Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History最新文献

{"title":"Outside the Pale: Marginality and Liminality in the Bronze Age Near East. Introduction","authors":"S. Cohen, Jana Mynářová","doi":"10.1515/janeh-2022-0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/janeh-2022-0009","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Studies of the Bronze Age in the ancient world traditionally have focused on mainstream populations, together with their social organization, and the economic subsistence strategies implemented by them. As a result, those people who lived on the edges of society, whether defined geographically, socially, demographically, or economically, have received correspondingly less attention. Yet, peoples on the margins of mainstream populations fulfilled roles integral to the primary economic and social systems in Bronze Age cultures in the ancient Near Eastern and North African world. This concept of marginal and/or liminal groups in the ancient world, the importance of examining them, and different methods of addressing them, are presented here, as the introduction to the collected papers on marginality and liminality in the Bronze Age world of the ancient Near East and North Africa in this special issue of the Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History.","PeriodicalId":174647,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History","volume":"18 2 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130915643","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Defining Marginality and Liminality for the Study of the Ancient Near East","authors":"Shawn Bubel","doi":"10.1515/janeh-2021-0016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/janeh-2021-0016","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Marginality and liminality are concepts that are used in the study of the ancient Near East, although formal definitions for these terms are rarely given. This paper explores the history of the uses of these terms in social theory, discussing the origins of the terms in the writings of early twentieth-century thinkers such as Georg Simmel, Robert Ezra Park, and Victor Turner. It details how these ideas and concepts were debated by psychologists, sociologists, and anthropologists throughout the twentieth century, when these terms were adopted into Near Eastern studies. While these concepts were defined by social theorists, investigations of the archaeological, textual, and art-historical evidence from the ancient Near East show that they well reflect emic conceptualizations. Examples from Near Eastern contexts demonstrate the benefits of using flexible and multi-vocalic conceptualizations of marginality and liminality that still recognize the distinctiveness of these two issues. The paper concludes by offering different frameworks for applying these concepts to the study of the Bronze Age Near East.","PeriodicalId":174647,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History","volume":"19 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-08-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114989861","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Debt and Credit: Entangling the Marginal and Liminal in the Non-monetary Economies of Bronze Age Ugarit","authors":"K. Mcgeough","doi":"10.1515/janeh-2021-0011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/janeh-2021-0011","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In a non-monetary economy, one of the main mechanisms for the storage of wealth is debt. For people living on the margins of the major urban societies of the Bronze Age Near East, debt and credit offered means of participating in larger aspects of economic life yet simultaneously allowed elites to gain access to their bodies, their family members, and their property as means of wealth storage. This paper seeks to explore how debt and credit were used to entangle marginal and liminal groups but also, perhaps, offered these same groups opportunities for resistance or for integration into larger polities. Textual evidence for debt and credit can allow us the opportunity to gain access to different information about the lives of marginal and liminal people. Using the Late Bronze Age Syrian city of Ugarit as a case study, this paper will explore some of the possible ways that the debt and credit mechanisms attested in the administrative record reflect practices through which marginal and liminal individuals became integrated into a larger Ugaritic society.","PeriodicalId":174647,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-08-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122442203","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Negev in the Intermediate Bronze Age: Questions of Subsistence, Trade, and Status","authors":"Susan L. Cohen","doi":"10.1515/janeh-2021-0012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/janeh-2021-0012","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The northern Negev—a region both geographically peripheral and environmentally marginal for human habitation—experienced increased settlement and activity in the Intermediate Bronze Age in the southern Levant (ca. 2500–2000/1950 BCE). Most interpretations link this phenomenon with Egyptian demand for copper and the accompanying development of trade networks that transported this valuable resource. However, the function of these networks, the subsistence of the peoples who operated them, and the social and economic systems that supported them remain unclear. This paper examines the means of subsistence and sustenance of the populations of these sites in the northern Negev, together with their role in supporting connections between Egypt and the southern Levant, and suggests that while their location may have been marginal, their identity and role in the social and economic system of the Intermediate Bronze Age southern Levant was not.","PeriodicalId":174647,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History","volume":"14 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-08-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132150987","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Liminal People(s) in the Late Bronze Age Levant? A New Light on Sherden (šerdanu)","authors":"Jana Mynářová","doi":"10.1515/janeh-2021-0010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/janeh-2021-0010","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article focuses on issues related to political liminality in the environment of the Levant in the Late Bronze Age. It first defines the term and then identifies key population groups that can be considered politically liminal. The main focus is on the so-called Sherden (Akk. šerdanu, širdanu), a group of persons and individuals, which are found in ancient Near Eastern and Egyptian sources spanning several centuries during the second half of the second half of the second millennium BCE. Whether as incoming enemies or as individuals settled on Egyptian soil, they represent one of the key phenomena of the Egyptian New Kingdom. But who were the Sherden and how did their role in the ancient Near Eastern and Egyptian societies change over time?","PeriodicalId":174647,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History","volume":"12 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-08-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124033988","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Not Marginal, But Marginalised. The ‘Pan-Grave’ Archaeological Culture, Pharaonic Egypt, and Egyptology","authors":"Aaron de Souza","doi":"10.1515/janeh-2021-0015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/janeh-2021-0015","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper focusses on the so-called “Pan-Grave” archaeological