Across Western Asia, the astonishing increase in the availability of durable ceramic containers in the seventh millennium BCE had significant societal repercussions – so much so that vital social, economic, and symbolic activities became dependent upon the availability of pottery containers. These early ceramic containers, however, established themselves alongside flourishing pre-existing container traditions, with vessels made in a wide range of materials including clay, bitumen, basketry, leather, wood, and stone. How did prehistoric people respond to the emergence of containers as a key factor in their lives? Building on Olivier Nieuwenhuyse’s rich scholarly legacy, this volume brings together 18 papers by leading scholars in the field of container technology, discussing cases from eastern Asia to Africa, but with a focus on prehistoric Western Asia. Looking not just at pottery but also explicitly beyond, the contributions consider and address the cross-overs of different kinds of raw materials for containers and their crafting; the multiplicity of temporal scales in the production, use and discard of pottery; the social anchoring of vessels’ use and deposition as evident in their specific contexts; and local as well as regional variations in early pottery.

The collection of essays in this book focuses on the highlands of Iran in pre-modern times, reaching from the Paleolithic to the medieval period. What holds the diverse contributions together is an issue that is closely related to debates in our own times: crises and how societies in the past dealt with them. We start from the premise that general circumstances in the fractured topographic structure of the Iranian highlands led to unique relations between ecological, social, economic and political conditions. In three sections entitled “Climate and palaeoenvironment”, “Settlement, subsistence and mobility” und “Political and economic institutions”, the authors ask what sorts of crises afflicted past societies in the Iranian highlands, to what extent they proved resilient, and especially what strategies they developed for enhancing the resilience of their ways of life. Looking for answers in paleoenvironmental proxy data, archaeological findings and written sources, the authors examine subsistence economies, political institutions, religious beliefs, everyday routines and economic specialization in different temporal, spatial and organizational scales.This book is the first volume of a series published by the German-Iranian research cooperation “The Iranian Highlands: Resiliences and Integration in Premodern Societies”. The goal of the research project is to shine a new light on communities and societies that populated the Iranian highlands and their more or less successful strategies to cope with the many vagaries, the constant changes and risks of their natural and humanly shaped environments.

Hugo de Reede (1929-2019), artist and archaeological illustrator has worked in Syria for many years. Gripped by the Gilgamesh Epos and the philosophy narrated in the epic, he created a pictorial book, re-telling the account of Gilgamesh and the eternal mystery of death. The style of drawing in the book suits the regional art in a remarkable manner and with a humorous touch that is fitting for the region’s storytelling tradition.

This volume combines the most up-to-date discoveries and perspectives of Near Eastern Neolithic lithics by leading international archaeologists. It presents the proceedings of the 9th International Conference of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic Chipped and Ground Stone Industries of the Near East, hosted at the University of Tokyo, Japan in 2019 (PPN9-Tokyo). The book places emphasis on regional perspectives to evaluate the Near Eastern Neolithic. Current research indicates that the earliest farming societies of the Near East developed in interaction with neighbouring hunter-gatherer societies, that either coexisted with them for long periods or soon assimilated to the Near Eastern farmers. Understanding these contrasting processes sheds new light on identifying the Neolithisation practices of the 'core' regions in the Near East itself. The 39 papers in this volume include contributions on the Iranian Zagros, the Caucasus, and Central Asia, a region whose Neolithic archaeological records are far less well understood but which enrich our understanding of the first farming societies of the Near East.

Tell Ahmar – also known as Masuwari, Til Barsib and Kar-Shalmaneser in the first millennium BCE – was first inhabited in the sixth millennium during the Ubaid period, and progressively developed to become a regional centre, and in the eighth and seventh centuries, a provincial capital of the Assyrian empire. Remains from the third millennium (a temple and a funerary complex), the second millennium (an administrative complex and well-preserved houses) and the first millennium (an Assyrian palace and elite residences) are particularly impressive. The book offers an archaeological and historical synthesis of the results obtained by the excavations of François Thureau-Dangin (1929–1931) and by the more recent excavations of the universities of Melbourne (1988–1999) and Liège (2000–2010). It presents a comprehensive and diachronic view of the evolution of the site, which, by its position on the Euphrates at an important crossroads of ancient communication routes, was at the heart of a game of cultural and political interference between Mesopotamia, the Mediterranean world and Asia Minor.

