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ARKY 325 > MT1 Week1 > Flashcards

MT1 Week1 Flashcards

1
Q

Nabonidus

A

> last king of Babylon excavated the temple of Ur in
Mesopotamia about 2500 years ago to better understand Sumerian culture

> His work contributed to knowledge of ancient Sumer that is still used today

> But his motives were political: he wanted to give his ruler-ship more prestigious origins!

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2
Q

Italian Renaissance

A

> 14th century

  • During this period scholars re-­discovered ancient Roman and Greek texts
  • The growing merchant class became interested in collected Roman and Greek objects
  • Encouraged the looting of ancient sites (beginning of antiquarianism)
  • Not good archaeology!
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3
Q

Ciriaco de’Pizzicolli (1391-­1452)

A
  • He spent 25 years studying classic texts to locate ancient sites around the Mediterranean
  • and then he would go out and record these sites by writing down inscriptions, detailed drawings of monuments/architecture
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4
Q

Grand Tour

A

Ideas of the Renaissance spread from Italy across Europe

•Wealthy Europeans went on the Grand Tour of ancient monuments
as a ‘finishing school’

•Often paid people to loot these sites and bought bits home!

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5
Q

Antiquarianism

A
  • Antiquarianism is the collection of antiquities just for the sake of it
  • No careful documentation of context
  • Formed the foundation of Europe’s national museums by the 19th century
  • For example: Lord Elgin’s marbles in the British Museum
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6
Q

National Looting

A

Lord Elgin’s looting of the Parthenon is part of national antiquarianism

•European nations systematically looted antiquities in other countries

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7
Q

Giovanni Battista Belzoni 1778-­1823

A

Famous Looter

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8
Q

Professional Archaeology

A

By late 19th century more systematic and scientific data collection were developed and these became expectations of scientific research worldwide

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9
Q

What is modern archaeology?

A

•Archaeology is the scientific study of the human past through the recovery of material and spatial evidence including material culture

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10
Q

How is archaeology different from looting!

A
  • Scientific study with the goal of interpreting the past
  • Important information comes from the context of ancient materials that we recover through careful excavation, detailed recording and mapping
  • Context is the spatial and temporal association of an object with other objects in a site.
  • Prefer to find objects in situ (in place). This is its provenience
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11
Q

Sources of data for civilizations

A
  • Most information of ancient states comes from archaeology
  • States left fabulous stuff!

•But we are also interested in the materials that people left of their
everyday lives – including the lives of ordinary people

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12
Q

Texts

A
  • Written texts provide information about ancient states
  • Not all states had texts
  • Not all texts deciphered
  • Texts provide insight into how a society worked and what they thought: economy, politics, belief systems, values, poetry, law …
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13
Q

What is a civilization?

A

Civilizations are complex societies that archaeologists usually refer to as states

  • Complexity refers to the complexity of a society’s social, economic and political organization
  • States are fundamentally different from other types of societies in the complexity of their internal organization….
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14
Q

Types of societies

A
  • Societies are organized differently based on
    * how society makes a living (do they produce surplus food, are they mobile or sedentary)
    * its social organization (kinship or classes)
    * how decisions are made (by concensus or by elites)
    * population size and density on the landscape

•Complexity is a description of the levels of organization in these different areas of life: it is not a value judgement

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15
Q

States

A
  • Fundamentally different from other types of societies
  • Kinship is not the main principle of organizing society
  • True government has full authority over all members of society regardless of kinship
  • State authority is backed by force
  • Significant economic specialization
  • Social inequality
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16
Q

Shared elements of ancient states: the current approach

A
  • 2 primary characteristics that are focus of current research:
  • Urban living: all states have densely packed populations
  • Centralized government (the state)
17
Q

City-­states:

A

city as hub of commercial, ritual and social activity with people who have different jobs/status

•Rest of population lived in rural hinterland in smaller settlements – paid taxes to elite but the city was not source of services/craft products

18
Q

Territorial States:

A

cities as political centers where elite/ritual
specialists lived

•Rest of population lived in rural hinterland in smaller settlements – paid taxes to elite but the city was not source of services/craft products

19
Q

Cities in general

A
  • Defined: large, relatively dense settlement with populations numbering in the thousands
  • Central places offering specialized goods and services
  • Interdependence of city/hinterland
  • Archaeological visibility: scale, monumental architecture, internal spatial complexity
20
Q

•Cities require regulation to

A
  • resolve disputes
  • acquire and redistribute resources
  • Build needed infrastructure (irrigation, trade routes)
  • Ideology to legitimate authority & unify population into a system of inequality
21
Q

Centralized political unit

A
  • Nature of governing body varies: despots, kings, councils, priests
  • Monumental architecture includes a state style of art and architecture expressed in palaces, temples, city walls, elaborate tombs, storage facilities, public buildings (theatres)
  • Often have standardized systems of writing and/or notation
22
Q

Origins of agriculture

A

First cities arise about 5500 years ago

  • No single geographic origin – arose in many places around globe
  • Until about 12-­10,000 years ago all people were hunter-­gatherers
  • About 10,000 years ago, and in many parts of the world, people began to domesticate plants and animals
  • The origins of agriculture eventually led to large scale food production that is needed to support urban populations
23
Q

Domesticated plants

A

•Wheat, barley, rye, rice, sorghum, millet, maize are major staples today

All developed in the Neolithic (between 12-­5000 years ago)

