Meets Thursdays 4:00-6:20 pm (the so-called Q-hour) in Joukowsky Institute Seminar Room 203
With: Ömür Harmansah Assistant Professor of Archaeology and Egyptology and Ancient Western Asian Studies
Office Hours: Wednesday 10-12 am. (and by appointment-please email Ömür)
Office: Joukowsky Institute (70 Waterman St.) Room 202
E-mail: Omur_Harmansah@brown.edu Tel: 401-863-6411

Discourses on state formation dominate archaeological explorations of Mesopotamia in association with social complexity, urbanization, long-distance trade, and development of writing. Archaeological evidence from 4th-3rd millennia BC were incorporated into narratives of state from chiefdoms to empires, and linked to its and political economies. We will unpack this preoccupation with states in academic practice, while exploring case studies from Mesopotamia, Anatolia and the Levant from 9000 to 2000 BC. Course Description (Long version)

Books available at Brown Bookstore

• Eagleton, Terry; 2007. Ideology: an introduction. New Edition. Verso.
• Mann, Michael; 1986. The sources of social power: Volume 1. A history of power from the beginning to AD 1760. Cambridge University Press.
• Yoffee, Norman; 2005. Myths of the archaic state : evolution of the earliest cities, states and civilizations. Cambridge University Press.
• Smith, Adam. The Political Landscape: Constellations of Authority in Early Complex Polities. University of California Press.

News

• Mobilization of the social sciences in the service of the state apparatus. Information capital. The case of cultural anthropologists in Iraq.