Comparative Civilizations (Archaeology)

The concept of civilization is not unambiguously defined, which leads to a significant variation in approaches up to the denial of the civilizational approach. This concept is conditional and largely subjective, so that in different systems, the same people fall into different civilizations. In addition, changes in the analyzed civilizations over time are often combined with the allocation of their static criteria, which increases the subjectivity of results. In this regard, it is reasonable to carry out the analysis of local civilizations in two aspects, dynamic (changes in time) and static (a "snapshot"). In addition, it seems promising to develop a multifactorial approach to the analysis of similarity levels for different ethnic groups, based on social characters, which would provide a more realistic picture. Preliminary comparison shows a higher similarity between the Tibetan and Mongolian ethnic groups than with other groups in the terms of key characters of religion, social and psychological characteristics, customs, languages, folklore, traditional views on nature, traditional economy, clothing, fine arts, jewelry, singing and music, as well as family rites. This allows us distinguishing a separate Tibetan-Mongolian civilization.

The newly commissioned series, ‘Global Perspectives on Ancient Mediterranean Archaeology’, is excited to solicit high-quality research relating to the archaeology of the ancient Mediterranean world. The series’ remit includes the period from the Mediterranean Bronze Age through the Byzantine period (c. 3200 BCE – 1453 CE). Although nominally focused on the Mediterranean Sea and areas which immediately border it, the series also welcomes studies on areas slightly further afield which are linked to the Sea by cultural, social, economic, religious, or political connections, and where the Mediterranean zone is directly relevant. It will include both the presentation of new archaeological material as well as syntheses and discussions of existing material and work, and volumes may represent either monographs or edited collections (stand-alone, or the result of specialist workshops). Although focused on the material culture of the region, the series also explicitly encourages the union of archaeological and historical material wherever possible and appropriate. A guiding principle of the series would be the inclusive appreciation of all available material from a particular area, time, and culture, even if the primary focus is on the archaeological aspects. Finally, as suggested by its name, the series is particularly interested in publishing works which adopt a broad comparative and cross-cultural approach, as well as those which bring together concepts and themes more common in the study of archaeology from elsewhere in the world (most notably the Pacific and Australasia) with those from the Old World. In a connected theme, the series is also keen to promote concepts of connectivity and networks which transcend normal regional and geographic limits.

Editors:
Jeremy Armstrong – University of Auckland (js.armstrong@auckland.ac.nz)
Gijs Tol – University of Melbourne (gijs.tol@unimelb.edu.au)

Board:
Amelia Brown – University of Queensland
Lieve Donnellan – University of Melbourne
Elizabeth Greene - University of Western Ontario
Ray Laurence – Macquarie University
Nicolas Monteix – Rouen University
Rebecca Phillipps – University of Auckland
Jeroen Poblome – KU Leuven
Fernando Quesada Sanz - Autonomous University of Madrid
Christopher Smith – University of St Andrews

Qoraalkani waxa uu ka warramayaa duugidda ilbaxnimooyinka dunida iyo hardanka ka jira. Waxa kale oo tilmaamayaa sida Soomaalidu wax badan oo lahayd oo ay hagradeen, misena aanay u dadaalin ay u aasmeen oo maanta dadyow kale u sheegtaan. Si loo helo qoraallo rasmi ah oo ka hadlaya ilbaxnimooyinka Soomaalidii hore ayaa ay ka fursan weyday in qoraalkani noqdo ibofur dhankaas la xidhiidha.

Collapse, societal failure, doom and dystopia are popular topics, both in scholarship and in much wider spheres of cultural consumption. The decline or disappearance of human societies has been a point of interest for as long as people have been aware of the vestiges of cultures past, from colonial sensationalism concerning the ruins of apparently mighty civilizations through to early scholarship emphasizing historical process (e.g. Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 1776–1789). Modern studies of collapse have highlighted the topic as a historical and anthropological problem of comparative interest in the archaeology of complex societies (see the foundational works of Tainter 1988; Yoffee & Cowgill 1988)...

