focus on the origin of script and the boundaries of non-scribal communication media in proto-literate and literate societies of the ancient Aegean. Over the last 30 years, the domain of scribes and bureaucrats has become much better known. Our goal now is to reach below the élite and scribal levels to interface with non-scribal operations conducted by people of the ‘middling’ sort. Who made these marks and to what purpose? Did they serve private or (semi-) official roles in Bronze Age Aegean society? The comparative study of such practices in the contemporary East (Cyprus, Anatolia, the Levant, and Egypt) can shed light on sub-elite activities in the Aegean and also provide evidence for cultural and economic exchange networks.
