Irrigation in Early States
Irrigation in Early States

Author: Stephanie Rost

Publisher: Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago

Published: 2022-06-30

Total Pages: 484

ISBN-13: 1614910723

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Irrigation has long been of interest in the study of the past. Many early civilizations were located in river valleys, and irrigation was of great economic importance for many early states because of the key role it played in producing an agricultural surplus, which was the main source of wealth and the basis of political power for the elites who controlled it. Agricultural surplus was also necessary to maintain the very features of statehood, such as urbanism, full-time labor specialization, state institutions, and status hierarchy. Yet, the presence of large-scale or complex irrigation systems does not necessarily mean that they were under centralized control. While some early states organized the construction, operation, and maintenance of irrigation works and resolved conflicts related to water distribution, other early governments left most of the management to local farmers and controlled only the surplus. The cross-cultural studies in this volume reexamine the role of irrigation in early states. Ranging geographically from South America and the southwestern United States to North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, they describe the physical attributes and environments of early irrigation systems; various methods for empirical investigation of ancient irrigation; and irrigation's economic, sociopolitical, and cosmological dimensions. Through their interdisciplinary perspectives, the authors-all experts in the field of irrigation studies-advance both methodological and theoretical approaches to understanding irrigation in early civilizations.

Provincial Taxation and the Ur III State
Provincial Taxation and the Ur III State

Author: Tonia M. Sharlach

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 9789004135819

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This volume investigates the relationship between the central government and the provinces during the Ur III period (2112-2004 B.C.). Specifically, the book focuses on one system of taxation known as bala," or "rotation," so called as provinces' payments rotated month by month throughout the year. This work is the first to take an interarchival approach, discussing Sumerian tablets from Umma, Lagash and Puzri -Dagan, and is the first major synthesis of what has long been recognized as a fundamental institution. The book contains six chapters and detailed appendices (including charts, the edition of approximately 150 previously unpublished tablets and bibliographical material)."

Crusoe's Books
Crusoe's Books

Author: Bill Bell

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2022-01-13

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 0192894692

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This is a book about readers on the move in the age of Victorian empire. It examines the libraries and reading habits of five reading constituencies from the long nineteenth century: shipboard emigrants, Australian convicts, Scottish settlers, polar explorers, and troops in the First World War. What was the role of reading in extreme circumstances? How were new meanings made under strange skies? How was reading connected with mobile communities in an age of expansion? Uncovering a vast range of sources from the period, from diaries, periodicals, and literary culture, Bill Bell reveals some remarkable and unanticipated insights into the way that reading operated within and upon the British Empire for over a century.

Chasing Aphrodite
Chasing Aphrodite

Author: Jason Felch

Publisher: HMH

Published: 2011-05-24

Total Pages: 397

ISBN-13: 0547538022

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A “thrilling, well-researched” account of years of scandal at the prestigious Getty Museum (Ulrich Boser, author of The Gardner Heist). In recent years, several of America’s leading art museums have voluntarily given up their finest pieces of classical art to the governments of Italy and Greece. Why would they be moved to such unheard-of generosity? The answer lies at the Getty, one of the world’s richest and most troubled museums, and scandalous revelations that it had been buying looted antiquities for decades. Drawing on a trove of confidential museum records and candid interviews, these two journalists give us a fly-on-the-wall account of the inner workings of a world-class museum, and tell a story of outlandish characters and bad behavior that could come straight from the pages of a thriller. “In an authoritative account, two reporters who led a Los Angeles Times investigation reveal the details of the Getty Museum’s illicit purchases, from smugglers and fences, of looted Greek and Roman antiquities. . . . The authors offer an excellent recap of the museum’s misdeeds, brimming with tasty details of the scandal that motivated several of America’s leading art museums to voluntarily return to Italy and Greece some 100 classical antiquities worth more than half a billion dollars.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review “An astonishing and penetrating look into a veiled world where beauty and art are in constant competition with greed and hypocrisy. This engaging book will cast a fresh light on many of those gleaming objects you see in art museums.” —Jonathan Harr, author of The Lost Painting

Storage in Ancient Complex Societies
Storage in Ancient Complex Societies

Author: Linda R. Manzanilla

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-05-20

Total Pages: 351

ISBN-13: 1315520966

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The ability to accumulate and store large amounts of goods is a key feature of complex societies in ancient times. Storage strategies reflect the broader economic and political organization of a society and changes in the development of control mechanisms in both administrative and non-administrative—often kinship based—sectors. This is the first volume to examine storage practices in ancient complex societies from a comparative perspective. This volume includes 14 original papers by leading archaeologists from four continents which compare storage systems in three key regions with lengthy traditions of complexity: the ancient Near East, Mesoamerica, and Andes. Storage in Ancient Complex Societies demonstrates the importance of understanding storage for the study of cultural evolution.

Roots Verb Forms and Primary Derivatives
Roots Verb Forms and Primary Derivatives

Author: William Dwight Whitney

Publisher: Motilal Banarsidass Publ.

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 9788120804852

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The work is intended especially as a supplement to the author's Sanskrit Grammar giving a fullness of detail that was not there practicable, nor admissible as part of the grammar itself, all the quotable roots of the language, with the tense and conjugation-systems made from them and with the noun and adjective (infinitival and participial) formation that attach themselves most closely to the verb and further with the other derivative noun and adjective-stems usually classed as primary. Everything given is dated with such accuracy as the information thus far in hand allows. In the indexes of stems given at the end of the volume, a classification is adopted which is intended to facilitate the historical comprehension of the language, by distinguishing what belongs respectively to its older and to its later periods from that which forms a part of it through the whole history.

The Creatures of Man
The Creatures of Man

Author: Howard L. Myers

Publisher: Baen Books

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 0743436075

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A future war is being fought across the galaxy and the key to victory can be found on the legendary lost world where humanity originated--Earth. This future saga is here assembled for the first time, as well as several bonus short novels in a huge volume of highly original space adventure.