In this book, Lauren Ristvet rethinks the narratives of state formation by investigating the interconnections between ritual, performance, and politics in the ancient Near East. She draws on a wide ...range of archaeological, iconographic, and cuneiform sources to show how ritual performance was not set apart from the real practice of politics; it was politics. Rituals provided an opportunity for elites and ordinary people to negotiate political authority. Descriptions of rituals from three periods explore the networks of signification that informed different societies. From circa 2600 to 2200 BC, pilgrimage made kingdoms out of previously isolated villages. Similarly, from circa 1900 to 1700 BC, commemorative ceremonies legitimated new political dynasties by connecting them to a shared past. Finally, in the Hellenistic period, the traditional Babylonian Akitu festival was an occasion for Greek-speaking kings to show that they were Babylonian and for Babylonian priests to gain significant power.
Stone Tools in the Paleolithic and Neolithic Near East: A Guide surveys the lithic record for the East Mediterranean Levant (Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Jordan, and adjacent territories) from the ...earliest times to 6,500 years ago. It is intended both as an introduction to this lithic evidence for students and as a resource for researchers working with Paleolithic and Neolithic stone tool evidence. Written by a lithic analyst and professional flintknapper, this book systematically examines variation in technology, typology, and industries for the Lower, Middle, and Upper Paleolithic; the Epipaleolithic; and Neolithic periods in the Near East. It is extensively illustrated with drawings of stone tools. In addition to surveying the lithic evidence, the book also considers ways in which archaeological treatment of this evidence could be changed to make it more relevant to major issues in human origins research. A final chapter shows how change in stone tool designs points to increasing human dependence on stone tools across the long sweep of Stone Age prehistory.
Urban violence in the Middle East Freitag, Ulrike; Fuccaro, Nelida; Ghrawi, Claudia ...
2015., 20150315, 2015, 2015-03-30, Letnik:
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Covering a period from the late eighteenth century to today, this volume explores the phenomenon of urban violence in order to unveil general developments and historical specificities in a variety of ...Middle Eastern contexts. By situating incidents in particular processes and conflicts, the case studies seek to counter notions of a violent Middle East in order to foster a new understanding of violence beyond that of a meaningless and destructive social and political act. Contributions explore processes sparked by the transition from empires - Ottoman and Qajar, but also European - to the formation of nation states, and the resulting changes in cityscapes throughout the region.
From the dawn of writing in Sumer to the sunset of the Islamic empire, Founding Gods, Inventing Nations traces four thousand years of speculation on the origins of civilization. Investigating a vast ...range of primary sources, some of which are translated here for the first time, and focusing on the dynamic influence of the Greek, Roman, and Arab conquests of the Near East, William McCants looks at the ways the conquerors and those they conquered reshaped their myths of civilization's origins in response to the social and political consequences of empire.
Rolf Strootman brings together various aspects of court culture in the Macedonian empires of the post-Achaemenid Near East. During the Hellenistic Period (c. 330-30 BCE), Alexander the Great and his ...successors reshaped their Persian and Greco-Macedonian legacies to create a new kind of rulership that was neither 'western' nor 'eastern' and would profoundly influence the later development of court culture and monarchy in both the Roman West and Iranian East. Drawing on the socio-political models of Norbert Elias and Charles Tilly, After the Achaemenids shows how the Hellenistic dynastic courts were instrumental in the integration of local elites in the empires, and the (re)distribution of power, wealth, and status. It analyses the competition among courtiers for royal favour and the, not always successful, attempts of the Hellenistic rulers to use these struggles to their own advantage.
In this book, Anne Porter explores the idea that mobile and sedentary members of the ancient world were integral parts of the same social and political groups in greater Mesopotamia during the period ...4000 to 1500 BCE. She draws on a wide range of archaeological and cuneiform sources to show how networks of social structure, political and religious ideology, and everyday as well as ritual practice worked to maintain the integrity of those groups when the pursuit of different subsistence activities dispersed them over space. These networks were dynamic, shaping many of the key events and innovations of the time, including the Uruk expansion and the introduction of writing, so-called secondary state formation and the organization and operation of government, the literary production of the Third Dynasty of Ur and the first stories of Gilgamesh, and the emergence of the Amorrites in the second millennium BCE.
"In the interwar Eastern Mediterranean, European colonial modes of establishing land claims and controlling populations converged with a recent Ottoman past featuring desperate and violent efforts at ...nationalization and an increasingly empowered Zionist settler colonialism. States of Separation explores how this confluence produced a series of internationally supported plans to move "minority" communities in, around, and out of the newly constituted states of Iraq, Syria, and Palestine under the aegis of the League of Nations - a massive demographic experiment that carried lasting political and social consequences for the twentieth century Middle East and the international order."
The new arab man Inhorn, Marcia C
2012., 20120325, 2012, 2012-03-25, 20120101
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Middle Eastern Muslim men have been widely vilified as terrorists, religious zealots, and brutal oppressors of women.The New Arab Manchallenges these stereotypes with the stories of ordinary Middle ...Eastern men as they struggle to overcome infertility and childlessness through assisted reproduction.
Drawing on two decades of ethnographic research across the Middle East with hundreds of men from a variety of social and religious backgrounds, Marcia Inhorn shows how the new Arab man is self-consciously rethinking the patriarchal masculinity of his forefathers and unseating received wisdoms. This is especially true in childless Middle Eastern marriages where, contrary to popular belief, infertility is more common among men than women. Inhorn captures the marital, moral, and material commitments of couples undergoing assisted reproduction, revealing how new technologies are transforming their lives and religious sensibilities. And she looks at the changing manhood of husbands who undertake transnational "egg quests"--set against the backdrop of war and economic uncertainty--out of devotion to the infertile wives they love.
Trenchant and emotionally gripping,The New Arab Mantraces the emergence of new masculinities in the Middle East in the era of biotechnology.
