Kursinformation

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 part will introduce the students the main classes of evidence, periods, and civilizations of ancient western Asia starting from the Neolithization and ending with the empires of the 1st millennium BCE. The mainlines of the introductory classes will present the elements of political archaeology  associated with the first villages, the first cities, the development of early states up to the empires of the 1st millennium. Students will get familiar with interpretative theory associated with these periods, but also diagnostic archaeological evidence for each period, such as architecture, figurative art and material culture. This part is for all students taking the course without prerequisites. 

A second part consists of a seminar of an integrated teaching program offered by myself and the colleague Dr. Dominic Pollard to graduate students of the Institute for the Study of the Ancinet World - New York University, and selected students taking the course in in the MedArch MA program. The course is entitled: 

Archaeologies of Landscape and Territoriality in the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age Mediterranean

Here is a resume of the aims of the seminar:

One important contribution of the ‘Mediterraneanizing’ archaeological approaches of the last two decades has been to re-assert the importance of the relationships between human communities and the landscapes they inhabit. There is a particular emphasis on the impact and visibility of different identities within the same community and the definition of alternative forms of political interaction with space and landscape. Temporality and critical events add further elements of dynamism to a fine understanding of human – landscape interactions. This seminar will critically examine a range of these relationships in the context of the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age in the Mediterranean region. The class will begin by introducing the physical and ecological setting of the Mediterranean Basin, and the kinds of physical landscapes – mountains, plains, coasts, rivers and seas – that characterize it, and which have formed important foci of human activity in antiquity. We will then examine historical developments in the archaeological study of ancient landscapes, and discuss different theoretical approaches to conceptualizing and analyzing human-landscape relationships in the past. This will lead to a consideration of the kinds of landscapes – physical, economic, political, and ritual – that intersect in the emergence of concepts of territoriality between and within groups. These ideas will be contextualized through case studies drawn from across the Mediterranean region, spanning the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age, during which time landscapes of human settlement, mobility, interaction, and scale of complexity underwent significant changes in many regions. Working over multiple scales, this seminar will tackle the concepts of landscape and territoriality from the level of individual communities, up to the cities, states, and empires which existed during this dynamic period of Mediterranean history.

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 your 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 09.13 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)