The Political Machine: Assembling Sovereignty in the Bronze Age Caucasus (The Rostovtzeff Lectures, 3) - Hardcover

Smith, Adam T.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0691163235 ISBN 13: 9780691163239

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 2015

Synopsis

The Political Machine investigates the essential role that material culture plays in the practices and maintenance of political sovereignty. Through an archaeological exploration of the Bronze Age Caucasus, Adam Smith demonstrates that beyond assemblies of people, polities are just as importantly assemblages of things―from ballots and bullets to crowns, regalia, and licenses. Smith looks at the ways that these assemblages help to forge cohesive publics, separate sovereigns from a wider social mass, and formalize governance―and he considers how these developments continue to shape politics today.

Smith shows that the formation of polities is as much about the process of manufacturing assemblages as it is about disciplining subjects, and that these material objects or "machines" sustain communities, orders, and institutions. The sensibilities, senses, and sentiments connecting people to things enabled political authority during the Bronze Age and fortify political power even in the contemporary world. Smith provides a detailed account of the transformation of communities in the Caucasus, from small-scale early Bronze Age villages committed to egalitarianism, to Late Bronze Age polities predicated on radical inequality, organized violence, and a centralized apparatus of rule.

From Bronze Age traditions of mortuary ritual and divination to current controversies over flag pins and Predator drones, The Political Machine sheds new light on how material goods authorize and defend political order.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

"This provocative and timely book identifies three main phases in the development of ‘sovereign assemblage' and provides a compelling account of social change in Caucasian societies between the fourth millennium and the Iron Age. Peppered with erudite case studies, this original and important book will be widely read and used by archaeologists, anthropologists, and art historians."--David Wengrow, University College London

"In The Political Machine, Smith presents a cogent and sophisticated paradigm to explain over three millennia of material, social, and political developments in the southern Caucasus. He successfully traces his conceptual agenda through a diversity of archaeological cases across a wide span of time and territory."--Michael Frachetti, Washington University in St. Louis

About the Author:

Adam T. Smith is professor of anthropology and chair of the Department of Anthropology at Cornell University. He is the author of The Political Landscape and the coauthor of The Archaeology and Geography of Ancient Transcaucasian Societies, Volume 1.

About this edition

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0691163235
• ISBN 13: 9780691163239
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 264