Archaeological Landscapes of the Near East

Archaeological Landscapes of the Near East PDF Author: Tony J. Wilkinson
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 9780816521739
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
Many fundamental studies of the origins of states have built upon landscape data, but an overall study of the Near Eastern landscape itself has never been attempted. Spanning thousands of years of history, the ancient Near East presents a bewildering range of landscapes, the understanding of which can greatly enhance our ability to infer past political and social systems. Tony Wilkinson now shows that throughout the Holocene humans altered the Near Eastern environment so thoroughly that the land has become a human artifact, albeit one that retains the power to shape human societies. In this trailblazing bookÑthe first to describe and explain the development of the Near Eastern landscape using archaeological dataÑWilkinson identifies specific landscape signatures for various regions and periods, from the early stages of complex societies in the fifth to sixth millennium B.C. to the close of the Early Islamic period around the tenth century A.D. From Bronze Age city-states to colonized steppes, these signature landscapes of irrigation systems, tells, and other features changed through time along with changes in social, economic, political, and environmental conditions. By weaving together the record of the human landscape with evidence of settlement, the environment, and social and economic conditions, Wilkinson provides a holistic view of the ancient Near East that complements archaeological excavations, cuneiform texts, and other conventional sources. Through this overview, culled from thirty years' research, Wilkinson establishes a new framework for understanding the economic and physical infrastructure of the region. By describing the basic attributes of the ancient cultural landscape and placing their development within the context of a dynamic environment, he breaks new ground in landscape archaeology and offers a new context for understanding the ancient Near East.

Archaeological Landscapes of the Near East

Archaeological Landscapes of the Near East PDF Author: Tony J. Wilkinson
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 9780816521739
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 282

Get Book Here

Book Description
Many fundamental studies of the origins of states have built upon landscape data, but an overall study of the Near Eastern landscape itself has never been attempted. Spanning thousands of years of history, the ancient Near East presents a bewildering range of landscapes, the understanding of which can greatly enhance our ability to infer past political and social systems. Tony Wilkinson now shows that throughout the Holocene humans altered the Near Eastern environment so thoroughly that the land has become a human artifact, albeit one that retains the power to shape human societies. In this trailblazing bookÑthe first to describe and explain the development of the Near Eastern landscape using archaeological dataÑWilkinson identifies specific landscape signatures for various regions and periods, from the early stages of complex societies in the fifth to sixth millennium B.C. to the close of the Early Islamic period around the tenth century A.D. From Bronze Age city-states to colonized steppes, these signature landscapes of irrigation systems, tells, and other features changed through time along with changes in social, economic, political, and environmental conditions. By weaving together the record of the human landscape with evidence of settlement, the environment, and social and economic conditions, Wilkinson provides a holistic view of the ancient Near East that complements archaeological excavations, cuneiform texts, and other conventional sources. Through this overview, culled from thirty years' research, Wilkinson establishes a new framework for understanding the economic and physical infrastructure of the region. By describing the basic attributes of the ancient cultural landscape and placing their development within the context of a dynamic environment, he breaks new ground in landscape archaeology and offers a new context for understanding the ancient Near East.

Assembling Çatalhöyük

Assembling Çatalhöyük PDF Author: Ian Hodder
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351190970
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
"Assembling Çatalhöyük, like archaeological remains, can be read in a number of ways. At one level the volume reports on the exciting new discoveries and advances that are being made in the understanding of the 9000 year-old Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük. The site has long been central to debates about early village societies and the formation of mega-sites in the Middle East. The current long-term project has made many advances in our understanding of the site that impact our wider understanding of the Neolithic and its spread into Europe from the Middle East. These advances concern use of the environment, climate change, subsistence practices, social and economic organization, the role of religion, ritual and symbolism. At another level, the volume reports on methodological advances that have been made by team members, including the development of reflexive methods, paperless recording on site, the integrated use of 3D visualization, and interactive archives. The long-term nature of the project allows these various innovations to be evaluated and critiqued. In particular, the volume includes analyses of the social networks that underpin the assembling of data, and documents the complex ways in which arguments are built within quickly transforming alliances and allegiances within the team. In particular, the volume explores how close inter-disciplinarity, and the assembling of different forms of data from different sub-disciplines, allow the weaving together of information into robust, distributed arguments."

Imperial Twilight

Imperial Twilight PDF Author: Stephen R. Platt
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307961745
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 609

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Book Description
As China reclaims its position as a world power, Imperial Twilight looks back to tell the story of the country’s last age of ascendance and how it came to an end in the nineteenth-century Opium War. As one of the most potent turning points in the country’s modern history, the Opium War has since come to stand for everything that today’s China seeks to put behind it. In this dramatic, epic story, award-winning historian Stephen Platt sheds new light on the early attempts by Western traders and missionaries to “open” China even as China’s imperial rulers were struggling to manage their country’s decline and Confucian scholars grappled with how to use foreign trade to China’s advantage. The book paints an enduring portrait of an immensely profitable—and mostly peaceful—meeting of civilizations that was destined to be shattered by one of the most shockingly unjust wars in the annals of imperial history. Brimming with a fascinating cast of British, Chinese, and American characters, this riveting narrative of relations between China and the West has important implications for today’s uncertain and ever-changing political climate.

