Proceedings Of The 4th International Congress Of The Archaeology Of The Ancient Near East 29 March 3 April 2004 Freie Universitat Berlin The Reconstruction Of Environment Natural Resources And Human Interrelations Through Time Art History Visual Communication

The Congress hosted 611 registered participants from 38 countries. Its aim was to be an international forum for scholars and demands of Near Eastern Archaeology. From the four sections of the Congress, Vol. I: 1) The Reconstruction of Environment. Natural Resources and Human Interrelation through Time, 2) Visual Communication, [Vol. II: 3) Social and Cultural Transformation: The Archaeology of Transitional Periods and Dark Ages, 4) Archaeological Field Reports (Excavations, Surveys, Conservation) ISBN 978344705757-8].Together these volumes unite 77 contributions on about 1100 pages. They are arranged according to the sections. The rst three will be introduced by the key lectures which were given by Tony Wilkinson, Winfried Orthmann, and Roger Matthews. The resumes of these sections were provided by Wendy Matthews, Dominik Bonatz, and Diederik J.W. Meijer. The contributions cover many aspects of the main themes through time, from the Neolithic to the Hellenistic / Roman period, and offer interdisciplinary approaches to complex archaeological problems.

The Congress hosted 611 registered participants from 38 countries. Its aim was to be an international forum for scholars and demands of Near Eastern Archaeology. From the four sections of the Congress, [Vol. I: 1) The Reconstruction of Environment. Natural Resources and Human Interrelation through Time, 2) Visual Communication ISBN 978-3-447-05703-5], Vol. II: 3) Social and Cultural Transformation: The Archaeology of Transitional Periods and Dark Ages, 4) Archaeological Field Reports (Excavations, Surveys, Conservation) Together these volumes unite 77 contributions on about 1100 pages. They are arranged according to the sections. The rst three will be introduced by the key lectures which were given by Tony Wilkinson, Winfried Orthmann, and Roger Matthews. The resumes of these sections were provided by Wendy Matthews, Dominik Bonatz, and Diederik J.W. Meijer. The contributions cover many aspects of the main themes through time, from the Neolithic to the Hellenistic / Roman period, and offer interdisciplinary approaches to complex archaeological problems.

In July, 2009, the International Association for Assyriology met in Paris, France, for 5 days to deliver and listen to papers on the theme “La famille dans le Proche-Orient.” This volume, the proceedings of the conference, contains 53 of the papers read at the 55th annual Rencontre, including primarily papers directly connected with the theme and some on areas of related interest. The papers covered every period of Mesopotamian history, from the third millennium through the end of the first millennium B.C.E. The photo on the back cover shows only a representative portion of the attendees, who were warmly hosted by faculty and students from the Collège de France.

This volume contains 4 papers focusing on terracotta figurines of the ancient Near East that were delivered at one of three sessions of the Annual Meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research in 2009, 2010, and 2011.

This book is the first comprehensive study of debts and credit system at Emar. It focuses on the socio-economic aspects of credit access and indebtedness as well as on the motivations behind debts and debt settlement in the city of Emar. The credit system is analyzed through several factors: the purpose of debts, i.e., productive or consumptive; the procedures for granting loans; the strategies put in place to meet an obligation and to cope with economic difficulties; the consequences of non-fulfillment, which may lead to servitude or slavery; the different types of slavery; slave prices; the mechanisms of enslavement; and termination of slavery. Moneylending practices and the formation of servile conditions at Emar are studied in the context of the Syrian economy aiming to understand whether the Emar evidence conforms with a socio political and economic crisis that is generally acknowledged to have struck Syria, Anatolia and Northern Mesopotamia at the end of the Late Bronze Age. This work is of sure relevance for scholars interested in socio-economic history, not only of the pertinent historical-geographical area.

