Section outline

  • Syllabus and Announcements

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  • Fri 9/4: What Is an Empire (and How Do We Think about Them)?

    Please read the syllabus (it will be ready soon, I promise). Please also read the following:

    • S. Howe, Empire: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2002), Ch. 1 (“Who’s an Imperialist?), Ch. 5 (“Studying and Judging Empires”)
    • G. Orwell, “Shooting an Elephant,” (1936), https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/shooting-an-elephant/
    • M. Gehler and R. Rollinger, “Imperial Turn: Challenges, Problems and Questions,” in M. Gehler and R. Rollinger (ed.), Empires to Be Remembered: Ancient Worlds through Modern Times (Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 2022), 3-39

  • Fri 9/11: The Archaeology of Empires

    Reading

    • C. Sinopoli, “Empires,” in G. Feinman and T. Price (ed.), Archaeology at the Millennium (New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Press, 2001), 439-71
    • R. Matthews, The Archaeology of Mesopotamia: Theories and Approaches (London: Routledge, 2003), Ch. 5 (“Archaeologies of Empire”)
    • B. J. Parker, “Toward an Understanding of Borderland Processes,” American Antiquity 71/1 (2006), 77-100
    • D. J. Mattingly, “Identities in the Roman World: Discrepancy, Heterogeneity, Hybridity, and Plurality,” in Gail L. Hoffman and Lisa R. Brody (ed.), Roman in the Provinces: Art on the Periphery of Empire (Chestnut Hill: McMullen Museum of Art, 2014), 35-59
    • M. J. Versluys et al., “Understanding Objects in Motion: An Archaeological Dialogue on Romanization” (with responses by R. Hingley, T. Hodos, T. D. Stek, P. van Dommelen and G. Woolf), Archaeological Dialogues 21/1 (2014), 1-64
    • T. N. D’Altroy, “Empires Reconsidered: Current Archaeological Approaches,” Asian Archaeology 1 (2018), 95-109
    • M. Fernández-Götz et al., “The Dark Side of the Empire: Roman Expansionism between Object Agency and Predatory Regime,” Antiquity 94 (2020), 1630-39

  • Fri 9/18: The Egyptian New Kingdom

    Reading

    • J. C. Moreno García, “Egypt, Old to New Kingdom (2686-1069 BCE),” in OWHE, 13-42
    • S. T. Smith, “Colonial Entanglements: Imperial Dictate, Individual Action, and Intercultural Interaction in Nubia,” in AE, 21-55
    • E. Morris, Ancient Egyptian Imperialism (Hoboken: Wiley Blackwell, 2018), Introduction, Ch. 5-9

  • Fri 9/25: The Hittite Empire

    Reading

    • T. Bryce, “The Hittite Empire,” in CAANE, 722-39
    • C. Glatz, “Empire as Network: Spheres of Material Interaction in Late Bronze Age Anatolia,” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 28 (2009), 127-41
    • C. Gatz, “Negotiating Empire: A Comparative Investigation into the Responses to Hittite Imperialism by the Vassal State of Ugarit and the Kaska of Pontic Anatolia,” in G. E. Areshian (ed.), Empires and Diversity: On the Crossroads of Archaeology, Anthropology and History (Los Angeles: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press, 2013), 21-56
    • E. Devecchi, “The Governance of the Subordinated Countries,” in S. de Martino (ed.), Handbook Hittite Empire (Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2022), 271-312
    • M. Durusu-Tanrıöver, “Ways of Being Hittite: Empire and Borderlands in Late Bronze Age Anatolia and Northern Syria,” Studia Orientalia Electronica 9/2 (2021), 3-27

  • Fri 10/2: The Neo-Assyrian Empire

    Reading

    • G. Barjamovic, “The Empires of Western Asia and the Assyrian World Empire,” in OWHE, 73-110
    • B. J. Parker, “Archaeological Manifestations of Empire: Assyria’s Imprint on Southeastern Anatolia,” American Journal of Archaeology 107 (2003), 525-57
    • V. R. Herrmann, “The Empire in the House, the House in the Empire: Toward a Household Archaeology Perspective on the Assyrian Empire,” in A. Yasur-Landau et al. (ed.), Household Archaeology in Ancient Israel and Beyond (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 303-20
    • M. S. Rosenzweig, “Cultivating Subjects in the Neo-Assyrian Empire,” Journal of Social Archaeology 16/3 (2016), 307-34
    • D. Morandi Bonacossi, “The Creation of the Assyrian Heartland: New Data from the ‘Land behind Nineveh,’” in AIL, 48-85  
    • B. S. Düring, “The Assyrian Threshold: Explaining Imperial Consolidation in the Early Assyrian Empire,” in AE, 145-65
    • E. Miller, "Drawing Distinctions: Assyrians and Others in the Art of the Neo-Assyrian Empire," Studia Orientalia Electronica 9/2 (2021), 82-107

  • Fri 10/9: The Achaemenid Empire I: Structure

    Reading

    • M. W. Waters, “The Achaemenid Persian Empire: From the Medes to Alexander,” in OWHE, 111-36
    • H. P. Colburn (cough), “Globalization and the Study of the Achaemenid Persian Empire,” in T. Hodos (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Archaeology and Globalization (London: Routledge, 2017), 871-84
    • P. Briant, “From the Mediterranean to the Indus Valley: Modalities and Limitations of the Achaemenid Imperial Space,” in Y. Pines et al. (ed.), The Limits of Universal Rule: Eurasian Empires Compared (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 49-78
    • W. M. F. Henkelman, “Imperial Signature and Imperial Paradigm: Achaemenid Administrative Structure and System across and beyond the Iranian Plateau,” in B. Jacobs, W. F. M. Henkelman, and M. W. Stolper (ed.), Die Verwaltung im Achämenidenreich = Administration in the Achaemenid Empire (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2017), 45-256 (no need to read past p. 186)
    • M. C. Root, “Medes and Iranian Identity in the Achaemenid Social Imaginary: The Persepolis Apadana,” in M. B. Garrison and W. F. M. Henkelman (ed.), The Persian World and Beyond: Achaemenid and Arsacid Studies in Honour of Bruno Jacobs (Münster: Zaphon, 2023), 75-148

  • Fri 10/16: Fall Break (no class)

  • Fri 10/23: Paper 1 due