Ebla and its Landscape

Ebla and its Landscape

Author: Paolo Matthiae

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-06-16

Total Pages: 900

ISBN-13: 131542987X

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The discovery of 17,000 tablets at the mid-third millennium BC site of Ebla in Syria has revolutionized the study of the ancient Near East. This is the first major English-language volume describing the multidisciplinary archaeological research at Ebla. Using an innovative regional landscape approach, the 29 contributions to this expansive volume examine Ebla in its regional context through lenses of archaeological, textual, archaeobiological, archaeometric, geomorphological, and remote sensing analysis. In doing so, they are able to provide us with a detailed picture of the constituent elements and trajectories of early state development at Ebla, essential to those studying the ancient Near East and to other archaeologists, historians, anthropologists, and linguists. This work was made possible by an IDEAS grant from the European Research Council.


Byzantine Silk on the Silk Roads

Byzantine Silk on the Silk Roads

Author: Sarah E. Braddock Clarke

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2022-08-11

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 1350099317

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With over 200 color illustrations, Byzantine Silk on the Silk Roads examines in detail the eclectic iconography of the Byzantine period and its impact on design and creativity today. Through an examination of the extraordinary variety of designs in these captivating silks, an international team of experts reveal that Byzantine culture was ever-moving and open to diverse influences across the length of the Silk Road. Commentaries from curators at key collections – including the Museum of Arts, Boston, the Smithsonian (Cooper Hewitt), the V&A and the Vatican – reveal the spread of silk embroidery and designs from East to West, and from West to East, from China to Rome, and from Constantinople to Korea. Drawing on exclusive imagery from worldwide collections within museums, churches and archives as case studies, their analysis of these unique woven silks explores the relationship between color and power, material culture and status, and offers broader insight into Byzantine culture, trade, society and ceremony. Byzantine Silk ... takes us on a journey from the past to the present, too, where Byzantine story-telling and image-making is revisited, through color, imagery and pattern, in contemporary fashion collections. Exploring Byzantine culture through a contemporary filter, the book shows how the Byzantine era still influences textile and fashion designers today in their choices of materials and colors, and their utilization of images and patterns, acting as a unique source of inspiration to designers and creators in the 21st century.


Susa and Elam II

Susa and Elam II

Author: Jan Tavernier

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2023

Total Pages: 568

ISBN-13: 9004541438

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Susa and Elam II contains 16 contributions presented at an international conference on Susa and Elam (SW Iran) in 2015 in Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium). They cover various themes on Susian and Elamite history, language, religion, and culture.


The Art and Architecture of Ancient Egypt

The Art and Architecture of Ancient Egypt

Author: William Stevenson Smith

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 1998-01-01

Total Pages: 326

ISBN-13: 9780300077476

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A survey of Egyptian art and architecture is enhanced by revised text, an updated bibliography, and over four hundred illustrations.


The Neolithic Cemetery at Tell el-Kerkh

The Neolithic Cemetery at Tell el-Kerkh

Author: Akira Tsuneki

Publisher: Archaeopress Publishing Ltd

Published: 2022-02-03

Total Pages: 422

ISBN-13: 1803270276

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The Neolithic Cemetery at Tell el-Kerkh is the second volume of the final reports on the excavations at Tell el-Kerkh, northwest Syria, focusing on the discovery of a Pottery Neolithic cemetery dating between c. 6400 and 6100 BC, one of the oldest outdoor communal cemeteries in West Asia.


Climate and Cultural Change in Prehistoric Europe and the Near East

Climate and Cultural Change in Prehistoric Europe and the Near East

Author: Peter F. Biehl

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 2016-11-23

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 1438461844

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The subject of climate change could hardly be more timely. In Climate and Cultural Change in Prehistoric Europe and the Near East, an interdisciplinary group of contributors examine climate change through the lens of new archaeological and paleo-environmental data over the course of more than 10,000 years from the Near East to Europe. Key climatic and other events are contextualized with cultural changes and transitions for which the authors discuss when, how, and if, changes in climate and environment caused people to adapt, move or perish. More than this publication of crucial archaeological and paleo-environmental data, however, the volume seeks to understand the social, political and economic significance of climate change as it was manifested in various ways around the Old World. Contrary to perceptions of threatening global warming in our popular media, and in contrast to grim images of collapse presented in some archaeological discussions of past climate change, this book rejects outright societal collapse as a likely outcome. Yet this does not keep the authors from considering climate change as a potential factor in explaining culture change by adopting a critical stance with regard to the long-standing practice of equating synchronicity with causality, and explicitly considering alternative explanations.


Women and Religion in the Ancient Near East and Asia

Women and Religion in the Ancient Near East and Asia

Author: Nicole Maria Brisch

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2023-04-03

Total Pages: 356

ISBN-13: 1501514822

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The recent years have seen an upswing in studies of women in the ancient Near East and related areas. This volume, which is the result of a Danish-Japanese collaboration, seeks to highlight women as actors within the sphere of the religious. In ancient Mesopotamia and other ancient civilizations, religious beliefs and practices permeated all aspects of society, and for this reason it is not possible to completely dissociate religion from politics, economy, or literature. Thus, the goal is to shift the perspective by highlighting the different ways in which the agency of women can be traced in the historical (and archaeological) record. This perspectival shift can be seen in studies of elite women, who actively contributed to (religious) gift-giving or participated in temple economies, or through showing the limits of elite women’s agency in relation to diplomatic marriages. Additionally, several contributions examine the roles of women as religious officials and the language, worship, or invocation of goddesses. This volume does not aim at completeness but seeks to highlight points for further research and new perspectives.


The Huns, Rome and the Birth of Europe

The Huns, Rome and the Birth of Europe

Author: Hyun Jin Kim

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2013-04-18

Total Pages: 347

ISBN-13: 1107067227

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The Huns have often been treated as primitive barbarians with no advanced political organisation. Their place of origin was the so-called 'backward steppe'. It has been argued that whatever political organisation they achieved they owed to the 'civilizing influence' of the Germanic peoples they encountered as they moved west. This book argues that the steppes of Inner Asia were far from 'backward' and that the image of the primitive Huns is vastly misleading. They already possessed a highly sophisticated political culture while still in Inner Asia and, far from being passive recipients of advanced culture from the West, they passed on important elements of Central Eurasian culture to early medieval Europe, which they helped create. Their expansion also marked the beginning of a millennium of virtual monopoly of world power by empires originating in the steppes of Inner Asia. The rise of the Hunnic Empire was truly a geopolitical revolution.