An up-to-date analysis of the history of the ancient Near East and the Arameans K. Lawson Younger Jr. presents a political history of the Arameans from their earliest origins to the demise of their independent entities. The book investigates their tribal structures, the development of their polities, and their interactions with other groups in the ancient Near East. Younger utilizes all of the available sources to develop a comprehensive picture of this complex, yet highly important, people whose influence and presence spanned the Fertile Cresent. Features: The best, recent understanding of tribal political structures, aspects of mobile pastoralism, and models of migration A regional rather than a monolithic approach to the rise of Aramean polities Thorough integration of the complex relationships and interactions of the Arameans with the Luwians, the Assyrians, the Israelites, and others

Minoan Crete is rightly famous for its idiosyncratic architecture, as well as its palaces and towns such as Knossos, Malia, Gournia, and Palaikastro. Indeed, these are often described as the first urban settlements of Bronze Age Europe. However, we still know relatively little about the dynamics of these early urban centres. How did they work? What role did the palaces have in their towns, and the towns in their landscapes? It might seem that with such richly documented architectural remains these questions would have been answered long ago. Yet, analysis has mostly found itself confined to building materials and techniques, basic formal descriptions, and functional evaluations. Critical evaluation of these data as constituting a dynamic built environment has thus been slow in coming. This volume aims to provide a first step in this direction. It brings together international scholars whose research focuses on Minoan architecture and urbanism as well as on theory and methods in spatial analyses. By combining methodological contributions with detailed case studies across the different scales of buildings, settlements and regions, the volume proposes a new analytical and interpretive framework for addressing the complex dynamics of the Minoan built environment.

A synthetic reconstruction of women’s religious engagement and experiences in preexilic Israel “This monumental book examines a wealth of data from the Bible, archaeology, and ancient Near Eastern texts and iconography to provide a clear, comprehensive, and compelling analysis of women’s religious lives in preexilic times.”—Carol Meyers, Duke University Throughout the biblical narrative, ancient Israelite religious life is dominated by male actors. When women appear, they are often seen only on the periphery: as tangential, accidental, or passive participants. However, despite their absence from the written record, they were often deeply involved in religious practice and ritual observance. In this new volume, Susan Ackerman presents a comprehensive account of ancient Israelite women’s religious lives and experiences. She examines the various sites of their practice, including household shrines, regional sanctuaries, and national temples; the calendar of religious rituals that women observed on a weekly, monthly, and yearly basis; and their special roles in religious settings. Drawing on texts, archaeology, and material culture, and documenting the distinctions between Israelite women’s experiences and those of their male counterparts, Ackerman reconstructs an essential picture of women’s lived religion in ancient Israelite culture.

The ancient historians considered the Assyrian empire the crucial starting point of a new political system which was adopted by later empires. In modern historical research, this problem still needs to be investigated in a global perspective that studies the development of the imperial model through ages. Abundant epigraphical and archaeological sources can be used in investigating the expansionistic tacticts, the control structures, and the administrative procedures implemented by the Assyrians through a continuous effort of adaptation to evolving situations and changing needs. The book provides an updated outline of the history of the Assyrian empire and its neighbours, a detailed analysis of the technical and ideological aspects of the construction of the Assyrian empire, and of its long-lasting legacy in the Near East and in the West. For its broad theoretical framework, which includes the reference to studies of ancient and modern empires and imperialism, the book is intended not only for the specialists of Ancient Near Eastern history, but also for a wider public of Classical and Medieval historians and of historians interested in world and global history.

These case studies offer new approaches to the analysis and interpretation of symbols in a variety of media and as expressed on a range of objects at different scales. This third volume in the Material Religion in Antiquity series stems from the First International Congress on the Archaeology of Symbols (ICAS I) that took place in Florence in May 2022. The archaeological process of reconstructing and understanding our past has undergone several reassessments in the last century, producing an equal number of new perspectives and approaches. The recent materiality turn emphasizes the necessity to ground those achievements in order to build fresh avenues of interpretation and reach new boundaries in the study of the human kind and its ecology. Symbols must not be conceived only as allegory but also, and perhaps mainly, as reason (raison d’être) and meaning (culture). They may be considered key elements leading to interpretation, not only in their physical manifestation but by being infused with the gestures, beliefs and intentions of their creators, created in a specific context and with a specific chaîne opératoire. In this volume a variety of case studies is offered, representing disparate ancient cultures in the Mediterranean and central Europe and the Near East. The thread that connects them revolves around the prominence of symbols and allegorical aspects in archaeology, whether they are considered as expressions of iconographic evidence, material culture or ritual ceremonies, seen from a multicultural perspective. This (and subsequent ICAS) volumes, therefore, aims to embrace all the different aspects pertaining to symbols in archaeology in a specific ‘place’, allowing the reader to deepen their knowledge of such a fascinating and multifaceted topic, by looking at it from a multicultural perspective.