Much focus in research on alphabetic writing systems has been on correspondences between graphemes and phonemes. The present study sets out to complement these by examining the linguistic denotation of markers of word division in several ancient Northwest Semitic (NWS) writing systems, namely, Ugaritic, Phoenician, Moabite, and Hebrew, as well as alphabetic Greek. While in Modern European languages words on the page are separated on the basis of morphosyntax, I argue that in most NWS writing systems words are divided on the basis of prosody: ‘words’ are units which must be pronounced together with a single primary accent or stress, or as a single phrase. After an introduction providing the necessary theoretical groundwork, Part I considers word division in Phoenician inscriptions. I show that word division at the levels of both the prosodic word and of the prosodic phrase may be found in Phoenician, and that the distributions match those of prosodic words and prosodic phrases in Tiberian Hebrew. The latter is a source where, unlike the rest of the material considered, the prosody is well represented. In Part II, word division in Ugaritic alphabetic cuneiform is analysed. Here two-word division strategies are identified, corresponding broadly to two genres of text: viz, literary, and administrative documents. Word division in the orthography of literary and of some other texts separates prosodic words. By contrast, in many administrative (and some other) documents, words are separated on the basis of morphosyntax, anticipating later word division strategies in Europe by several centuries. Part III considers word division in the consonantal text of the Masoretic tradition of Biblical Hebrew. Here word division is found to mark out ‘minimal prosodic words’. I show that this word division orthography is also found in early Moabite and Hebrew inscriptions. Word division in alphabetic Greek inscriptions is the topic of Part IV. Whilst it is agreed that word division marks out prosodic words, the precise relationship of these units to the pitch accent and the rhythm of the language is not so clear, and consequently this issue is addressed in detail. Finally, the Epilogue considers the societal context of word division in each of the writing systems examined, to attempt to discern the rationales for the prosodic word division strategies adopted. Contexts of and Relations between Early Writing Systems (CREWS) is a project funded by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 677758), and based in the Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge.

Bathing culture was one of the pillars of Roman society and bathhouses are one of the largest categories of a particular type of construction excavated in the Roman world. The large number of surviving remains and their regional variety make bathhouses vital for the study of the local societies in the Roman-Byzantine period. This book presents the archaeological evidence of close to 200 Roman-style bathhouses from the region of Iudaea/Syria-Palaestina and Provincia Arabia, part of the provinces of the Roman East, constructed from the reign of Herod the Great (second half of the 1st century BCE) to the end of the Umayyad rule (mid-8th century CE). The bathing complexes of the Roman, Byzantine, and the Early Islamic periods, ranging from large public thermae to small bathing suites, are for the first time analysed as unified data with an unprecedented amount of detail, considering a variety of parameters - from dating and setting, through building techniques and materials, to plans and decorations. Typologies of the bathhouses and their components are supplemented by exploration of the socio-cultural insight provided by this particular type of construction. The historical narrative of the regional bathing facilities is updated in the light of new information. The full raw data used for the study is provided in the expandable open-access online database.

Culture of Defeat is based on a 2017 conference focusing on the impact on, and responses by, the defeated parties in conflicts in the ancient Near East. Shifting the focus of analysis from the conqueror to the vanquished, the (re-)examination of written sources and the archaeological record sheds new light on the consequences and reactions after often traumatic defeats and allows to gain a more nuanced and complete picture of such events.

This book contains a selection of nineteen articles published by K.R. Veenhof, focusing on his main field of study: law and trade in the Old Babylonian and Old Assyrian society of the early second millennium B. C. They were originally published in journals, conference proceedings and collective volumes over the past fifty years. Their reissue here is motivated by their lasting value and their fundamental importance to the study of these subjects.It includes both “broad” articles, which give an introduction to or an overview of a specific subject, e.g. Old Assyrian trade and the practice of justice in Babylonia in the early second millennium B.C., and “narrow” ones that give an in-depth study of a single issue or a single text, such as a problematic paragraph of Hammurabi’s law code or the meaning of the noun iṣurtum. The first two articles provide a general introduction to the subject; the next nine focus on Old Assyrian society, and the final eight concern Old Babylonian.The inclusion of “broad” and “narrow” articles makes this publication of interest both to the well-informed general reader interested in the Ancient Near East and to the specialist working on Old Babylonian and Old Assyrian society.Prof. dr. Klaas

