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Archaeologies of the Near East | Home
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Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology

 

 

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]


Week 1: January 23-25.Introduction.


Wednesday ~ Introduction: Where is Babylon? (scope of the course, methods, overview)..

Friday ~ Where is Mesopotamia, Near East, Middle East? Imperialism and the politics of defining a region. (Discussion)


Week 2. Jan. 28-Feb 1. Archaeology, politics and the “presence of the past” in the Middle East.


Monday ~ Modernity: Speaking of the (ancient) past in the (modern) present

Wednesday ~ Heritage of the Middle East: who owns the past? Ideologies of the present.

Friday ~ Sites of violence: archaeological site and museum as places of conflict. (Discussion) Looting of the Iraq Museum in Baghdad and archaeological sites in the Middle East. (Discussion)

Reading downloads


Week 3: Feb. 4-8. Landscapes of the Near East


Monday ~ Landscapes of the Ancient Near East: understanding a cultural geography.

Wednesday ~ Noah’s Flood? From the air to the pollens on lake-bottoms: climate, environment and long-term history

Friday ~ In the marshes of Iraq: Landscapes of imagination and experience. (Discussion)

Reading downloads


Week 4: Feb 11-15. Prehistory: the Neolithic in the Near East


Monday ~ From hunter-gatherers to agriculturalists: early settled communities- Göbekli Tepe, Nevali Cori, Ain Ghazal. Agricultural revolution.

Wednesday ~ Ömür out of town. You will be watching a documentary.

Friday ~ Shamanism, architecture and wall painting at Çatalhöyük.

Reading downloads


Week 5. Feb. 18-22. Towards urbanization and social complexity: Uruk Period in Southern Mesopotamia


Monday ~ Long weekend. No class.

Wednesday ~ Emerging social complexities in Mesopotamia: the Chalcolithic in the Near East.
(Assignment 2: Cultural Biography of Objects paper due)

Friday ~ Ritual at Uruk, the city: Inanna and the temple household.

Reading downloads


Week 6. Feb. 25-29. From memory to history: the urban, literate cultures of southern Iraq


Monday ~ The first written word: The invention of cuneiform writing. Economy, state bureaucracy, poetry.

Wednesday ~ Cattlepen and the Sheepfold: The Early Mesopotamian city and holy Nippur. Ancient Text: Nippur Lament

Friday ~ Burying the dead: Royal Tombs of Ur (discussion).

Reading downloads


Week 7. March 3-7. Vision, visuality and the cult image: Mesopotamia in the Early Bronze Age


Monday ~Early Dynastic period (Early Bronze Age) in the Diyala River Basin. The sites of Khafajah and Tell Asmar: temples and urban neighborhoods.

Wednesday ~ Priests, temples and cult practice: an introduction to Mesopotamian religion.

Friday ~ Powerful visions: Ritual objects and cultures of seeing in Early Mesopotamia (the uncanny statues of the Abu temple at Tell Asmar).

Reading downloads


Week 8. March 10-14. Akkad and Sumer: narratives of royal ideology.


Monday ~ The Akkadian kingdom: Sargon, Naram-Sin and the mythical kingship.

Wednesday ~ The invention of the ziggurat: The Third Dynasty of Ur and the Moon God Nanna.

Friday ~ Powerful objects: Technology, agency and new perspectives on material culture. Discussion. (Midterm essay questions distributed)

Reading downloads


Week 9. March 17-21. Cities and nomads along the Euphrates: Syria in the Middle Bronze Age.


Monday ~ House of the Storm God: new cities, new temples in Syria (Ebla and Aleppo). Kings of Ashur and Mari: nomads and the city.

(Midterm essays due)

Wednesday ~ Documentary: Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life.

(directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack) A 1925 documentary that follows the journey of the Bakhtiari, a nomadic tribe in Iran, as they herd their livestock up snow-covered mountain passes to get to the grazing lands on the other side of the mountains.

Friday ~ Nomadism in the Ancient Near East: long-term perspectives

Reading downloads

March 22-30 Spring break


Week 10. March 31- April 4. Greetings to my brother! Great kings, the Late Bronze age in the Levant and the Hittite Empire


Monday ~Geography of Anatolia and the wandering kings of the Hittite empire

Wednesday ~ Hattusha: the city of one thousand gods

Friday ~ Eastern Mediterranean, cross-cultural exchange and cultural hybridity.

Reading downloads


Week 11. April 7-11. The new countryside: Early Iron Age and the Assyrian Empire


Monday ~ Returning to the village after collapse: Early Iron age in Northern Mesopotamia
(Final paper proposals due)

Wednesday ~ The cities of the Assyrian Empire: Kalhu and Nineveh

Friday ~ The writing on the wall: Orthostat reliefs, bronze bands and scary beasts of Assyrian palaces

Reading downloads


Week 12. April 14-18. To the edges of the world: Neo-Babylonian and Persian worlds


Monday ~ A city of imagination and learning: Babylon.

Wednesday ~ The hanging gardens of Babylon? Paradise in Babylonia and Persia

Friday ~ Pasargadae to Persepolis: the Persian conquest of the world

Reading downloads


Week 13. April 21-25. Politics of cultural heritage in the Middle East


Monday ~ Were Hittites Turks? Modernity, nationalism and the use and abuse of archaeological pasts: the case of Turkey.

Wednesday ~ Politics of the Past: The case of contemporary Israel

Reading downloads

Friday ~ Wrap up discussion and course evaluations. (Final paper drafts due)

April 25-May 6. Reading period

May 12 Final papers due.