The Syro-Anatolian City-States

The Syro-Anatolian City-States PDF Author: James F. Osborne
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199315833
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
"This book presents a new model for the cluster of ancient kingdoms that clustered around the northeast corner of the Mediterranean Sea during the Iron age, ca. 1200-600 BCE. Rather than presenting them as ancient versions of the modern nation-state, characterized by homogenous ethnolinguistic communities like "the Aramaeans" or "the Luwians" living in neatly bounded territories, this book sees these polities as being fundamentally diverse and variable, distinguished by demographic fluidity and cultural mobility. This conclusion is reached via an examination of a host of evidentiary sources, including site plans, settlement patterns, visual arts, and historical sources. Together, these lines of evidence lead to the awareness that this time and place consists of a complex fusion of cultural traditions that is nevertheless distinctly recognizable unto itself. This book thus proposes a new term to encapsulate that diversity: the Syro-Anatolian Culture Complex"--

The Syro-Anatolian City-States

The Syro-Anatolian City-States PDF Author: James F. Osborne
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199315833
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Get Book

Book Description
"This book presents a new model for the cluster of ancient kingdoms that clustered around the northeast corner of the Mediterranean Sea during the Iron age, ca. 1200-600 BCE. Rather than presenting them as ancient versions of the modern nation-state, characterized by homogenous ethnolinguistic communities like "the Aramaeans" or "the Luwians" living in neatly bounded territories, this book sees these polities as being fundamentally diverse and variable, distinguished by demographic fluidity and cultural mobility. This conclusion is reached via an examination of a host of evidentiary sources, including site plans, settlement patterns, visual arts, and historical sources. Together, these lines of evidence lead to the awareness that this time and place consists of a complex fusion of cultural traditions that is nevertheless distinctly recognizable unto itself. This book thus proposes a new term to encapsulate that diversity: the Syro-Anatolian Culture Complex"--

The Connected Iron Age

The Connected Iron Age PDF Author: Jonathan M. Hall
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226819051
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
An interdisciplinary consideration of how eastern Mediterranean cultures in the first millennium BCE were meaningfully connected. The early first millennium BCE marks one of the most culturally diverse periods in the history of the eastern Mediterranean. Surveying the region from Greece to Iraq, one finds a host of cultures and political formations, all distinct, yet all visibly connected in meaningful ways. These include the early polities of Geometric period Greece, the Phrygian kingdom of central Anatolia, the Syro-Anatolian city-states, the seafaring Phoenicians and the biblical Israelites of the southern Levant, Egypt’s Twenty-first through Twenty-fifth Dynasties, the Urartian kingdom of the eastern Anatolian highlands, and the expansionary Neo-Assyrian Empire of northern Mesopotamia. This volume adopts an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the social and political significance of how interregional networks operated within and between Mediterranean cultures during that era.

Syro-Hittite Monumental Art and the Archaeology of Performance

Syro-Hittite Monumental Art and the Archaeology of Performance PDF Author: Alessandra Gilibert
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110222264
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
The ceremonial centers of the Syro-Hittite city-states (1200-700 BC) were lavishly decorated with large-scale, open-air figurative reliefs – an original and greatly influential artistic tradition that has captivated the imagination of its contemporaries as well as that of modern scholars. This volume explores how Syro-Hittite monumental art was used as a powerful backdrop to important ritual events, and it opens up a new perspective by situating the monumental heritage in the context of large public performances and civic spectacles of great emotional impact. The first part of the volume focuses on the sites of Carchemish and Zincirli, offering a close reading of the relevant archaeological contexts. The second part of the volume discusses the embedment of monumental art in ritual performance and examines how change in art relates to change in ceremonial behavior, and how the latter relates in turn to change in power structures and models of rulership.

Cities and the Shaping of Memory in the Ancient Near East

Cities and the Shaping of Memory in the Ancient Near East PDF Author: Ömür Harmanşah
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107311187
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 373

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Book Description
This book investigates the founding and building of cities in the ancient Near East. The creation of new cities was imagined as an ideological project or a divine intervention in the political narratives and mythologies of Near Eastern cultures, often masking the complex processes behind the social production of urban space. During the Early Iron Age (c.1200–850 BCE), Assyrian and Syro-Hittite rulers developed a highly performative official discourse that revolved around constructing cities, cultivating landscapes, building watercourses, erecting monuments and initiating public festivals. This volume combs through archaeological, epigraphic, visual, architectural and environmental evidence to tell the story of a region from the perspective of its spatial practices, landscape history and architectural technologies. It argues that the cultural processes of the making of urban spaces shape collective memory and identity as well as sites of political performance and state spectacle.

