Informazioni sul corso

Aim of the course is to introduce the students to the archaeology of western Asia, and to the critical discussion of the analysis of the archaeological evidence. The ultimate goal is to let them become aware of an early cultural tradition and become able to integrate this tradition in the wider discourse on memory and identities of the ancient Mediterranean and their ties to the modern world.

The course consists of two parts, one introductive of the main classes of evidence, periods, and civilizations of ancient western Asia. This part will be open to all students without prerequisites. A second part consists of a seminar part of an integrated teaching program offered also to the graduate students of ISAW - New York University, entitled: Religious Institutions and Sacred Space in Syria and Anatolia (2nd-1st Testi in italiano Lingua insegnamento INGLESE Obiettivi per lo sviluppo sostenibile Codice Descrizione Millennium BCE) Here is a short resume of its content: After its demise during the end of the past century, the archaeology of the cult has reacquired momentum in the study of the human past. New technologies and new theoretical approaches allow us to concentrate on the cultic use of space and the reconstruction of rituals through new venues that will be discussed in the first classes of the seminar. They will be then applied to the case study of Late Bronze Age and Iron Age Anatolia and Syria. The LBA-IA transition in southwest Asia was felt nowhere as politically disruptive as in the core of the Hittite empire. After considering the discussion on the "Hittite collapse", the course will try to trace the different local political trajectories developing during the Early and the Middle Iron Age in the former territories of the empire, with a particular attention to material remains and figurative art. While exploring the micro-regional, specific developments of the single postHittite polities, questions of economic strategies, strategies of political legitimation, (re)definition of cultic institutions, of social stratification, of long and short distance contacts, the impact and modalities of movements of peoples, of technological innovations and of the specific intercultural contacts with the east (Assyria), the west (Mediterranean), and the south (southern Levant, Biblical world) and the models used to represent them in modern scholarship will be discussed with the participants. The seminar is not mandatory (see below). No more than 20 students will be admitted to the seminar. Prerequisite to be admitted is to have attended in the BA a course of ancient western Asia archaeology or history, or being registered for the pre-course of Ancient Mediterranean Archaeology. Students planning a MA thesis on ancient western Asia will be given priority and are in any case strongly suggested to take the seminar and engage with research approaches to AWA archaeology, the remaining spots will be assigned on a first-come-first-served basis. The seminar will begin on Wednesday 09.14 3-6pm, and will continue every Wednesday until the second week of December. Students interested in participating in the seminar are invited to contact the instructor by email (lorenzo.dalfonso@unipv.it)