Power and Identity at the Margins of the Ancient Near East

Power and Identity at the Margins of the Ancient Near East PDF Author: Sara Mohr
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
ISBN: 1646423585
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 220

Book Description
Power and Identity at the Margins of the Ancient Near East rethinks the dichotomy between antiquated terms such as “core” and “periphery,” explores lived realities in the margins of central authority, and centers those margins as places of resistance and power in their own right. The borderlands of hegemonic entities within the Near East and Egypt pressed against each other, creating cities and societies with influence from several competing polities. The peoples, cities, and cultures that resulted present a unique lens by which to examine how states controlled and influenced the lives, political systems, and social hierarchies of these subjects (and vice versa). This volume addresses the distinct traditions and experiences of areas beyond the core; terminology used when discussing empire, core, periphery, borderlands, and frontiers; conceptualization of space; practices and consequences of warfare, captive-taking, and slavery; identity- and secondary state–formation; economy and society; ritual; diplomacy; and the negotiation of claims to power. It is imperative that historians and social scientists understand the ways in which these cultures developed, spread, and interacted with others along frontier edges. Using an intersectional approach across disciplines, Power and Identity at the Margins of the Ancient Near East brings together professionals from archaeology, religious studies, history, sociology, and anthropology to make new contributions to the study of the frontier. Contributors: Alexander Ahrens, Peter Dubovský, Avraham Faust, Daniel E. Fleming, Mahri Leonard-Fleckman, Alvise Matessi, Ellen Morris, Valeria Turriziani, Eric M. Trinka

Understanding Power in Ancient Egypt and the Near East, Volume 1

Understanding Power in Ancient Egypt and the Near East, Volume 1 PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004712488
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 298

Book Description
This volume offers new theoretical approaches to the study of concepts and manifestations of power in the ancient world. Bringing together scholars from Egyptology and ancient Near Eastern studies, this volume aims to synchronize our understanding of the complex mechanics of Power across our fields. Broad in theoretical, geographical, and temporal scope, it presents theoretical models in an approachable manner, showcasing ways in which they can be employed by all scholars of the ancient world.

Displays of Cultural Hegemony and Counter-Hegemony in the Late Bronze and Iron Age Levant

Displays of Cultural Hegemony and Counter-Hegemony in the Late Bronze and Iron Age Levant PDF Author: Shane M. Thompson
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000846261
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 271

Book Description
This volume examines the power relationships between the rulers of the Late Bronze and Iron Age and their subjects in the Levant through the lens of "cultural hegemony." It explores the impact of these foreign powers on all social classes and reconstructs the public presence of cultural control. The book serves to determine the impact of foreign control on the daily lives of those living in the ancient Levant and offers a means by which to attempt to discuss non-elites in the ancient Near East. It examines expressions of foreign ideology within public performance such as religious expressions and in public places, observable by all social classes, which assert control or dominance over local identity markers. In utilizing textual, epigraphic, and archaeological records, it paints a more complete picture of Levantine society during this time while also drawing upon evidence from neighbouring Anatolia, Egypt, and Mesopotamia. This is a fascinating resource for students and scholars of the ancient Near East, particularly the Levant but also Anatolia, Egypt, and Mesopotamia in the Late Bronze and Iron Age periods. It is also useful for scholars working on power and imperialism across history.

Cultures of Mobility, Migration, and Religion in Ancient Israel and Its World

Cultures of Mobility, Migration, and Religion in Ancient Israel and Its World PDF Author: Eric M. Trinka
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000544087
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 306

Book Description
This book examines the relationship between mobility, lived religiosities, and conceptions of divine personhood as they are preserved in textual corpora and material culture from Israel, Judah, Egypt, and Mesopotamia. By integrating evidence of the form and function of religiosities in contexts of mobility and migration, this volume reconstructs mobility-informed aspects of civic and household religiosities in Israel and its world. Readers will find a robust theoretical framework for studying cultures of mobility and religiosities in the ancient past, as well as a fresh understanding of the scope and texture of mobility-informed religious identities that composed broader Yahwistic religious heritage. Cultures of Mobility, Migration, and Religion in Ancient Israel and Its World will be of use to both specialists and informed readers interested in the history of mobilities and migrations in the ancient Near East, as well as those interested in the development of Yahwism in its biblical and extra-biblical forms.