Why the West Rules - For Now

Why the West Rules - For Now PDF Author: Ian Morris
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
ISBN: 1551995816
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 767

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Book Description
Why does the West rule? In this magnum opus, eminent Stanford polymath Ian Morris answers this provocative question, drawing on 50,000 years of history, archeology, and the methods of social science, to make sense of when, how, and why the paths of development differed in the East and West — and what this portends for the 21st century. There are two broad schools of thought on why the West rules. Proponents of "Long-Term Lock-In" theories such as Jared Diamond suggest that from time immemorial, some critical factor — geography, climate, or culture perhaps — made East and West unalterably different, and determined that the industrial revolution would happen in the West and push it further ahead of the East. But the East led the West between 500 and 1600, so this development can't have been inevitable; and so proponents of "Short-Term Accident" theories argue that Western rule was a temporary aberration that is now coming to an end, with Japan, China, and India resuming their rightful places on the world stage. However, as the West led for 9,000 of the previous 10,000 years, it wasn't just a temporary aberration. So, if we want to know why the West rules, we need a whole new theory. Ian Morris, boldly entering the turf of Jared Diamond and Niall Ferguson, provides the broader approach that is necessary, combining the textual historian's focus on context, the anthropological archaeologist's awareness of the deep past, and the social scientist's comparative methods to make sense of the past, present, and future — in a way no one has ever done before.

Syro-Hittite Monumental Art and the Archaeology of Performance

Syro-Hittite Monumental Art and the Archaeology of Performance PDF Author: Alessandra Gilibert
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110222256
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
The ceremonial centers of the Syro-Hittite city-states (1200-700 BC) were lavishly decorated with large-scale, open-air figurative reliefs - an original and greatly influential artistic tradition. But why exactly did the production of such an array of monumental images ever start? This volume explores how Syro-Hittite monumental art was used as a powerful backdrop to important ritual events, and opens up a new perspective by situating monumental art in the context of public performances and civic spectacles of great emotional impact, such as processions, royal triumphs, and dynastic funerals.

After Thermopylae

After Thermopylae PDF Author: Paul Cartledge
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019991155X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
The Battle of Plataea in 479 BCE is one of world history's unjustly neglected events. It decisively ended the threat of a Persian conquest of Greece. It involved tens of thousands of combatants, including the largest number of Greeks ever brought together in a common cause. For the Spartans, the driving force behind the Greek victory, the battle was sweet vengeance for their defeat at Thermopylae the year before. Why has this pivotal battle been so overlooked? In After Thermopylae, Paul Cartledge masterfully reopens one of the great puzzles of ancient Greece to discover, as much as possible, what happened on the field of battle and, just as important, what happened to its memory. Part of the answer to these questions, Cartledge argues, can be found in a little-known oath reputedly sworn by the leaders of Athens, Sparta, and several other Greek city-states prior to the battle-the Oath of Plataea. Through an analysis of this oath, Cartledge provides a wealth of insight into ancient Greek culture. He shows, for example, that when the Athenians and Spartans were not fighting the Persians they were fighting themselves, including a propaganda war for control of the memory of Greece's defeat of the Persians. This helps explain why today we readily remember the Athenian-led victories at Marathon and Salamis but not Sparta's victory at Plataea. Indeed, the Oath illuminates Greek anxieties over historical memory and over the Athens-Sparta rivalry, which would erupt fifty years after Plataea in the Peloponnesian War. In addition, because the Oath was ultimately a religious document, Cartledge also uses it to highlight the profound role of religion and myth in ancient Greek life. With compelling and eye-opening detective work, After Thermopylae provides a long-overdue history of the Battle of Plataea and a rich portrait of the Greek ethos during one of the most critical periods in ancient history.

The Making of Empire in Bronze Age Anatolia

The Making of Empire in Bronze Age Anatolia PDF Author: Claudia Glatz
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108491103
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 387

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Book Description
This book reconsiders the concept of empire and examines the processes of imperial making and undoing in Hittite Anatolia (c. 1600-1180 BCE).

From Hittite to Homer

From Hittite to Homer PDF Author: Mary R. Bachvarova
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521509793
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 691

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Book Description
This book takes a bold new approach to the prehistory of Homeric epic, arguing for a fresh understanding of how Near Eastern influence worked.

Anatolica

Anatolica PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Middle East
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description