Social History (up to c. 500)

Thanks largely to the introduction of new methods of recovery and analysis archaeology is increasingly treated as a science. Yet it should continue to ask questions that are founded in the humanities. This is especially true of social archaeology which forms the core of this volume. Being based on the notion that ‘the social’ permeates all areas of life the chapters gathered here give priority to archaeological data and contexts which in turn form the prerequisite for analyzing how at particular times and places people negotiated or reaffirmed the society around them. Case studies from the Levant and the Eastern Mediterranean sit alongside selected comparative cases from other parts of the world and assess issues such as the development of cultural characteristics of societies societal continuity and collapse religious beliefs and rituals and the role of social memory as well as interactions within and between societies. The volume is dedicated to the memory of our colleague and friend Dr. Sharon Zuckerman who embraced the quest for ‘the social’ throughout her career.

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a theoretical approach emphasizing personal motivation and multiple scales of analysis this book organizes previously unpublished data from six sites in the region Arslantepe Ta kun Mevkii Pulur Nor untepe Tepecik and Korucutepe dating to this dramatic and transformative period.

The site of Lori Berd located in northern Armenia is home to an extraordinary necropolis that once housed the dead of the local elite during a period that spanned from 2200 to 400 BC. Influenced both by Urartian conquests from the south and by invasions from the Eurasian nomadic tribes from the north the people of this region buried their dead with prestigious artefacts complex customs and a particular reverence shown during the later stages of the Early and Middle Iron Ages (1000–550 BC). This volume offers a detailed account of the archaeological significance of the site providing detailed accounts of thirty-one tombs the majority of which have never before been comprehensively published and seeking to set Lori Berd in its broader historical and material context. Through this approach the book offers a comprehensive exploration of the Iron Age in the South Caucasus unravelling the interconnected themes of wealth power and cultural expressions.

The roles played by women in history and even the very idea of what it is to be female have always been in flux changing over centuries between cultures and in response to diverse social and economic parameters. Even today women’s roles and women’s rights continue to face changes and pressures. In establishing the series Women of the Past: Testimonies from Archaeology and History the ambition is to build on the profound theoretical and empirical developments that have taken place over the last fifty years of gender-focused research and to explore them in a contemporary context.

The aim of this series is to shed light on not just the outstanding and extraordinary women who were trendsetters of their time but also the not quite so outstanding women often overshadowed by outstanding men and the ordinary women those who simply went about their everyday life and kept their world turning in their own quiet way. This edited volume Women of the Past Issues for the Present is the inaugural volume of the series and shows the wide span of the series chronologically geographically and socially in terms of the research presented. From Roman slaves to Viking women and from medieval wet-nurses to the nineteenth-century wives who supported their archaeologist husbands on excavation this groundbreaking volume opens a new vista in our understanding of the past.

Le présent ouvrage porte sur la première martyre de la littérature monothéiste c’est-à-dire la mère anonyme du 7ème chapitre du 2ème livre des Maccabées (2 M). L’exégèse qui y est faite démontre grâce à une critique structurelle et des analyses narratologique comparative et philologique que ce personnage est central autant dans le texte deutérocanonique que pour la martyrologie bien qu’il soit généralement éclipsé dans la littérature savante. Or la particulière virilité des femmes martyres d’hier et d’aujourd’hui s’y inscrit en primeur au verset 7 21 et la nouvelle traduction proposée par l'auteure bouscule les idées reçues. En effet les habituels « sentiments féminins » deviennent « une pensée féminine » et le « mâle courage » fait place à « une colère virile ou humaine » selon que l’épithète est comparée au féminin dans le parallélisme croisé du verset ou mise en parallèle avec les colères inhumaines de certains personnages masculins du livre dont le roi Antiochos IV Épiphane et les guerriers judéens. D’ailleurs les analyses comparées des éléments identitaires de la martyre avec ceux du roi séleucide permettent de constater que son trouble dans le genre s’observe sur divers plans et contribue indéniablement à son unicité. C’est sans compter que les discours de la mère représentent la plus importante innovation du livre et ce tant sur le plan anthropologique que théologique. En somme l’ouvrage montre que la mère de 2 M 7 est belle et bien « éminemment admirable et digne de bonne mémoire » (2 M 7 21).

