The course will examine Bronze Age cultures in Central Asia (Oxus Civilization), the Iranian Plateau (Helmand and Halil Rud Civilizations), and the Greater Indus Valley (Indus Civilization), while also drawing comparisons with Arabia (Magan Civilization) and China (Shang Civilization). For each culture, the course examines the history of archaeological research, environmental setting, socio-political and economic organisation, settlement and urban organisation, material culture, administrative practices and writing technologies, long-distance exchange and intercultural relations, and religious and mythopoetic traditions. Examined as distinct yet closely interconnected analytical dimensions, the evidence presented for each culture will make it possible to draw reasoned conclusions about the specific cognitive systems underlying the formation and evolution of these societies and to develop a critical understanding of Bronze Age urbanisation in Eurasia as a plurality of only partially overlapping socio-economic and political experiments, rather than as the repetition of a single model.
- Docente: Dennys Frenez