Archaic State Interaction

In current archaeological research the failure to find common ground between world-systems theory believers and their counterParts has resulted in a stagnation of theoretical development in regards to modeling how early state societies ititeracted with their neighbors. This book is an attempt to redress these issues. By shifting the theoretical focus away from questions of state evolution to state interaction, the authors develop anthropological models for understanding how ancient states interacted with one another and with societies of scales of economic and political organization. One of their goals has been to identify a theoretical middle ground that is neither dogmatic nor dismissive. The result is innovative approach to modeling-social interaction that will he helpful in exploring the relationship between Social processes that occur at different geographic scales and over different temporal durations. The scholars who participated in the SAR advanced seminar that resulted in this hook used a Particular geographic and temporal context as a case study for developing anthropological models of interaction that are cross-cultural in scope but still deal well with the idiosyncrasies of specific culture histories. Advance praise for Archaic State Interaction "An excellent example of a meeting of the minds to hammer at an interesting and current set of problems affecting archaeologists around the world...It is not necessary for the reader to be a 'believer' in world-systems theory to benefit from these essays."-Thomas F. Tartaron, University of Pennsylvania

In this ground-breaking work, Norman Yoffee shatters the prevailing myths underpinning our understanding of the evolution of early civilisations. He counters the emphasis in traditional scholarship on the rule of 'godly' and despotic male leaders and challenges the conventional view that early states were uniformly constituted bureaucratic and regional entities. Instead, by illuminating the role of slaves and soldiers, priests and priestesses, peasants and prostitutes, merchants and craftsmen, Yoffee depicts an evolutionary process centred on the concerns of everyday life. Drawing on evidence from ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, China and Mesoamerica, the author explores the variety of trajectories followed by ancient states, from birth to collapse, and explores the social processes that shape any account of the human past. This book offers a bold new interpretation of social evolutionary theory, and as such it is essential reading for any student or scholar with an interest in the emergence of complex society.

While ritual and archaic states have both been prominent topics in recent archaeological studies, this is the first volume to combine both subjects by exploring the varying nature, expression, and significance of ritual in archaic states. It compares archaic rituals across many different cultures--Vijayanagara, Swahili Lamu, Venice, Asante, Aztec, Ming China, Oaxaca, Greece, Inca, Wari, and Chaco. The contributors posit that the nature of rituals, the level of investment in rituals, and their sociopolitical significance can vary greatly from state to state, even among societies with similar levels of social complexity, population, and spatial distribution. Highlighting the importance of ritual as an inherent part of a cultural narrative, and demonstrating how the study of ritual enables a better understanding of diverse social groups, this volume shows how the location, frequency, and role of ritual differed significantly across archaic states.

In this volume, the authors highlight the diversity and instability of ancient states and how widely they have varied through time and across space. Archaic States presents new comparative studies of early states in the Old and New Worlds, including the Near East, India and Pakistan, Egypt, Mesoamerica, and the Andes. In the process, it helps to define key avenues for research and discussion in the decades ahead.

Rituals, Collapse, and Radical Transformation in Archaic States explores the role of ritual in a variety of archaic states and generates discussion on how the decline in a state’s ability to continue in its current form affected the practices of ritual and how ritual as a culture-forming dynamic affected decline, collapse, and regeneration of the state. Chapters examine ritual in collapsing and regenerating archaic states from diverse locations, time periods, and societies including Crete, Mycenean and Byzantine Greece, Mesopotamia, India, Africa, Mexico, and Peru. Underscoring similarities in a variety of archaic states in the role of ritual during periods of threat, collapse, and transformation, the volume shows how ritual can be used as a stabilizing or divisive force or a connecting medium between the present to the past in an empowering way. It also highlights the diversity of ritual roles and location in similar situations and illustrates how states in close proximity and sharing many cultural similarities can respond differently through ritual to stress and contrast the different response in rural and urban settings. Through detailed, cultural specific studies, the book provides a nuanced understanding of the diverse roles of ritual in the decline, collapse, and regeneration of societies and will be important for all archaeologists involved in the important notions of state "collapse" and "regeneration".

A Companion to Ethnicity in the Ancient Mediterranean presents a comprehensive collection of essays contributed by Classical Studies scholars that explore questions relating to ethnicity in the ancient Mediterranean world. Covers topics of ethnicity in civilizations ranging from ancient Egypt and Israel, to Greece and Rome, and into Late Antiquity Features cutting-edge research on ethnicity relating to Philistine, Etruscan, and Phoenician identities Reveals the explicit relationships between ancient and modern ethnicities Introduces an interpretation of ethnicity as an active component of social identity Represents a fundamental questioning of formally accepted and fixed categories in the field

Essential overview of American Indian societies during the Archaic period across central North America.

Memory and Nation Building addresses the complex topic of collective memory, first described by sociologist Maurice Halbwachs in the first half of the 20th century. Author Michael Galaty argues that the first states appropriated traditional collective memory systems in order to form. With this in mind, he compares three Mediterranean societies – Egypt, Greece, and Albania – each of which experienced very different trajectories of state formation. Galaty attributes these differences to varying responses to collective memory in all three places through time, with climaxes in the Ottoman period, during which all three were under Ottoman control. Egypt was characterized by deeply meaningful memory tropes concerning national unity, which spanned all of Egyptian history, while Greece experienced memory fragmentation, a condition exacerbated by periods of imperial conquest. Albania adapted and assimilated when faced with foreign domination, such that an indigenous Albanian state did not form until 1912. Galaty builds a diachronic model of state formation and its relationship to memory and political control. Memory and Nation Building culminates in an analysis of modern collective memory systems and resistance to those systems, which are often framed as conflicts over “heritage”. The formation and eventual fall of the short-lived Islamic State serves as an example of extreme memory work, with lessons for other modern nations.

Understanding Collapse explores the collapse of ancient civilisations, such as the Roman Empire, the Maya, and Easter Island. In this lively survey, Guy D. Middleton critically examines our ideas about collapse - how we explain it and how we have constructed potentially misleading myths around collapses - showing how and why collapse of societies was a much more complex phenomenon than is often admitted. Rather than positing a single explanatory model of collapse - economic, social, or environmental - Middleton gives full consideration to the overlooked resilience in communities of ancient peoples and the choices that they made. He offers a fresh interpretation of collapse that will be accessible to both students and scholars. The book is an engaging, introductory-level survey of collapse in the archaeology/history literature, which will be ideal for use in courses on the collapse of civilizations, sustainability, and climate change. It includes up-to-date case studies of famous and less well-known examples of collapses, and is illustrated with 25 black and white illustrations, 3 line drawings, 16 tables and 18 maps.