The Making Of Empire In Bronze Age Anatolia

This book reconsiders the concept of empire and examines the processes of imperial making and undoing in Hittite Anatolia (c. 1600-1180 BCE).

"In this book, Claudia Glatz reconsiders the concept of empire and the processes of imperial making and undoing of the Hittite network in Late Bronze age Anatolia. Using an array of archaeological, iconographic, and textual sources, she offers a fresh account of one of the earliest, well-attested imperialist polities of the ancient Near East. Glatz critically examines the complexity and ever - transforming nature of imperial relationships, and the practices through which Hittite elites and administrators aimed to bind disparate communities and achieve a measure of sovereignty in particular places and landscapes. She also tracks the ambiguities inherent in these practices -- what they did or did not achieve, how they were resisted, and how they were subtly negotiated in different regional and cultural contexts"--

In this book, Claudia Glatz reconsiders the concept of empire and the processes of imperial making and undoing of the Hittite network in Late Bronze Age Anatolia. Using an array of archaeological, iconographic, and textual sources, she offers a fresh account of one of the earliest, well-attested imperialist polities of the ancient Near East. Glatz critically examines the complexity and ever - transforming nature of imperial relationships, and the practices through which Hittite elites and administrators aimed to bind disparate communities and achieve a measure of sovereignty in particular places and landscapes. She also tracks the ambiguities inherent in these practices -- what they did or did not achieve, how they were resisted, and how they were subtly negotiated in different regional and cultural contexts.

Bringing together expert voices and key case studies from well-known and newly excavated sites, this book calls attention to the importance of western Anatolia as a legitimate, local context in its own right. The study of Early Bronze Age cultures in Europe and the Mediterranean has been shaped by a focus on the Levant, Europe, and Mesopotamia. Geographically, western Anatolia lies in between these regions, yet it is often overlooked because it doesn't fit neatly into existing explanatory models of Bronze Age cultural development and decline. Instead, the tendency has been to describe western Anatolia as a bridge between east and west, a place where ideas are transmitted and cultural encounters among different groups occur. This narrative has foregrounded discussions of outside innovations in the prehistory of the region while diminishing the role of local, endogenous developments and individual agency. The contributors to this book offer a counternarrative, ascribing a local impetus for change rather than a metanarrative of cultural diffusion. In doing so, they offer fresh observations about the chronology and delineation of regional cultural groups in western Anatolia; the architecture, settlement, and sociopolitical organization of the Early Bronze Age; and the local characteristics of material culture assemblages. Offering multiple authoritative studies on the archaeology of western Anatolia, this book is an essential resource for area research in western Anatolia, a key reference for comparative studies, and essential reading for college courses in the archaeology and anthropology of sociopolitical complexity, European and Mediterranean prehistory, and ancient Anatolia.

A diachronic, yet nuanced study of Amorite identity from Mesopotamia to Egypt over a millennium of Bronze Age history.

The ancient Anatolian city of Kanesh (present-day Kültepe, Turkey) was a continuously inhabited site from the early Bronze Age through Roman times. The city flourished c.2000–1750 BCE as an Old Assyrian trade outpost and the earliest attested commercial society in world history. More than 23,000 elaborate clay tablets from private merchant houses provide a detailed description of a system of long-distance trade that reached from central Asia to the Black Sea region and the Aegean. The texts record common activities such as trade between Kanesh and the city state of Assur, and between Assyrian merchants and local people. The tablets tell us about the economy as well as the culture, language, religion, and private lives of individuals we can identify by name, occupation, and sometimes even personality. This book presents an in-depth account of this vibrant Bronze Age Anatolian society, revealing the daily lives of its inhabitants.

The first comprehensive overview of the development of literacy, script usage, and literature in Hittite Anatolia (1650-1200 BC).

An up-to-date, systematic depiction of Bronze Age societies of the Levant, their evolution, and their interactions and entanglements with neighboring regions.

Students of antiquity often see ancient Turkey as a bewildering array of cultural complexes. Ancient Turkey brings together in a coherent account the diverse and often fragmented evidence, both archaeological and textual, that forms the basis of our knowledge of the development of Anatolia from the earliest arrivals to the end of the Iron Age. Much new material has recently been excavated and unlike Greece, Mesopotamia, and its other neighbours, Turkey has been poorly served in terms of comprehensive, up-to-date and accessible discussions of its ancient past. Ancient Turkey is a much needed resource for students and scholars, providing an up-to-date account of the widespread and extensive archaeological activity in Turkey. Covering the entire span before the Classical period, fully illustrated with over 160 images and written in lively prose, this text will be enjoyed by anyone interested in the archaeology and early history of Turkey and the ancient Near East.

An archaeologist who has spent much of his life in the Near East attempts to share his profound interest in an antique land, its inhabitants, and the surviving monuments that link the present to the past. Illustrations.