What I Thought I Knew

What I Thought I Knew PDF Author: Alice Eve Cohen
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101050934
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Book Description
"Darkly hilarious...an unexpected bundle of joy." -O, The Oprah Magazine Alice Cohen was happy for the first time in years. After a difficult divorce, she had a new love in her life, she was rais­ing a beloved adopted daughter, and her career was blossoming. Then she started experiencing mysterious symptoms. After months of tests, x-rays, and inconclusive diagnoses, Alice underwent a CAT scan that revealed the truth: she was six months pregnant. At age forty-four, with no prenatal care and no insurance coverage for a high-risk pregnancy, Alice was besieged by opinions from doctors and friends about what was ethical, what was loving, what was right. With the intimacy of a diary and the suspense of a thriller, What I Thought I Knew is a ruefully funny, wickedly candid tale; a story of hope and renewal that turns all of the "knowns" upside down.

Mrs. Poe

Mrs. Poe PDF Author: Lynn Cullen
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1476702918
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
Struggling to support her family in mid-19th-century New York, writer Frances Osgood makes an unexpected connection with literary master Edgar Allan Poe and finds her survival complicated by her intense attraction to the writer and the scheming manipulations of his wife.

Patience and Fortitude

Patience and Fortitude PDF Author: Scott Sherman
Publisher: Melville House
ISBN: 1612196675
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
A riveting investigation of a beloved library caught in the crosshairs of real estate, power, and the people’s interests—by the reporter who broke the story In a series of cover stories for The Nation magazine, journalist Scott Sherman uncovered the ways in which Wall Street logic almost took down one of New York City’s most beloved and iconic institutions: the New York Public Library. In the years preceding the 2008 financial crisis, the library’s leaders forged an audacious plan to sell off multiple branch libraries, mutilate a historic building, and send millions of books to a storage facility in New Jersey. Scholars, researchers, and readers would be out of luck, but real estate developers and New York’s Mayor Bloomberg would get what they wanted. But when the story broke, the people fought back, as famous writers, professors, and citizens’ groups came together to defend a national treasure. Rich with revealing interviews with key figures, Patience and Fortitude is at once a hugely readable history of the library’s secret plans, and a stirring account of a rare triumph against the forces of money and power.

No Ordinary Time

No Ordinary Time PDF Author: Doris Kearns Goodwin
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439126194
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 790

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Book Description
Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Pulitzer Prize–winning classic about the relationship between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt, and how it shaped the nation while steering it through the Great Depression and the outset of World War II. With an extraordinary collection of details, Goodwin masterfully weaves together a striking number of story lines—Eleanor and Franklin’s marriage and remarkable partnership, Eleanor’s life as First Lady, and FDR’s White House and its impact on America as well as on a world at war. Goodwin effectively melds these details and stories into an unforgettable and intimate portrait of Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt and of the time during which a new, modern America was born.

Up in the Old Hotel

Up in the Old Hotel PDF Author: Joseph Mitchell
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 1101971304
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 738

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Book Description
Saloon-keepers and street preachers, gypsies and steel-walking Mohawks, a bearded lady and a 93-year-old “seafoodetarian” who believes his specialized diet will keep him alive for another two decades. These are among the people that Joseph Mitchell immortalized in his reportage for The New Yorker and in four books—McSorley's Wonderful Saloon, Old Mr. Flood, The Bottom of the Harbor, and Joe Gould's Secret—that are still renowned for their precise, respectful observation, their graveyard humor, and their offhand perfection of style. These masterpieces (along with several previously uncollected stories) are available in one volume, which presents an indelible collective portrait of an unsuspected New York and its odder citizens—as depicted by one of the great writers of this or any other time.

Three Bedrooms in Manhattan

Three Bedrooms in Manhattan PDF Author: Georges Simenon
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 1590175611
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
An actor, recently divorced, at loose ends in New York; a woman, no less lonely, perhaps even more desperate than the man: they meet by chance in an all-night diner and are drawn to each other on the spot. Roaming the city streets, hitting its late-night dives, dropping another coin into yet another jukebox, these two lost souls struggle to understand what it is that has brought them, almost in spite of themselves, together. They are driven—from moment to moment, from bedroom to bedroom—to improvise the most unexpected of love stories, a tale of suspense where risk alone offers salvation. Georges Simenon was the most popular and prolific of the twentieth century’s great novelists. Three Bedrooms in Manhattan—closely based on the story of his own meeting with his second wife—is his most passionate and revealing work.

The Social Archaeology of the Levant

The Social Archaeology of the Levant PDF Author: Assaf Yasur-Landau
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108668240
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 941

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Book Description
The volume offers a comprehensive introduction to the archaeology of the southern Levant (modern day Israel, Palestine and Jordan) from the Paleolithic period to the Islamic era, presenting the past with chronological changes from hunter-gatherers to empires. Written by an international team of scholars in the fields of archaeology, epigraphy, and bioanthropology, the volume presents central debates around a range of archaeological issues, including gender, ritual, the creation of alphabets and early writing, biblical periods, archaeometallurgy, looting, and maritime trade. Collectively, the essays also engage diverse theoretical approaches to demonstrate the multi-vocal nature of studying the past. Significantly, The Social Archaeology of the Levant updates and contextualizes major shifts in archaeological interpretation.