culture, and the extent to which communities attributed to it can or should be considered “marginal” based on the available archaeological and historical evidence. It will be argued that communities that archaeologists identify as “Pan-Grave” were likely to have been small and hence a minority in terms of population size, but that the wide distribution of evidence suggests that “Pan-Grave culture” was a recognisable component of the ancient Egyptian socio-cultural landscape. The frequency and variety of evidence for contact and exchange between the Pan-Grave and Egyptian cultural spheres points towards close social ties rather than Pan-Grave being marginal to the ancient Egyptian “core”. At the same time, it is proposed that Pan-Grave culture—and Nubian cultures in general—have been marginalised by Egyptology as an academic discipline, which has a tradition of implicitly (and explicitly) using ancient rhetoric to justify its own conception of ancient Egyptian dominance. It is also argued that a re-framing of “Pan-Grave” communities as an integral part of the cultural fabric of pharaonic Egypt would encourage Egyptology as a discipline to question its own perception of what defines “Egyptian” from both ancient and academic perspectives.","PeriodicalId":174647,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130054640","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Many Arts of Writing a Babylonian National History","authors":"Odette Boivin","doi":"10.1515/janeh-2021-0018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/janeh-2021-0018","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Any discussion about historiography in Mesopotamia leads sooner or later—and it is usually sooner—to the question of genre. This article explores aspects of this question by examining how, in the wake of political, intellectual and cultural developments which marked the late second and the beginning of the first millennium BCE, various streams of historiographic practice converged towards the writing of a Babylonian national history, or rather, national histories. In order to do so, three roughly contemporary sources, written in different milieus, are discussed as instances of this phenomenon: the Chronicle of Ancient Kings A, the Chronicle Concerning the Early Years of Nebuchadnezzar II, and the Imgur-Enlil Inscription of Nabopolassar. The contents, form, sources used, and intentions of writing of each of them are evaluated, and a number of shared themes and approaches are identified and proposed as elements of seventh/sixth century national history writing in Babylonia.","PeriodicalId":174647,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History","volume":"18 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122226579","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Sacred Spaces and Liminal Behavior in Levantine Temples in Antis","authors":"Steven E Falconer, Patricia L. Fall","doi":"10.1515/janeh-2021-0013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/janeh-2021-0013","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Temples in antis provide clearly defined liminal spaces for ritual behaviors that are readily recognizable both textually and archaeologically. This architectural form and the religious tradition it embodied were remarkably widespread geographically and temporally, spanning the Levant and Greater Syria from the end of the Early Bronze Age until the early Iron Age. Although the Southern Levant has been characterized as highly urbanized during the Middle Bronze Age, settlement pattern analysis suggests that it was fragmented into numerous polities, as documented subsequently in the Late Bronze Age Amarna Letters. In contrast, Levantine towns and villages shared a common religious tradition marked by ritual behaviors within clearly marked liminal spaces. These behaviors are readily recognizable archaeologically at Tell el-Hayyat, Jordan, where they are framed in temple enclosures by distinct architecturally-defined boundaries, and signaled by feasting on sheep and goat, and deposition of copper-alloy figurines, tools and metallurgical remains. These lines of material and architectural evidence, and the liminal behaviors they reflect, linked villages and towns in localized Levantine polities, as exemplified among a cluster of settlements in the northern Jordan Valley. Parallel sequences of four temples in antis at Tell el-Hayyat and nearby Pella (ancient Piḫilu in the Amarna Letters) developed in tandem through the Middle Bronze Age, suggesting that temple construction and rebuilding was coordinated between town and village communities. Further examples of temples in antis and patterns of material deposition and liminal behavior suggest that this temple form and its associated ritual tradition were spread throughout the Southern Levant as part of a much larger and longer-lived cultural tradition extending across Greater Syria, which has been characterized as a Middle Bronze Age cultural koinè. Thus, despite its fractious local political environment, Middle Bronze Age Levantine society was grounded in a remarkably broad cultural tradition marked by the sacred spaces and liminal behaviors associated with temples in antis.","PeriodicalId":174647,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History","volume":"13 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116986771","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Hard Times for Sippar Women: Three Late Old Babylonian Cases","authors":"Seth Richardson","doi":"10.1515/janeh-2021-0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/janeh-2021-0009","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Despite important work on issues of gender and representation with regard to women’s history in Mesopotamia over the past generation or two, less direct attention has been devoted to the hard reality of women’s socio-economic inequality in this starkly patriarchal culture. The present contribution takes up three examples of groups of women living in varying degrees of hardship and deprivation in the Late Old Babylonian period: slave, poor nadītums, and dependents. I analyze small corpora of evidence about these women to make two basic points: first, Mesopotamian women were subject to structural inequities which manifested themselves in repeatable ways (without requiring that we call them “weak” or “powerless”); second, despite consistent and persistent inequality, women’s histories were yet as mutable and subject to change as those of men. It is no more effective to write the histories of only “strong women” than it is to write them of only “great men.” Intersectional issues such as socio-economic difference must be taken into account to arrive at a better working picture of this or any society.","PeriodicalId":174647,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124230760","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Princely Employments in the Reign of Shulgi","authors":"T. Sharlach","doi":"10.1515/janeh-2020-0027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/janeh-2020-0027","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article considers the sons of Shulgi, especially those who never became crown prince, and what can be known of their employments as adults. Well documented as various types of military officers and on diplomatic missions, as well as in administrative roles, Shulgi’s sons appear to have had many leadership roles in his reign. However, perhaps in an effort to keep any one from becoming too powerful, the sons were constantly rotated in and out of positions.","PeriodicalId":174647,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History","volume":"39 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122912635","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}