Contacts of Languages and Peoples in the Hittite and Post-Hittite World

Contacts of Languages and Peoples in the Hittite and Post-Hittite World PDF Author: Federico Giusfredi
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004548637
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 540

Book Description
Ever since the early 2nd millennium BCE, Pre-Classical Anatolia has been a crossroads of languages and peoples. Indo-European peoples – Hittites, Luwians, Palaeans – and non-Indo-European ones – Hattians, but also Assyrians and Hurrians – coexisted with each other for extended periods of time during the Bronze Age, a cohabitation that left important traces in the languages they spoke and in the texts they wrote. By combining, in an interdisciplinary fashion, the complementary approaches of linguistics, history, and philology, this book offers a comprehensive, state-of-the-art study of linguistic and cultural contacts in a region that is often described as the bridge between the East and the West. With contributions by Paola Cotticelli-Kurras, Alfredo Rizza, Maurizio Viano, and Ilya Yakubovich.

Ancient Southeast Mesoamerica

Ancient Southeast Mesoamerica PDF Author: Patricia A. Urban
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316800083
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 409

Book Description
Ancient Southeast Mesoamerica explores the distinctive development and political history of the region from its earliest inhabitants up to the Spanish conquest. It demonstrates how inhabitants from different locales were organized within a matrix of social networks, and how they mobilized the assets that they needed to achieve their own goals.

A Historical-Materialist Reading of Genesis 1-4

A Historical-Materialist Reading of Genesis 1-4 PDF Author: Ron Naiweld
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040260616
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 190

Book Description
This book offers a historical-materialist reading of the opening chapters of the book of Genesis in an attempt to revive their potential to engage people in truthful discussions about power and pleasure. For the past two millennia, biblical stories have been told and discussed in countless settings; whether one lives in Europe or in a country that was colonized by Europeans, the biblical symbolic universe remains present. This book offers a method to explore the social and political meanings of its most theological content by visiting two historical settings in which biblical modes of expression intersected with the demands of an economic-political process: Jerusalem and its province during the Persian period (5th–4th centuries bce) and Brazil of the early colonial period (16th century ce). Though distant in time and space, both were moments of comparable transformation: individuals with financial resources and military power arrived from the East to seize control over lands and means of production, subjugating the population to a distant king. By turning to these two historical settings, Ron Naiweld examines how the narratives of Genesis resonated in these environments, how they were used to legitimize imperial power structures, and how they opened these structures to scrutiny. The volume is part of a larger trend of reading the Bible with a historical-materialist approach that allows us to grasp the power of its symbolic universe to inspire both utopia and barbarism, especially in colonial contexts. This book is suitable for students and scholars interested in the biblical symbolic universe and Jewish and Christian history. It is also of interest to those working on the history of Brazil, comparative literature, and the intersection of religion, economy, and politics.

God and Gods in the Deuteronomistic History

God and Gods in the Deuteronomistic History PDF Author: Corrine Carvalho
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1666787604
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 305

Book Description
Like other constructs in biblical studies, the Deuteronomistic History has come under scrutiny in the 21st century. The books beginning with Joshua and concluding with 2 Kings were thought to be, at their core, a unified explication of Israel's demise in Deuteronomistic terms of sin and its consequences. Current scholarship views these books as more disparate and influenced by a number of different texts, not limited to Deuteronomy. God and Gods in Deuteronomistic History exemplifies the latest research on these Hebrew Scriptures. Each study focuses on the question of how God is disclosed in Israel's history. Contributors look at the topic in a single book to bring forth the richness and variety of the Deity's descriptions. The results show an array of understandings about the divine figure Yhwh, whose titles also include El, El the Living, and Yhwh God in heaven, to name but a few. A strength of this volume is the meticulous analysis of Mesopotamian and West Semitic sources, expressed both textually and in material culture. The biblical writers adopted and adapted these ancient Near Eastern sources to create various pictures of God in the Deuteronomistic History, at times mirroring the deities of the so-called idolatrous religions. This book brings forth portrayals of Israel's God as well as other regional deities in their contguity and complexity, across the Deuteronomistic History.

