Ancient Mesopotamia & Iranian plateau (up to 7th cen.)
More general subjects:
Sumer and the Sea
Deltas, Shoreline, and Urban Water Management in 3rd Millennium Mesopotamia. Proceedings of the 1st ARWA International Research Workshop (Rome, 2–4 June 2021)
From the Chalcolithic onwards the culture and society of Sumer flourished along the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers with communities living close to the ancient shoreline in an environment that was closely linked to the exploitation of fluvial systems the sea and the unique marshlands of the area. This volume gathers together research first presented as part of a workshop entitled Sumer and the Sea: Deltas Shoreline and Urban Water Management in 3rd Millennium Mesopotamia to explore the interaction between Sumerians and their water-dominated environment. The chapters gathered here offer updates on methodologies and the most recent research from the field to provide new understanding and fresh insights into how the Sumerians adapted to the world in which they lived.
Alexander the Great and the Campaign of Gaugamela
New Research on Topography and Chronology IAMNI 1 (Italian Archaeological Mission to Northern Iraq)
The Battle of Gaugamela in which Alexander the Great’s army faced the Persian army of King Darius III in 331 bce remains a famous date in history the last battle that led to Alexander’s conquest of the Achaemenid Empire. However the topography and chronology of the campaign have up to now remained little studied. Taking these two elements as its starting point this volume draws both on the latest archaeological research in the region and on recent advances in science (in particular GIS) to offer a completely new reconstruction of the Gaugamela campaign arguing for a much shorter campaign than has hitherto been understood. By turning the spotlight for the first time onto the geographical and topographical context of the campaign the author here also provides a new understanding of both the scale of Alexander’s military achievement and the long-term effects of the military reforms introduced by his father Philip II.
Violence and Imagination after the Collapse
Encounters, Identity and Daily Life in the Upper Euphrates Region, 3200-2500 BCE
In the late fourth millennium BCE the villages temples and palace of the Upper Euphrates region stood between two social worlds: the comparatively hierarchical centrally organized Mesopotamian social tradition to the south and the comparatively egalitarian decentralized Kura-Araxes social tradition to the north. Over the next seven centuries this positioning and the interactions it sparked fed into reactions among the region’s inhabitants that ranged from cataclysmic violence to a flowering of innovation in visual culture and social arrangements. These events had a wide array of short-term and long-term impacts some limited to a single house or settlement and some like the innovation of the Warrior Tomb template that transformed societies across West Asia. With an eye towards detail a theoretical approach emphasizing personal motivation and multiple scales of analysis this book organizes previously unpublished data from six sites in the region Arslantepe Ta kun Mevkii Pulur Nor untepe Tepecik and Korucutepe dating to this dramatic and transformative period.
Sarazm: A Site along the Proto-Silk Road at the Intersection of the Steppe and Oasis Cultures
Results from Excavation VII
Sarazm in modern-day Tajikistan is rightly famous as an archaeological site. A Chalcolithic and Bronze Age settlement it formed part of a cultural and economic network that stretched from the steppe of Central Asia across to the Iranian Plateau and the Indus. Between 1984 and 1994 fieldwork led by a joint Tajik-French project took place at Excavation VII yielding unique archaeological contexts and materials that shed light on Sarazm’s multicultural nature its evolution through time and the varied activities that took place at the site. Now in this new volume the first comprehensive description and analysis of all available data from Excavation VII is presented and the data from this excavation contextualized both at site level and within the broader setting of the Steppe and Oasis cultures of the IVth and IIIrd millennia bce. The author offers functional cultural and chronological conclusions about the exposed occupations as well as putting forward new interpretations and hypotheses on this important settlement.
Late Chalcolithic Northern Mesopotamia in Context
Papers from a Workshop held at the 11th ICAANE in Munich, April 5th 2018
Many of the debates that have until recently driven research into Mesopotamia’s proto-urban phase (5th- 4th millennia bce) have now been reassessed thanks to new fieldwork in Iraqi Kurdistan and new data into the relationships between the north and south of the Alluvium from hitherto poorly-documented regions. These debates were re-examined in the light of this new material during a workshop held at the ICAANE in 2018 in Munich leading to unprecedented perspectives on the patterns of early urbanization social mobility and the organization of Late Chalcolithic communities. Drawing on research first presented at ICAANE and building on the most recent data from surveys and excavations this volume engages with one key question from different angles: namely how can we reconcile detailed analysis of the multifaceted local variations of proto-urbanism with the supra-regional intricate and more widespread nature of this same phenomenon across Mesopotamia?
