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Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology & the Ancient World
Brown University
Box 1837 / 60 George Street
Providence, RI 02912
Telephone: (401) 863-3188
Fax: (401) 863-9423
[email protected]
ARCH 0800/AWAS 0351 Introduction to the Ancient Near East Fall 2009
Take-home Midterm Essay Questions
Please choose two questions from the following and write an essay on each. Each of your essays should be no longer than 2 pages in length (Times New Roman 12 font, double spaced) and the whole submission not more than 4 pages. Feel free to use all your class notes, Ömür’s powerpoint presentations and the course readings. Make plenty reference to specific examples, case studies, or sites in your essays as relevant.
Deadline: Monday Oct 19th, by 5 pm hard copy to Omur's mailbox at Joukowsky Institute.
1. What does Alain Schnapp mean by “the presence of the past” and how does he relate to the field of archaeological research and the study of the past? Discuss the argument that history is not “a thing of the past” but a vital component of our everyday present.
2. A historical relief is carved on the tympanum above the entrance of the Oriental Institute in Chicago, commissioned by its founder James Henry Breasted in 1919. Discuss the significance of this composition for the history of the study of the ancient cultures of the Middle East.
3. What is landscape? And what are the various ways that archaeologists and ancient historians go about investigating ancient landscapes?
4. In the Neolithic period (9600-6000 BC) in the so-called “Fertile Crescent”, human societies went through a series of transformations. What were, in your opinion, the most dramatic changes in people’s lives? What sorts of archaeological evidence do we have to support these?
5. There seems to be a general consensus among scholars that cities emerge in sourthern Mesopotamia towards the end of the fourth millennium BC (3500-3100 BC). Cities are generally understood as places of creativity and innovation. What sorts of cultural and social innovations in your opinion accompanied the process of urbanization?