  • Produce storable resource
  • Potatoes, yams, taro, bananas also from Neolithic support other large populations
24
Q
  1. V. Gordon Childe: the Urban Revolution
A
  • Viewed culture change as revolutions: urban revolution
  • characterized by invention of metal, emergence of full-­time specialists
  • Lived in cities / supported by food from hinterlands
  • Craft resources obtained by traders through long-­distance trade
  • Economic specialization of workforce = steady pressure to intensify food production = invention of new technologies (irrigation)
  • Central authority controls politics and economy and uses writing/bureaucracy to document taxes , tribute and to organize trade
  • Result: class-­based society less reliant on kinship / unified by religious ideology
  • Rulers were despots/priest kings who built monuments to show their authority

PROBLEMS:

  • Craft specialization more a result than cause of of rise of states
  • Production of surplus in state formation does not tell us why/how surplus production developed in the first place
  • Or why people started to live in cities
25
Q
  1. What caused surplus: Irrigation theories
A
  • Many early states emerge in dry river valleys
  • Breasted suggests that the exceptional fertility of the Nile and the Euphrates floodplains was primary cause of rise of states in these valleys
  • Floods provided new silt/water each year – produced surplus that led to exchange, wealth and the support of specialists
26
Q

Hydraulic states: irrigation more than surplus!

A

Wittfogel’s hydraulic state theory (irrigation leads to central authority)

  • Life in dry river valleys requires the development of a group to organize irrigation and to redistribute surplus production
  • People submit themselves to this authority voluntarily
  • Authority eventually controls other activities: e.g., trade
  • The authority controls water distribution and can divert more water to its own fields, surplus to obtain prestige goods…
  • Authority eventually becomes corrupt

•More recent studies show that Egypt/Mesopotamian communities started irrigation from natural collection basins with small canals
to their fields and controlled their own irrigation long before state control

Current thoughts on irrigation

  • Irrigation is important in many state structures
  • But it took several centuries before rulers took over farmers’ canal systems and built greater irrigation networks
  • Also irrigation systems are found also in wetter conditions -­-­ not just dry ones – Subak system in Bali, Indonesia is integrated into the religious and political system
27
Q
  1. Technology and Trade stimulate states
A
  • Others argue that the need to trade for raw materials and other goods stimulated long-­distance exchange
  • Opportunity for emergent elite to accumulate exotic materials to build prestige and unequal levels of wealth (prestige goods economy)

•Evidence of many chiefdoms that participated in exchange of prestige goods and shared ideologies to create regional and local
influence (interaction spheres)

28
Q
  1. Warfare: Carneiro’s environmental circumscription model
A

•If fertile farmland is bordered by desert, mountains, ocean then it is circumscribed (e.g. farmland is limited)

Farmers settle on the floodplain/fertile lands until all land is taken up

  • The population keeps increasing and puts pressure on food resources
  • Only option is to take other people’s land

•One group takes neighbour’s land by force until all of the land is under one leader (circumscription means people have no where to
run)

  • As each group is conquered it moves into the bottom rung of the hierarchy – gels into classes
  • Ruler serves purpose of increasing agricultural production by taking more land/developing technologies for intensive agriculture (e.g. irrigation)

Problems with Carneiro’s theory
•Not all states emerge in circumscribed environments

  • States engage in warfare, but unclear if warfare is ‘cause’ of state formation (certainly contributes to empire-­building)
  • Urban centers often develop around shrines – powers of place can attract settlers
29
Q

Current Ideas on State Origins

A

Lots of theories, but single causes and universal models are generally discarded

  • Previous models all have elements that are found in many states: irrigation, warfare, long-­distance trade
  • No single push!
  • Most archaeologists now view states as developing gradually overtime and from multiple causes.
30
Q

Social Theories with multiple factors

A
  • Power needs to be created at every level of society
  • Economic power is ability to create specialized workforce & to organize surplus storage and distribution (including trade for prestige goods)
  • Social power requires development of an ideology of social relations and an understanding of the world that bonds a group of unrelated people
  • Political power tied into social and religious ideology represented in symbols, architecture, art that legitimates social inequality and the right of priests/rulers to surplus production and prestige
31
Q

Performance and monumental architecture

A

Core of cities: temples, pyramids, plazas for elaborate ceremonies where ideologies were enacted

  • Religious/secular rulers perform rituals in these settings to show that they were the rightful keepers of the cosmic order
  • Had right to surplus wealth, power and prestige
32
Q

Political Power

A
  • Ideology, symbols, architecture, performance
  • Ability to impose authority through administration and military who are not their kin
  • Had to provide spiritual, economic and physical security for those they governed
  • Needed to be successful in war and diplomacy
  • States were hard to maintain
33
Q

Internal Structures of States

A

Research tends to focus on occupational hierarchy as social difference

  • States and empires were ethnically diverse – created different factions in society
  • Different groups introduced new ideas, technologies, religions, political ideas
  • Sometimes factions seized opportunities to overthrow the state
34
Q

Concept of Cycling States

A

•Explains how internal differences and external competition cause states to rise and fall

New larger polities can develop from state collapse and these can introduce new ways of administration, new ideologies and technology…which can also lead to collapse and a breaking-­down into many new competing states that are economically more sustainable…

•Collapse can result in opportunities…

35
Q

Collapse and sustainability

A

States require enormous organization and resources unlike any other type of society

  • States tend to be fragile
  • No single factor causes states to rise – no single factor causes them to fall

Multiple factors lead to collapse
•Environmental disasters or plagues
•Impact of state on its environment (stressing resources)
•Weak rulers or rulers who fail to control the forces of the cosmos
•Warfare
•Civil war

ARKY 325 (6 decks)

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