Imperial Peripheries in the Neo-Assyrian Period

Imperial Peripheries in the Neo-Assyrian Period PDF Author: Craig W. Tyson
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
ISBN: 1607328224
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Book Description
Though the Neo-Assyrian Empire has largely been conceived of as the main actor in relations between its core and periphery, recent work on the empire’s peripheries has encouraged archaeologists and historians to consider dynamic models of interaction between Assyria and the polities surrounding it. Imperial Peripheries in the Neo-Assyrian Period focuses on the variability of imperial strategies and local responses to Assyrian power across time and space. An international team of archaeologists and historians draws upon both new and existing evidence from excavations, surveys, texts, and material culture to highlight the strategies that the Neo-Assyrian Empire applied to manage its diverse and widespread empire as well as the mixed reception of those strategies by subjects close to and far from the center. Case studies from around the ancient Near East illustrate a remarkable variety of responses to Assyrian aggression, economic policies, and cultural influences. As a whole, the volume demonstrates both the destructive and constructive roles of empire, including unintended effects of imperialism on socioeconomic and cultural change. Imperial Peripheries in the Neo-Assyrian Period aligns with the recent movement in imperial studies to replace global, top-down materialist models with theories of contingency, local agency, and bottom-up processes. Such approaches bring to the foreground the reality that the development and lifecycles of empires in general, and the Neo-Assyrian Empire in particular, cannot be completely explained by the activities of the core. The book will be welcomed by archaeologists of the Ancient Near East, Assyriologists, and scholars concerned with empires and imperial power in history. Contributors: Stephanie H. Brown, Anna Cannavò, Megan Cifarelli, Erin Darby, Bleda S. Düring, Avraham Faust, Guido Guarducci, Bradley J. Parker

Why Those Who Shovel Are Silent

Why Those Who Shovel Are Silent PDF Author: Allison Mickel
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
ISBN: 1646421159
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 218

Book Description
For more than 200 years, archaeological sites in the Middle East have been dug, sifted, sorted, and saved by local community members who, in turn, developed immense expertise in excavation and interpretation and had unparalleled insight into the research process and findings—but who have almost never participated in strategies for recording the excavation procedures or results. Their particular perspectives have therefore been missing from the archaeological record, creating an immense gap in knowledge about the ancient past and about how archaeological knowledge is created. Why Those Who Shovel Are Silent is based on six years of in-depth ethnographic work with current and former site workers at two major Middle Eastern archaeological sites—Petra, Jordan, and Çatalhöyük, Turkey—combined with thorough archival research. Author Allison Mickel describes the nature of the knowledge that locally hired archaeological laborers exclusively possess about artifacts, excavation methods, and archaeological interpretation, showing that archaeological workers are experts about a wide range of topics in archaeology. At the same time, Mickel reveals a financial incentive for site workers to pretend to be less knowledgeable than they actually are, as they risk losing their jobs or demotion if they reveal their expertise. Despite a recent proliferation of critical research examining the history and politics of archaeology, the topic of archaeological labor has not yet been substantially examined. Why Those Who Shovel Are Silent employs a range of advanced qualitative, quantitative, and visual approaches and offers recommendations for archaeologists to include more diverse expert perspectives and produce more nuanced knowledge about the past. It will appeal to archaeologists, science studies scholars, and anyone interested in challenging the concept of “unskilled” labor.