The ‘Black Desert’ begins just south of Damascus and comprises some 40,000 km2 of dark and desolate basalt fields, which stretch from southern Syria across north-eastern Jordan and reach the sand sea of the Nefud in Saudi Arabia. The rough and highly arid terrain is often difficult to access and travel through. Despite these uninviting conditions, recent fieldwork has revealed the immense archaeological and epigraphic record of the Black Desert. This material testifies to the prominent successes achieved by indigenous nomadic peoples in exploiting the basalt range through hunting and herding across centuries and millennia.To date, there is an ever-increasing interest in the archaeology of the Black Desert. In particular, Jordan is home to a range of international research projects, and exciting new discoveries convincingly demonstrate the archaeological affluence of Jordan’s desert landscape. The present volume provides a wide-ranging and up-to-date examination of the archaeology and epigraphy of the immense basalt expanse as well as comparative perspectives from other parts of the Levant and the Arabian Peninsula. This collection of papers offers detailed insights and analyses on topics ranging from mobility and landscape to developments in settlement and burial practices, as well as the role of rock art and literacy in ancient desert environments. This richly illustrated book is a significant point of reference for what is rapidly becoming a most vibrant and dynamic field of research in the Levant and Arabia.

The Eastern Fertile Crescent region of western Iran and eastern Iraq hosted major developments in the transition from hunter-forager to farmer-herder lifestyles through the Early Neolithic period, 10,000-7000 BC. Within the scope of the Central Zagros Archaeological Project, excavations have been conducted since 2012 at two Early Neolithic sites in the Kurdistan region of Iraq: Bestansur and Shimshara. Bestansur represents an early stage in the transition to sedentary, farming life, where the inhabitants pursued a mixed strategy of hunting, foraging, herding and cultivating, maximising the new opportunities afforded by the warmer, wetter climate of the Early Holocene. They also constructed substantial buildings of mudbrick, including a major building with a minimum of 65 human individuals, mainly infants, buried under its floor in association with hundreds of beads. These human remains provide new insights into mortuary practices, demography, diet and disease during the early stages of sedentarisation. The material culture of Bestansur and Shimshara is rich in imported items such as obsidian, carnelian and sea-shells, indicating the extent to which Early Neolithic communities were networked across the Eastern Fertile Crescent and beyond. This volume includes final reports by a large-scale interdisciplinary team on all aspects of the results from excavations at Bestansur and Shimshara, through application of state-of-the-art scientific techniques, methods and analyses. The net result is to re-emphasise the enormous significance of the Eastern Fertile Crescent in one of the most important episodes in human history: the Neolithic transition.

Maritime archaeologist Honor Frost (1917-2010) was a pioneer in her field. She left a rich legacy through her innovative research conducted in the eastern Mediterranean on the remains of ports and harbours, sea-level change, shipwrecks and ship construction, and ancient anchors. This volume provides an appreciation of Frost's work and gives a point-in-time assessment of current projects in the region that are in effect a continuity of Frost’s work. As such, it provides an insight into the development of the discipline of maritime archaeology in the region from its infancy to the present day. The subjects covered include Frost’s long-term research into the port infrastructures of the Levantine coast, particularly at Byblos, Tyre, Sidon, and Arwad, which heralded harbour geo-archaeology by addressing sea-level change and maritime paleo-landscapes. Also, her excavation and analysis of the ships relating to the archaeological remains of the Punic wars that she excavated from 1971 off the coast of Marsala, Sicily. This work is examined both through her underwater investigation at the time, the creation of a museum in Marsala to house the remains, and through a recent discovery in Frost’s archives. Frost’s survey of the lighthouse at Alexandria, on which all later work has been based, is also included. Her contribution to the establishment of research into stone anchors is examined within the context of current projects. Two seminal articles are offered. One with respect to Frost’s life before she became a maritime archaeologist: as artist and set and costume designer for ballet productions. The other one provides a detailed overview of her maritime archaeological career.

