Settlement and Society: Essays Dedicated to Robert McCormick Adams

Elizabeth C. Stone

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Series: Ideas, Debates, and Perspectives 3

ISBN: 978-1-931745-32-1

Publication Date: January 1, 2007

Price: OUT OF PRINT, eBook $65

This volume of essays dedicated to Robert McCormick Adams reflects both the breadth of his research and the select themes upon which he focused his attention. These essays written by his students and disciples focus on issues in Near Eastern archaeology but range as far afield as the Indus Valley and Mesoamerica. They are also concentrate on aspects of early complex society, but some refer back to the late Neolithic and others forward to Islamic times. The key foci of Adams’ work are reflected in this collection: ecology, frontiers, urbanism, trade and technology are all explored. Yet in spite of the breadth of the scope of this volume, the various intellectual threads pioneered by Adams serve to tie the volume together. These include the use of multiple lines of evidence to attack problems, the use of a comparative approach – including the use of ethnographic analogy–as a means of understanding the development of early states, the importance of the continuum of settlement between city dwellers, farmers, marsh dwellers and pastoralists, and an overall appreciation of cultural ecology.

Table of Contents

  • Introduction by Elizabeth C. Stone
  • Ch. 01: Landscape Archaeology in Mesopotamia: Past, Present, and Future by Nicholas Kouchoukos and Tony Wilkinson
  • Ch. 02: Archaeological Surveys and Mesopotamian History by Hans J. Nissen
  • Ch. 03: KLM to CORONA: A Bird’s-Eye View of Cultural Ecology and Early Mesopotamian Urbanization by Jennifer R. Pournelle
  • Ch. 04: Cycles of Settlement in the Khorramabad Valley in Luristan, Iran by Frank Hole
  • Ch. 05: Harappan Geoarchaeology Reconsidered: Holocene Landscapes and Environments of the Greater Indus Plain by Joseph Schuldenrein, Rita Wright, and Mohammed Afzal Khan
  • Ch. 06: Representing Abundance: The Visual Dimension of the Agrarian State by Irene J. Winter
  • Ch. 07: Resisting Empire: Elam in the First Millennium BC by Elizabeth Carter
  • Ch. 08: The Lattimore Model and Hatti’s Kaska Frontier by Paul Zimansky
  • Ch. 09: Ancient Agency: Using Models of Intentionality to Understand the Dawn of Despotism by Henry T. Wright
  • Ch. 10: City and Countryside in Third-Millennium Southern Babylonia by Piotr Steinkeller
  • Ch. 11: The Mesopotamian Urban Experience by Elizabeth C. Stone
  • Ch. 12: The Archaeology of Early Administrative Systems in Mesopotamia by Mitchell S. Rothman
  • Ch. 13: Islamic Archaeology and the “Land behind Baghdad” by Donald Whitcomb
  • Ch. 14: The Urban Organization of Teotihuacan, Mexico by George L. Cowgill
  • Ch. 15: The Harappan Settlement of Gujarat by Gregory L. Possehl
  • Ch. 16: A Tale of Two Oikumenai: Variation in the Expansionary Dynamics of ˤUbaid and Uruk Mesopotamia by Gil J. Stein and Rana Özbal
  • Ch. 17: The Sumerian Takeoff by Guillermo Algaze
  • Ch. 18: Transformative Impulses in Late Bronze Age Technology: A Case Study from the Amuq Valley, Southern Turkey by K. Aslıhan Yener

Settlement and Society: Essays Dedicated to Robert McCormick Adams