The Ingholt Archive
The Palmyrene Material, Transcribed with Commentary and Bibliography
For a period of over 50 years from his first visit to Palmyra in the 1920s until the late 1970s Danish archaeologist Harald Ingholt carefully collected and curated a detailed archive of Palmyrene sculpture architecture and epigraphy. Containing approximately 2000 images each archive sheet contains handwritten annotations on Palmyrene funerary art transcribes and translates inscriptions includes detailed observations on object style and dating and provides bibliographical information for each sculpture. As such this archive is a treasure trove of information on Palmyrene sculpture architecture and epigraphy. Moreover Ingholt’s notes go beyond shedding light on the creation of these sculptures and also provide rich information about their more recent histories: object biographies offer details on provenance collection history and excavation photography. In doing so they offer unique insights into twentieth-century excavation conservation and collection practices. Since 1983 Ingholt’s archive has been housed at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen Denmark and then from 2012 onwards the archive took digital shape within the framework of the Palmyra Portrait Project at Aarhus University. Now available in print for the first time the Ingholt Archive is here presented in its entirety as a lavishly illustrated four-volume set. The authors have transcribed and commented upon each sheet in the archive provided new translations of the inscriptions that accompany the sculptures and compiled an updated bibliography for each item. This unique set is published together with a detailed introduction thirteen concordances and a bibliography making it an invaluable resource for researchers in the field.
The Historical and Cultural Memory of the Babylonian World
Collecting Fragments from the 'Centre of the World'
In the study of the ancient world Babylon can be considered as the most impressive representation historically archaeologically and in literature of urbanism in the Near East. This first example of an urban centre and its cultural heritage - both tangible and intangible - provides a focal point for discussions of historical and cultural memory in the region. The eleven contributions gathered here draw together multidisciplinary research into Babylonian culture exploring the epistemic foundations contacts resilience and cultural transmission of the city and its milieu from ancient times up until the modern day. Through this approach this volume is able to support conversations concerning the historical and cultural memory of Babylon and promote a dialogue that cuts across and unites both cultures and academic disciplines.
L’architecture de Mésopotamie et du Caucase de la fin du 7e à la fin du 5e millénaire
Cet ouvrage invite à retracer l’histoire des relations culturelles entre les communautés de Mésopotamie et du Caucase durant le Néolithique et le Chalcolithique par une étude des mécanismes d’innovation et de transmission des connaissances en architecture. Le premier objectif est de caractériser ces échanges techniques pour déterminer si les communautés du Caucase se sont installées de manière autonome ou si elles ont profité de l’expérience de celles de Mésopotamie. Le second objectif est de comprendre l’évolution de l’architecture "complexe" au Samarra et à l’Obeid et de mesurer l’impact social de l’expansion obeidienne. Ces recherches montrent que le milieu du sixième millénaire marque un tournant dans les échanges techniques et les relations culturelles entre ces deux régions. Auparavant ces échanges apparaissent diffus dans les régions situées au nord de la Mésopotamie centrale. Ensuite l’expansion obeidienne entraîne une homogénéisation progressive des techniques dans l’ensemble du bassin syro-mésopotamien à laquelle se sont greffés emprunts techniques et adaptations régionales.
Befund und Historisierung
Dokumentation und ihre Interpretationsspielräume
Archaeological periodization schemes of material culture development in Northern Mesopotamia from 7th to 5th centuries bce traditionally refer to the sequence of dynasties. In particular they highlight historical events related to distinguished members of the royal houses of the Sargonids Urartians Medes Teispids and Achaemenids. However whereas the repercussions these Iron Age empires had on the history of the Near East are undeniable the impact they had on the material culture and its development is not always equally tangible in the archaeological findings. The latter are not infrequently characterized by continuity rather than by incisive changes as recent studies and re-evaluations of key sites in Syria Iraq Iran and Armenia show. This publication uses case studies to address problems that arises when the archaeological (relative concept) and historical (absolute concept) methodology use different intrinsic values of time to reconstruct history and to understand cultural material development.