This innovative volume of cultural history offers a unique exploration of how gender and status competition have intersected across different periods and places. The contributions collected here focus on the role of women and the practice of masculinity in settings as varied as ancient Rome China Iran and Arabia medieval and early modern England and early modern Italy France and Scandinavia as well as exploring issues that affected people of all social rank from raillery and pranks to shaming male boasting about sexual conquests court rituals violence and the use and display of wealth. Particular attention is paid to the performance of such issues with chapters examining status and gender through cultural practices especially specific (re)presentations of women. These include Roman priestesses early Christian virgin martyrs flirtation in seventh-century Arabia and the attempt by an early modern French woman to take her place among the immortals. Together this wide-ranging and fascinating array of studies from renowned scholars offers new insights into how and why different cultures responded to the drive for status and the complications of gender within that drive.

Throughout a distinguished career Raymond Van Dam has contributed significantly to our understanding of Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages with ground-breaking studies on Gaul Cappadocia and the emperor Constantine. The hallmarks of his scholarship are critical study of a wide variety of written and material sources and careful historical analysis insightfully rooted in sociological and anthropological methodologies. The essays in this volume written by Van Dam’s former students colleagues and friends explore the dynamics between leaders and their communities in the fourth through seventh centuries. During this period people negotiated profound religious intellectual and cultural change while still deeply enmeshed in the legacy of the Roman Empire. The memory of the classical past was a powerful and compelling social and political force for the denizens of Late Antiquity even as their physical surroundings came to resemble less and less the ideals of the Greco-Roman city. These themes - leadership community and memory - have been central to Van Dam’s work and the contributors to this volume build on the legacy of his scholarship. Their papers examine how leaders exercised their authority in their communities at times exhibiting continuity with ancient patterns of leadership but in other cases shifting toward new paradigms characteristic of a post-classical world. Taken together the essays produce a fuller picture of the Mediterranean world and add further nuance to our understanding of Late Antiquity and early Middle Ages as a time of both continuity and transformation.

This work explores a second-century text the Protevangelium Iacobi and by examining current scholarship on the subject assesses the way it has influenced the Christian perception of women and the ordering of their lives through the centuries down to the present day. It demonstrates how Mary as she is presented in this text with extreme and unreal emphasis on her purity has been held up as an unattainable model for all Christian women and takes as a case study the lives of contemplative women in the Roman Catholic church showing how the image of Mary impossibly secluded in the temple has been partly responsible for their enclosure. By exploring the way female biological processes have been allowed to intrude on the sacred tracing this influence from the Old Testament through this text and its connection with Mary to the present day it argues that this has been a significant factor in the denial of presbyteral ordination to women in some Christian churches. One of the original features of this work is the tracing of art work depicting scenes from the text across the Christian world thus demonstrating the breadth of its influence right down to New Age writings today.

The Bronze Age in Northern Europe was a place of diversity and contrast an era that saw movements and changes not just of peoples but of cultures beliefs and socio-political systems and that led to the forging of ontological ideas materialized in landscapes bodies and technologies. Drawing on a range of materials and places the innovative contributions gathered here in this volume explore the disparate facets of Bronze Age society across the Nordic region through the key themes of time and trajectory rituals and everyday life and encounters and identities. The contributions explore how and why society evolved over time from the changing nature of sea travel to new technologies in house building and from advances in lithic production to evolving burial practices and beliefs in the afterlife. This edited collection honours the ground-breaking research of Professor Christopher Prescott an outstanding figure in the study of the Bronze Age north and it takes as its inspiration the diversity interdisciplinarity and vitality of his own research in order to make a major new contribution to the field and to shed new light on a Bronze Age full of contrasts and connections.