The Rise and Consolidation of Assyrian Control on the Northwestern Territories (original) (raw)
Related papers
Imperial Peripheries in the Neo-Assyrian Period, 2019
A brief look at the history of archaeology in the Ancient Near East can help explain why excavators initially categorized objects found at Hasanlu as either "Local" or "Assyrian/Assyrianizing" and why this notion has persisted in the literature, particularly those studies published between the beginning of the project in 1956 and the publication of East of Assyria in 1989. When the Hasanlu Expedition began its work in the 1950s, perhaps the most important and newsworthy excavation in the Near East was that of Nimrud, begun in 1949 by Sir Max Mallowan and the British School of Archaeology in Iraq. The extraordinary finds at Nimrud, which included hundreds of luxury objects made in Assyria, North Syria, and the Levant, supplemented and clarified the Assyrian archaeological discoveries of the nineteenth century. The Nimrud excavations were detailed in scholarly publications and heralded in the British popular press. 6 The participation of the Metropolitan Museum of Art at Nimrud and its 1955 exhibition of "treasure" obtained by the Met in partage brought a great deal of attention in the United States to the excavations and to Assyria itself. 7 By the time excavations began at Hasanlu in 1956, Assyrian and North Syrian material culture were well-published, extensively researched, and of great interest to scholarly and popular audiences alike. It is not surprising, then, that the excavators of Hasanlu used Assyrian objects as comparanda for their discoveries and Assyrian royal inscriptions when probing the identity of the citizens of Hasanlu. Strongly disposed toward Assyrian material culture, excavators determined that Hasanlu was "full of " Assyrian and Assyrianizing objects and, to a lesser extent, North Syrian objects (Dyson and Muscarella 1989, 3).
in Gavagnin K., Palermo R. (eds), Imperial Connections. Interactions and Expansions from Assyria to the Roman Period. Proceedings of the 5th "Broadening Horizons" Conference, Udine 5-8 June 2017 (West & East Monografie 3), Trieste: EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, pp. 165-182., 2020
The aim of this paper is to give some insights on the results coming from the renewed excavations in Zincirli, in south-eastern Turkey, carried out by the Chicago-Tübingen Expedition, in order to analyze and bring new data to the discussion of the mutual relationships between Assyria and local communities in the northern Levant during the period of expansion of the kings of Assur into the Syrian and Anatolian far West. The northern Levant in the first half of the first millennium BC provides interesting case studies for the various levels of interaction between Assyria and the neighbouring regions. According to historical sources the region between southern Anatolia and northern Syria is included into the boundaries of the Neo Assyrian empire, with a remarkable increase of land control by the central power. Through the analysis of the archaeological data from the site of Zincirli, ancient capital of the kingdom of Sam’al, we try to identity, and see in which degree, intercultural processes can be detected and explained through the support of material culture. Luwian and Aramaean city-states, with their peculiar culture deeply rooted into Syrian Bronze Age and Anatolian background, confront themselves with the impact of Assyrian expansion from the campaigns of Ashurnasirpal II to the definitive inclusion into the empire by Tiglath-pileser III and Sargon II. Can we assume elements of material culture as an asset to identify different levels of identities and interaction through this outgoing process?
2014
Field research undertaken in recent decades in northern Syria and southeastern Turkey has significantly improved our understanding of the material culture and settlement patterns in the area, offering new evidence that merits discussion. Although the new stratigraphic sequences brought to light in the recent excavations have enhanced the archaeological profile of some sites, a comprehensive picture of the composition and development of the settlements and ceramic assemblages during the second half of the second millennium BC is still lacking, mainly due to the very limited number, and the limited size, of settlements excavated to date. One of the key issues in the debate on the second millennium BC in northern Mesopotamia concerns the nature and development of the settlement pattern at the time of the Middle Assyrian conquest and the changes that occurred under the Mittani and Assyrian hegemonies in the upper Khabur and upper Tigris valleys.
The history of the Middle-Assyrian Empire
This article aims to re-evaluate the history of the Middle Assyrian Empire by looking at new archaeological data and by critically re-examining the textual evidence. Special attention will be given to concepts like ‘Empire’, the ‘rise’ and ‘fall’, and related models of social organisation. It argues that while the territory controlled by the Assyrian kings remained more constant than normally argued, its internal organisation was more flexible.