Building Walls, Social Groups and Empires: A Study of Political Power and Compliance in the Neo-Assyrian Period (original) (raw)
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Orient 54, 2024
A workshop called "Historical Studies on the Rule of Provinces in the Ancient Near Eastern Empires: Synthesising Philological and Archaeological Studies," to be held at Rikkyo University, was originally planned for 26 and 27 March 2020. Thirteen scholars from institutions in Germany, the UK, the US, and Japan were supposed to participate in it. However, the workshop could not be held due to the COVID-19 pandemic and related travel restrictions. In this situation, most of the scholars submitted their papers and/or presentations and Shuich Hasegawa, Karen Radner, and Shigeo Yamada read and viewed them on 26 March 2020. Consequently, the editors decided to publish the results of the workshop and issued a collection of papers that included six archaeological articles and three philological articles in the same year. I admire the editors' intensive work. In this book review, I provide a short summary of each article and make a few comments on them. 1. Mark Altaweel, "The Importance of Flat Archaeological Sites in the Age of Empires and New Digital Methods for Their Identification and Analysis: A Case Study from the Peshdar Plain in Iraqi Kurdistan" (pp. 7-23). Altaweel points out that numerous settlements were constructed on relatively flat landscapes in the age of empires in the first millennium BCE, but it is difficult to find them using traditional surveys and remote satellite sensing data. He suggests that machinelearning techniques, the use of point pattern analysis (PPA) of stone debris and graph analyses are helpful for detecting such sites. To demonstrate the value of these new digital methods, the author presents a case study conducted in the Dinka Settlement Complex on the Peshdar Plain in Iraqi Kurdistan. The following error on p. 19 should be corrected: subheading "4.1 Graph Analysis" should read "4.2 Graph Analysis." 2. Shuichi Hasegawa, "The Southern Levant in the Shadow of Imperial Powers: Tel Rekhesh in the Late Iron Age" (pp. 25-43). Hasegawa mentions the lack of historical research on the northern part of the southern Levant from the latter half of the eighth to fourth centuries BCE, when the Assyrian Empire, Neo-Babylonian Empire and Achaemenid Persia flourished. To respond to this issue, he analyses the results of excavations at Tel Rekhesh in the eastern Lower Galilee conducted in 2006-2010 and 2013-2017. He points out that the monumental building complex unearthed from the mound's crest resembles the "courtyard structure" of the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian periods and that the artefacts excavated from the site indicate that Tel Rekhesh's inhabitants during the two periods "came from Mesopotamia or at least had a close relationship with the region." He suggests that the building complex functioned as an administrative centre, a
COMMUNICATIONAL PROCEDURES AND ADMINISTRATIVE STRUCTURES IN THE NEO-ASSYRIAN EMPIRE
The random character of the Neo-Assyrian sources has stimulated, particularly in the last years, the research of appropriate models applicable to the interpretation of the history of the empire. This tendency, permeating as well other sectors of ancient Near Eastern studies, is to be considered positively and has revived the discussion about political institutions. 1 Epistolary texts and inscriptions have been studied aiming at tracing the outline of a political system based on patronage and at clarifying the functioning of characteristic structures such as the bīt bēli. 2 Together with the inscriptions of client rulers, which share, at least at the formal surface, the ideological perspective of the dominant power, these texts have been analysed in the framework of the Sargonids' cul-* This article is the first part of a study grown out from the workshop "Archives and Administration in the Neo-Assyrian empire", held in Verona in October 2005, and represents the revised version of the introductory communication presented there. It has largely profited from successive discussions on the topic also in occasion of a subsequent meeting of the group in march 2007. I thank M. Luukko for providing me with the new version of some Nimrud letters he his preparing and F.M. Fales and G.B. Lanfranchi for stimulating discussions on the topic.
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