Book Details
Orange Code:95679
Paperback:321 pages
Publications:
Categories:
Sections:
1. Archaeological Theory and Archaeological Evidence2. The Chalcolithic Prelude – From Social Hierarchies and Giant Settlements to the Emergence of Mobile Economies, ca. 4500–3500 BC3. The Caucasus – Donor and Recipient of Mater ials, Technolog ies, and Peoples to and from the Ancient Near East4. Taming the Steppe – The Development of Mobile Economies: From Cattle Herders with Wagons to Horseback Riders Tending Mixed Herds; the Continued Eastward Expansion of Large-Scale Metallurgical Production and Exchange5. Enter ing a Sown World of Ir r igation Ag r iculture – From the Steppes to Central Asia and Beyond: Processes of Movement, Assimilation, and Transfor mation into the “Civilized” World East of Sumer6. The Circulation of Peoples and Materials – Evolution, Devolution, and Recurrent Social Formations on the Eurasian Steppes and in West Asia: Patterns and Processes of Interconnection during Later Prehistory
Description:
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This book provides an overview of Bronze Age societies of Western Eurasia through an investigation of the archaeological record. Philip L. Kohl outlines the long-term processes and patterns of interaction that link these groups together in a shared historical trajectory of development. Interactions took the form of the exchange of raw materials and finished goods, the spread and sharing of technologies, and the movements of peoples from one region to another. Kohl reconstructs economic activities from subsistence practices to the production and exchange of metals and other materials. He also examines long-term processes, such as the development of more mobile forms of animal husbandry, which were based on the introduction and large-scale utilization of oxen-drive wheeled wagons and , subsequently, the domestication and riding of horses; the spread of metalworking technologies and exploitation of new centers of metallurgical production; changes in systems of exchange from those dominated by the movement of luxury goods to those in which materials essential for maintaining and securing the reproduction of the societies participating in the exchange network accompanied and/or supplanted the trade in precious materials; and increasing evidence for militarism and political instabilities as reflected in shifts in settlement patterns, including increases in fortified sites, and quantitative and qualitative advances in weaponry. Kohl also argues forcefully that the main task of the archaeologist should be to write culture-history on a spatially and temporally grand scale in an effort to detect large, macrohistorical processes of interaction and shared development.
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