Architectural Spaces and Hybrid Practices in Ancient Northern Mesopotamia (original) (raw)
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Ancient northern Mesopotamia reveals the presence of southern Uruk-style material cultural elements along with indigenous styles in fourth millennium B.C.E. In this study, I argue that we need to focus on the ways northern Mesopotamian societies constructed 'cultural difference' through an analysis of the meanings of southern-style elements within northern contexts. I further argue that an investigation of culturallyparticular ideas of "own" and "other" should involve a relationship between analytic and folk categories of cultural boundaries.
Stanford Journal of Archaeology, 2007
Ancient northern Mesopotamia reveals the presence of southern Uruk-style material cultural elements along with indigenous styles in fourth millennium B.C.E. In this study, I argue that we need to focus on the ways northern Mesopotamian societies constructed ‘cultural difference’ through an analysis of the meanings of southern-style elements within northern contexts. I further argue that an investigation of culturally particular ideas of “own” and “other” should involve a relationship between analytic and folk categories of cultural boundaries.
WNC2024 , 2024
The northern Mesopotamian Early Neolithic Period (Pre-Pottery Neolithic A) serves as a basis for the study of symbolic and ritual iconography, as well as important information for the study art in this region. However, the interpretation of these finds is mostly carried out on the concepts of belief or ritual with a symbolic emphasis, however very little research has been carried out on the iconographic features, object form, and the regional distribution of these objects. After recent archaeological studies in northern Mesopotamia (Northern Iraq, North Syria and the Southeastern Anatolia Region), the number of known settlements that were inhabited in the earliest stages of the Aceramic Neolithic period is increasing, and new data is being revealed on painted art in this region. Although these findings are interpreted mostly in a symbolic and socio-cultural context, it is known that the concept of iconography in the region varies within itself. In this context, it is important to examine the regional distribution of the archaeological finds, which are important for the study of Early Neolithic art in northern Mesopotamia, the regional distribution rather than the symbolic interpretations, and the introduction of regional similarities and differences.
Today, there continues to be an enormous epistemological gap between the lively discussion on the phenomenon of cultural hybridization in cultural anthropology and the reality of methodological approaches in archaeological interpretation. The diversity of human interaction and the hybridization processes connected therewith, on the one hand, and the fragmentary and silent character of archaeological source material on the other have been seen as insuperable obstacles to the translation of this concept into a practical method for archaeology. In my contribution, I shall attempt to overcome these barriers by breaking down a complex anthropological discourse into components that may be useful for archaeological sources. My aim is to unravel hybridization processes, which I call processes of entanglement, into distinct stages and consider the potential of each stage to be materialized in the archaeological record. I shall further attempt to distinguish between the entanglement of objects and the entanglement of social practices, because foreign, but in their materiality still unchanged, objects can be used in already entangled social practices. Subsequently, I shall examine what stage of the process of entanglement has given rise to an entangled object or social practice. Finally, the application of the concept of hybridization in recent studies on the Late Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean will be reviewed and my own approach demonstrated on the basis of a case study.
Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 2013
Mudbrick technology and permanent architecture are Neolithic hallmarks but their origins are not well understood. By adopting a symmetrical approach to the examination of building materials, and contextualizing these materials within a cultural knowledge of resources and other concurrent social practices, this paper challenges environmentally determined approaches to explain the adoption of mudbrick technology during the PPNA in Anatolia, Upper Euphrates and the Levant. This research illustrates the weak correlation between architectural form and building material, suggesting that although nature provides resources, it is culture that dictates architectural form and material use. It is argued that the human-constructed environment became normalized throughout the PPNA and the social complexities of village life created a conceptual shift towards an artificial environment, supported by other changes in symbolic behavior. If building materials, such as mudbricks, were considered objects reflexive of human behavior, then we can access the complex and entangled relationship between people and things. Furthermore, the choice of building materials and their use in architecture can be considered codes of social practice and even ideology. As material culture, architecture becomes a metaphor for human engagement and symbolic communication.
Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 2011
The materialization of religious beliefs is a complex process involving an active dialectic between ideas and practices that are physically engraved in the artefactual remains of ritual activities. However, this process is relevant only if it is based on a contextual association of elements (e.g. the performance of ceremonial activities, the creation of symbolic objects, the construction of ceremonial spaces) that validates the meaning of each component as part of a whole. Thus, archaeologists should try to connect these elements to form a network of meanings that stimulated the senses of ancient individuals in framing their cognitive perception of the divine. The study here presented will thus tackle such general theoretical tenets focusing particularly on the importance of the materialization of religious beliefs in constructing the ideological and economic domain of small-scale societies in rural contexts. In so doing, these topics will be confronted and developed through the analysis and interpretation of the archaeological data obtained from the Middle Bronze Age (c. 2000-1600 BC) architectural complex at the northern Mesopotamian site of Hirbemerdon Tepe, located along the upper Tigris river valley region in modern southeastern Turkey.(Received March 23 2010)(Accepted May 19 2010)(Revised September 28 2010)(Online publication January 31 2011)
Between the Real and Ideal: Efficacy in an Ancient Mesopotamian Building Ritual
NUMEN, 2024
This article investigates how ritual transforms the ordinary into something extraordinary. It is the capacity of ritual to differentiate, and to be differentiated from other activities, that provides a group with a framework for seeing what they are doing as being meaningfully different than ordinary. Without the proper focusing lensritualization-special nonordinary acts and objects can look very mundane indeed. Furthermore, there is often a stark contrast between what ritual actually does, and what is claimed is being done. This study analyzes a first millennium BCE ritual from Mesopotamia-attested both archaeologically and textually-that deals with preparing and manufacturing various materials and paraphernalia necessary for laying a temple's foundations, to underscore (1) the fundamental utility of these notions in broadly studying ritual, (2) the processes and mechanisms that transform ordinary materials into special, perhaps "sacred," products, and (3) how ritual merges the gap between the real and ideal.