The times between the Neolithic and Urban revolutions in Mesopotamia have for a long time been interpreted as a period of stagnation. This volume is part of an emerging discourse that challenges such assumptions. Focussing upon the northern parts of ancient Western Asia, where most recent research has concentrated, an international group of researchers demonstrates that Upper Mesopotamia underwent complex historical changes that we just begin to grasp fully. The Late Neolithic was a critical phase of the history of the ancient Middle East. Authors investigate settlement patterns, practices of painting pottery, distributions of various raw materials, the role of craft industries, the emergence of seals and other issues from a variety of theoretical and practical questions. The book is a must-have for prehistorians working in the Near East, and a rich source of information for archaeologists working in other parts of the world. Olivier Nieuwenhuyse is a Research Fellow at Leiden University and at the DAI-Berlin. His research focuses on reconstructions of landscape and prehistoric settlement and the meanings of material culture. Reinhard Bernbeck is professor at the Freie Universitat Berlin and Binghamton University, New York. His research focuses on critical assessments of ancient Western Asian prehistory and historical periods. Peter Akkermans is professor at Leiden University. He is the director of the excavatons at Tell Sabi Abyad and had published widely on the prehistory of the ancient Near East.

The second half of the seventh millennium BC saw the demise of the previously affluent and dynamic Neolithic way of life. The period is marked by significant social and economic transformations of local communities, as manifested in a new spatial organization, patterns of architecture, burial practices, and in chipped stone and pottery manufacture. This volume has three foci. The first concerns the character of these changes in different parts of the Near East with a view to placing them in a broader comparative perspective. The second concerns the social and ideological changes that took place at the end of Neolithic and the beginning of the Chalcolithic that help to explain the disintegration of constitutive principles binding the large centers, the emergence of a new social system, as well as the consequences of this process for the development of full-fledged farming communities in the region and beyond. The third concerns changes in lifeways: subsistence strategies, exploitation of the environment, and, in particular, modes of procurement, consumption, and distribution of different resources.

This unique collection applies globalization concepts to the discipline of archaeology, using a wide range of global case studies from a group of international specialists. The volume spans from as early as 10,000 cal. BP to the modern era, analysing the relationship between material culture, complex connectivities between communities and groups, and cultural change. Each contributor considers globalization ideas explicitly to explore the socio-cultural connectivities of the past. In considering social practices shared between different historic groups, and also the expression of their respective identities, the papers in this volume illustrate the potential of globalization thinking to bridge the local and global in material culture analysis. The Routledge Handbook of Archaeology and Globalization is the first such volume to take a world archaeology approach, on a multi-period basis, in order to bring together the scope of evidence for the significance of material culture in the processes of globalization. This work thus also provides a means to understand how material culture can be used to assess the impact of global engagement in our contemporary world. As such, it will appeal to archaeologists and historians as well as social science researchers interested in the origins of globalization.

More than 7000 years ago, groups of early farmers (the Linearbandkeramik, or LBK) spread over vast areas of Europe. Their cultural characteristics comprised common choices and styles of execution, with a central meaning and functionality attached to ‘doing things a certain way’, over an enormous geographical area. However, recent evidence suggests that the reality was much more varied and diverse. The central question of this book is the extent to which notions of ‘uniformity’ and ‘diversity’ have caused a wider shift in archaeological perspective. Using the LBK case study as a starting point, the volume brings together contributions by international specialists tackling the notion of cultural diversity and its explanatory power in archaeological analysis more generally. Through discussions of the domestic architecture, stone tool inventory, pottery traditions, landscape use and burial traditions of the LBK, this book provides a crucial reappraisal of the culture’s potential for adaptability and change. Papers in the second part of the volume are devoted to archaeological case studies from around the globe in which the tension between diversity and uniformity has also proved controversial, including the Near Eastern Halaf culture, the North American Mississippian, the Pacific expansion of the Lapita culture, and the European Bell Beaker phenomenon. All provide exciting theoretical and methodological contributions on how the appreciation of cultural diversity as a whole can be moved forward. These papers expose diversity and uniformity as cultural strategies, and as such provide essential reading for scholars in archaeology and anthropology, and for anyone interested in the interplay between material culture and human social change.

Raccolta di articoli in onore di Marcella Frangipane riguardo il sito archeologico Arslantepe, in Antaolia orientale

This book presents a comprehensive review of archaeological and environmental data between Syria and the Balkans around 6000 BC.

Beads, bracelets, necklaces, pendants and many other ornaments are familiar objects that play a fundamental role in personal expression and communication. This book considers how and why the human relationship with ornaments developed and continued over tens of thousands of years, from hunter-gatherer life in the cave to urban elites, from expedient use of natural resources to complex technologies. Using evidence from archaeological sites across Turkey, the Near East and the Balkans, it explores the history of personal ornaments from their appearance in the Palaeolithic until the rise of urban centers in the Early Bronze Age and encompassing technologies ranging from stone cutting to early glazing, metallurgy and the roots of glass manufacture. The development of theoretical and practical approaches to ornaments and the current state of research are illustrated with a wide variety of examples. This book shows that far from being objects of display, of little value in archaeological interpretation and often overlooked, these artifacts are key to understanding trade, relationships, values, beliefs and the construction of personal identity in the past. Indeed, more than any other group of artifacts, their variety in material, form, use and distribution opens doors to both wide ranging scientific exploration and consideration of what it is to be human.