Violence & Imagination after the Collapse. Encounters, Identity & Daily Life in the Upper Euphrates Region, 3200-2500 BCE

Pages: xviii + 306 p. Illustrations:210 b/w, 8 col., 12 tables b/w., 5 maps b/w. Language(s):English. Publication Year:2024. Brepols. ISBN: 978-2-503-60945-4. Paperback --- Summary In the late fourth millennium BCE, the villages, temples, and palace of the Upper Euphrates region stood between two social worlds: the comparatively hierarchical, centrally organized Mesopotamian social tradition to the south and the comparatively egalitarian, decentralized Kura-Araxes social tradition to the north. Over the next seven centuries, this positioning and the interactions it sparked fed into reactions among the region’s inhabitants that ranged from cataclysmic violence to a flowering of innovation in visual culture and social arrangements. These events had a wide array of short-term and long-term impacts, some limited to a single house or settlement, and some, like the innovation of the Warrior Tomb template, that transformed societies across West Asia. With an eye towards detail, a theoretical approach emphasizing personal motivation, and multiple scales of analysis, this book organizes previously unpublished data from six sites in the region, Arslantepe, Ta kun Mevkii, Pulur, Nor untepe, Tepecik, and Korucutepe, dating to this dramatic and transformative period. TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction Chapter 1. Identities under Construction at the Margins The Problem: Late Chalcolithic Mesopotamia and the Kura-Araxes Cultural Tradition at the End of the Fourth Millennium An Approach to Culture Contact Methodologies for New Research Chapter 2. Setting the Stage: The Late Chalcolithic Background The Local Late Chalcolithic of the Upper Euphrates in Regional Context The Kura-Araxes Cultural Tradition A Comparison of Upper Euphrates LC and Kura-Araxes Visual Culture Signatures Conclusion Chapter 3. The First Moments of Visible Contact: The EB Ia Period Arslantepe Tepecik Conclusions: The Formation of a New Kura-Araxes(-Inspired) Visual Orthodoxy Chapter 4. Isolated Citadels: The EB Ib Period Norsuntepe Tepecik Arslantepe Taşkun Mevkii Conclusions: The Creation of an Indigenous Visual Counter-Orthodoxy Chapter 5. Accommodation, Innovation, and Diversity: The EB II Period Norsuntepe Tepecik Korucutepe Pulur Arslantepe Conclusions: Innovation and Blending of Visual Templates in a Borderland Region Chapter 6. Legacies of Interactions and Innovations on the Upper Euphrates Legacies of EB I Occupations Legacies of EB II Occupations Conclusions. Evidence, Theory, and Narrative The Nature of Kura-Araxes Identity in the Upper Euphrates Region Violence, Power, and Symbolic Systems Works Cited Appendix 1. Plan Key Detailed Descriptions of Object Types Appendix 2. Object Registers Norsuntepe Tepecik Korucutepe Arslantepe Taskun Mevkii Objects.