Scholarship on premodern ruling elites tends to minimize the complexity of ancient politics and to focus on the decisions of individual kings and their charismatic swaying of entire populations. This dissertation departs from this tendency by investigating the exercise of power by the governments of premodern complex societies, or how ancient politicians organized their institutions. I argue the politics of ancient civilizations may best be studied by focussing on their regime: the political community which coalesced when rulers assembled their allies within the seat of government. This approach emphasizes practices of communication between a ruling body and its political network, as reflected by the exchange of information and goods.
Among premodern complex societies ruled by divine kingship, the regime is best described as a royal court, whose architectural institution corresponds to a regal palace. In order to address this anthropological political model, I examine the multi-dimensional archaeological record of the regal palace of La Corona, a small polity of northwest Guatemala that emerged during the Classic Period of Maya civilization (AD 250-950). I rely on an assemblage of complementary datasets – architecture, macro-artifacts, hieroglyphic monuments, micro-artifacts, geochemical elements, and macro-botanical remains – to study how the La Corona royal court exercised political power.
I study the last three construction phases of the north section of the La Corona regal palace and their two-century-long occupation to address a set of pragmatic questions. By examining residences, political stages, passageways, administrative space,
ancillary buildings, and middens, I seek to understand how Classic Maya politicians relied on economic and ritualized exchanges to effectively manage their regime. In addition, thanks to the rich historical record of La Corona and to a fine-tuned architectural sequence, I explore how the changing historical and geopolitical contexts of this polity transformed its government.
Through this rich diachronic empirical case-study, I build upon and contribute to an anthropological archaeology of politics, to ancient political economy, and to Classic Maya historical archaeology. In addition, I wish to highlight why the study of ancient politics may be relevant for us today, and perhaps, our near future.

This book provides a comparative study of the earliest urban civilisations of the Maya lowlands and the Greek mainland. The focus lies on the art styles of the Late Preclassic lowland Maya and Mycenaean Greece. Building on research from previous comparative studies, the approach used here seeks to combine more traditional iconographic approaches with more recent models on metaphor and the social agency of things. By comparing Maya and Mycenaean art styles through the three aspects of metaphor, semiotics and praxis, their differences and similarities are made clear. The book shows art to have played a more active role in the development of the earliest urban civilisations, rather than passively reflecting economic and political trends. In that way, the social role of art provides a key to understanding the relations between the different factors in the development of the two societies, as they played out at different temporal and geographical scales. To understand this, the notion of distinct Maya and Mycenaean ‘material worlds’, involving both materials and ideas, is proposed, with consequences for models about the earliest urban civilisations in general.

To determine the usefulness of comparative studies to understand Mycenaean palatial society, it is first necessary to discuss early civilisations as a comparative category. In this regard it is important to note that the level of generalisation concerns a specific set of societies with similar emergent properties, which are subject to two complementary forms of evaluation. Firstly, models of early civilisations need to correspond to the archaeological and historical records of single cases, and, secondly, there needs to be a cross-cultural coherence to the models used. The interpretive strength of a comparative category depends on its success in this balancing act. Comparative studies are of limited use for evaluating the correspondence between models and data for specific societies. At most the differences in available sources between distinct cases might reveal biases, being the result of a reliance on a limited set of sources. The use of analogy to make inferences for a case based on another case is not comparative, and is not used here. The significant use of comparative categories lies in the coherence they bring to model building, as well as the stimulus provided by interpretive debates on particular aspects of early civilisations.

The rapid development of early cities as ceremonial and economic centers affected their hinterlands profoundly.  The construction of the city and of the sacred precinct, which required unprecedented amounts of labor, were themselves events and performances, creating arenas for repeated performance. These new spaces were closely tied into the centers of population, and drew population from hinterlands, which became “ruralized,” depending on cities for most things apart from agricultural subsistence. In all of this elites played the primary role, while performances enhanced social solidarity and mitigated the societies’ deep divisions in power and wealth. In this chapter we explore themes that arise from comparison of our three case studies: Egypt, the Maya, and Southeast Asia.  In their earlier period, those polities conformed to the city-state type, but some of them acquired an expansionist territorial character in 9th–15th centuries CE.

The inhabited environment is crucial to global challenges. Although the humanities enrich our understanding of how human beings adapt their environment, they are underrepresented in global development debates. As the availability of digital data and technology rapidly grows, the opportunities to directly relate humanities research to the social and environmental sciences improves. Notably, in tropical archaeology, Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) is causing a 'revolution' by revealing huge swaths of urban landscapes. This new data source and the perspectives it affords, are changing the role and relevance of (historical) humanities knowledge in relation to global development. The Digital Humanities (DH) and Geohumanities are emergent fields with increasing resources. They invite exploration of how to harness and nurture interdisciplinary and comparative contributions. By embracing new digital data sources, acquisition, and manipulation techniques, Digital Humanities have the potential to contextualise and inform how current developmental practice is shaping socio-cultural inhabitation of the landscape.