This is the account of a remarkable excavation. It started with a modest dig on an unremarkable tell in Jordan. The name of the tell does not occur in the Bible, and no ancient town of any importance was to be expected under the rubble. The excavator Henk Franken had not yet made a name for himself within the archaeological community. And yet, from 1960 onwards history was being (re)written at Tell Deir Alla. To discover the secrets of the tell, the expedition team defied cold, rain and stormy winds for months on end, sleeping in rattling tents and working long days on the tell and in the camp. And with success! A meticulous yet efficient excavation method was introduced, the already tenuous relationship between Bible and archaeology was further exacerbated, and the study of excavated pottery was given a scientific basis. The name Deir Alla became an international benchmark for modern scientific research, for prompt publication of the remarkable finds and for independent interpretation of the excavation results. The story of the excavations at Tell Deir Alla in the 1960s have never been told in any detail, and the excavation results have mostly been published in scholarly books and journals which are difficult to access. This book hopes to remedy that. It recounts the story of the first ten years of the project, from 1959 when funding for the project was sought, until 1969 when the first report was published. The first section describes the organization of the project before the expedition team went out into the field. The second part takes the reader to the actual field work and describes the occupation history of the tell. The story is illustrated by numerous photographs and plans, many of which are being published for the first time.

This study analyses the social and symbolic value of the material culture, in particular the pottery production and the architecture, and the social structure of the local communities of a broad area encompassing Eastern Anatolia, the South Caucasus and North-western Iran during the last phase of the Late Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age. This broad area is known from the Assyrian texts as ‘Nairi lands’. The second part of the study, furnishes a reassessment of pottery production characteristics and theories, as well as of the socio-economic structure and issues, tied to the sedentary and mobile local communities of the Nairi lands. The study brings into focus the characteristics, the extension and the distribution of Grooved pottery, along with other pottery typologies, by providing an accompanying online catalogue with detailed descriptions and high-resolution images of the pots and sherds obtained from public and private institutions in Turkey and Armenia. Moreover, the socio-political organisation and subsistence economy issues are addressed in order to advance a possible reconstruction of the social structure of the Nairi lands communities. Particular attention is devoted to the pastoral nomad component and the role played within the Nairi phenomenon. The study includes a very large corpus of text images and high-resolution color images of the pottery of the area under examination, gathered by the author in order to offer a reliable tool and compendium.

Rest in Mesopotamian and Israelite Literature studies the concept of rest in the Hebrew Bible and ancient Near Eastern literature. Through close examination of Mesopotamian texts and selections from the Deuteronomistic History and Chronicles, Kim delineates a concept of rest for each body of literature, and employs a comparative approach to illuminate the rest motif in the Hebrew Bible in light of Mesopotamian literature.

Soviet archaeological research in southern Turkmenistan revealed a series of small Late Neolithic and Aeneolithic villages strung along the streams that emerge from the Kopet Dag and water the narrow foothill zone separating the mountains from the Kara Kum desert. A commonly accepted premise of their work was that these communities garnered their technological knowledge if not their populations from regions to the south and west in present-day Iran.Since 2010 we have reinvestigated one of these sites, the small Late Neolithic (ca. 6200-5600 BCE) and early Aeneolithic (ca. 4800-4350 BCE) village of Monjukli Depe. Our research examines microhistories of cultural techniques as a source of insights into long-term and spatially extensive change as well as internal variations and similarities in material practices. This volume presents results of this work. A Bayesian modeling of 14C dates demonstrates a long hiatus between the Neolithic and Aeneolithic strata of the site as well as a hitherto unattested very early Aeneolithic phase (“Meana Horizon”). A sequence of densely built, well preserved Aeneolithic houses exhibits marked similarities to earlier Neolithic architecture in the region. Despite overall standardized plans, the houses reveal significant variations in internal features and practices. Similar flexibility within a set of common dispositions is evident in burial practices. Very limited quantities of pottery offer a stark contrast to the frequent occurrence of spindle whorls, indicating a substantial production of thread, and to a large and varied assemblage of clay tokens. A wide variety of fire installations attests to routinized handling of fire, which did not prevent at least one building from succumbing to a conflagration. Animal herding was heavily based on sheep and goats, while cattle figured prominently in feasts. The Meana tradition at Monjukli Depe exhibits significant structural similarities to other early village societies in Western Asia and will make this volume of interest to scholars working on similar times and contexts.