Interweaving Worlds: Systemic Interactions in Eurasia, 7th to 1st Millennia BC

How do we understand the systemic interactions that took place in and between different regions of prehistoric Eurasia and their consequences for individuals, groups and regions on both a theoretical and empirical basis? Such interactions helped create economic and cultural spheres that were mutually dependent yet distinct. This volume, emerging from a conference hosted in memory of Professor Andrew Sherratt in Sheffield in April 2008 and in honor of his contributions to large-scale economic history, presents some diverse archaeological responses to this problem. These range from from "world-systems" through "ritual economies" to "textile rivalries" and address the challenge of documenting, explaining and understanding the progressively more interwoven worlds of prehistoric Eurasia.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction (Sue Sherratt)
2. Global Development (Andrew Sherratt)

The Warp: Global systems and interactions
3. Evolutions and Temporal Delimitations of Bronze Age World-systems in western Asia and the Mediterranean (Philippe Beaujard)
4. The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Andrew Sherratt (Cyprian Broodbank)
5. Ingestion and Food Technologies: Maintaining Differences over the Long-term in West, South and East Asia (Dorian Fuller and Michael Rowlands)
6. Revolutionary Secondary Products: the Development and Significance of Milking, Animal-Traction and Wool-Gathering in Later Prehistoric Europe and the Near East (Paul Halstead and Valasia Isaakidou)
7. World Systems and Modelling Macro-Historical Processes in Later Prehistory: an Examination of Old and a Search for New Perspectives (Philip L. Kohl)
8. ‘From Luxuries to Anxieties’: A Liminal View of the Late Bronze Age World-system (Christopher Monroe)
9. Re-integrating ‘Diffusion’: the Spread of Innovations among the Neolithic and Bronze Age societies of Europe and the Near East (Lorenz Rahmstorf)
10. What might The Bronze Age World-system look like? (David Warburton)
11. 'Archival' and 'Sacrificial' Economies in Bronze Age Eurasia: an Interactionist Approach to the Hoarding of Metals (David Wengrow)

The Weft: The local and the global
12. The Formation of Economic Systems and Social Institutions during the Fifth and Fourth Millennia BC in the southern Levant (Nils Anfinset)
13. The Near East, Europe, and the ‘Routes’ of Community in the Early Bronze Age Black Sea (Alexander Bauer)
14. Negotiating Metal and the Metal Form in the Royal Tombs of Alacahöyük in north-central Anatolia (Christoph Bachhuber)
15. Between Assyria and the Mediterranean World: the Prosperity of Judah and Philistia in the Seventh Century BCE in Context (Avraham Faust and Ehud Weiss)
16. Northeast Africa and the Levant in Connection: A World-Systems Perspective on Interregional Relationships in the Early Second Millennium BC (Roxana Flammini)
17. Travelling in (World) Time: Transformation, Commoditization, and the Beginnings of Urbanism in the Southern Levant (Raphael Greenberg)
18. Strands of Connectivity: Assessing the Evidence for Long Distance Exchange of Silk in Later Prehistoric Eurasia (Irene Good)
19. New Kid on the Block: the Nature of the first Systemic Contacts between Crete and the eastern Mediterranean around 2000 BC (Borja Legarra Herrero)
20. Bridging India and Scandinavia: Institutional Transmission and Elite Conquest during the Bronze Age (Kristian Kristiansen)
21. Lost in Translation: The Emergence of Mycenaean Culture as a Phenomenon of Glocalisation (Joseph Maran)
22. Anticipating the Silk Road: Some Thoughts on the Wool-Murex Connection in Tyre (Jane Schneider)
23. Unbounded Structures, Cultural Permeabilities and the Calyx of Change: Mesopotamia and its World (Norman Yoffee)

"Toby C. Wilkinson is currently a TÜBITAK postdoctoral research fellow at the Department of Archaeology, Istanbul University, Turkey (2013-2014). He studied anthropology and archaeology at the University of Oxford, University College London and the Department of Archaeology, University of Sheffield. He has also worked for the Pitt Rivers Museum and Dept. of Continuing Education in Oxford and has held research scholarships from the British Institute at Ankara (BIAA) and Koç University’s Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations (RCAC).
Toby’s present research interests include macro-scale Near Eastern archaeology, computer applications and GIS mapping, anthropological approaches to the ancient world (including studies of art, cross-craft interaction and skeuomorphism). He continues to co-ordinate the ArchAtlas project, an online journal and archaeological atlas, and has been involved with a number of field projects (including the Cide Archaeological Project and Project Panormos.
"



John Bennet is the Director of the British School at Athens, and Professor of Aegean Archaeology at the University of Sheffield.