Lagash I — The Ceramic Corpus from al-Hiba, 1968–1990
A Chrono-Typology of the Pottery Tradition in Southern Mesopotamia during the Third and Early Second Millennium bce
Between 1968 and 1990 Donald P. Hansen and Vaughn E. Crawford directed six seasons of excavations at al-Hiba the ancient Sumerian city-state Lagash. Overseen by Edward L. Ochsenschlager the team documented one of the largest ceramic datasets from a southern Mesopotamian site spanning the entire third and the early second millennium bce. With the availability of digital tools and relational database technology the Al-Hiba Publication Project led by Holly Pittman at the Penn Museum can now analyze these results in preparation of final publication. As a case-study in the difficulties of working with legacy data the publication project also assesses how the original recording methodology structures and limits the interpretation of these datasets. This first volume of the Lagash publications presents the ceramic corpus organized in a chrono-typology that traces the development of the pottery tradition through the Early Dynastic Akkadian Ur III and Isin-Larsa periods. Often confirming well-established trends in general Mesopotamian ceramic development this dataset from the south-eastern part of the Mesopotamian alluvium also introduces an underappreciated degree of regional variation.
Interdisciplinary Research on the Bronze Age Diyala
Proceedings of the Conference Held at the Paris Institute for Advanced Study, 25–26 June, 2018
The Diyala region in eastern Iraq has long been a focal area of study for scholars of the Bronze Age thanks both to its long history of human occupation and its position as a site of strategic importance. Drawing on this strong tradition of scholarship and the results of numerous excavations and collections in the area the seven contributions gathered in this volume aim to offer new insights into the cultures and societies of the Bronze Age Diyala by proposing new questions problems and approaches. Exploring subjects as widespread as architecture and iconography cultural and economic history the study of social networks historiography and the identification of ancient cities these chapters explore the richness of the Bronze Age Diyala from a range of perspectives and together offer important new insights into our understanding of the area.
De la crise naquirent les cultes
Approches croisées de la religion, de la philosophie et des représentations antiques
Dans le présent volume le lecteur prendra connaissance des contributions présentées à l’occasion d’un colloque international organisé à l’Université catholique de Louvain les 12 et 13 juin 2014 par le Centre d’étude des Mondes Antiques en collaboration avec le Centre d’Histoire des Religions Cardinal Julien Ries et les Actions de Recherche Concertées « A World in Crisis? ». Le thème se focalisait sur la corrélation des notions de « culte » et de « crise » dont les acceptions particulières se trouvent sensiblement modifiées et enrichies par leur mise en rapport. Le concept supérieur ainsi formé peut lui-même être mis en relation avec l’expression anglo-saxonne « Crisis Cults » originellement un des produits de la recherche ethno-anthropologique américaine des années 1970. Les contributeurs ont ainsi été invités à réfléchir sur la différence qu’ils pourraient éventuellement identifier en se basant sur leur propre domaine de spécialisation entre des cultes subissant une crise (ce que représente l’expression française « cultes en crise ») et des cultes issus d’une crise autrement dit des cultes qui sont une réponse à une situation de crise (ce que traduit l’expression anglaise « Crisis Cults »).
Par son sujet même ce volume se veut interdisciplinaire et subséquemment transversal aux thématiques abordées. Dans ces pages en effet ont été rassemblées les interventions de spécialistes provenant des domaines de l’archéologie de la numismatique de la philologie de l’histoire et de la philosophie autant de contributions portant sur des sujets aussi variés que le monde minoen l’Égypte ancienne les institutions de la Grèce classique les civilisations anatoliennes la philosophie platonicienne la Rome aussi bien républicaine qu’impériale et l’époque tardo-antique.
Finalement ce livre non seulement constitue une avancée de la recherche dans différentes disciplines mais ouvre aussi la voie à une étude phénoménologique et transversale des notions de « crise » et de « culte » et a ainsi posé quelques jalons en vue d’études ultérieures sur un sujet qui est loin d’être épuisé.
Writing Down the Myths
What are myths? Are there ‘correct’ and ‘incorrect’ versions? And where do they come from? These and many other related questions are addressed in Writing Down the Myths a collection of critical studies of the contents of some of the most famous mythographic works from ancient classical medieval and modern times and of the methods motivations and ideological implications underlying these literary records of myth.
While there are many works on myth and mythology and on the study of this genre of traditional narrative there is little scholarship to date on the venerable activity of actually writing down the myths (mythography) attested throughout history from the cultures of the ancient Middle East and the Mediterranean to those of the modern world. By assembling studies of the major literary traditions and texts through a variety of critical approaches this collection poses - and seeks to answer - key questions such as these: how do the composers of mythographic texts choose their material and present them; what are the diverse reasons for preserving stories of mythological import and creating these mythographic vessels; how do the agenda and criteria of pre-modern writers still affect our popular and scholarly understanding of myth; and do mythographic texts (in which myths are so to speak captured by being written down) signal the rebirth or the death of mythology?