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Ancient Cities of the Indus Valley Civilization presents a refreshingly new perspective on the earliest cities of Pakistan and western India (2600-1900 BC). Through a careful examination of the most recent archaeological discoveries from excavations in both Pakistan and India, the author provides a stimulating discussion on the nature of the early cities and their inhabitants. This detailed study of the Indus architecture and civic organization also takes into account the distinctive crafts and technological developments that accompanied the emergence of urbanism. Indus trade and economy as well as political and religious organizations are illuminated through comparisons with other contemporaneous civilizations in Mesopotamia and Central Asia and through ethnoarchaeological studies in later cultures of South Asia.
Learn about the history and civilizations from ancient South Asia through the study of a variety of archaeological discoveries.
This volume, a compilation of original papers written to celebrate the outstanding contributions of Jonathan Mark Kenoyer to the archaeology of South Asia over the past 40 years, highlights recent developments in the archaeological research of ancient South Asia, with specific reference to the Indus Civilisation.
Ancient Cities of the Indus Valley Civilization presents a refreshingly new perspective on the earliest cities of Pakistan and western India (2600-1900 BC). Through a careful examination of the most recent archaeological discoveries from excavations in both Pakistan and India, the author provides a stimulating discussion on the nature of the early cities and their inhabitants. This detailed study of the Indus architecture and civic organization also takes into account the distinctive crafts and technological developments that accompanied the emergence of urbanism. Indus trade and economy as well as political and religious organizations are illuminated through comparisons with other contemporaneous civilizations in Mesopotamia and Central Asia and through ethnoarchaeological studies in later cultures of South Asia.
The pottery of Mohenjo-dara, one of the two major urban centers of the Indus Valley civilization (2500-2000 B.C.) is described and documented. The authors survey Harappan ceramic technology and style, and develop an important and unique approach to vessel form analysis and terminology. Included is Leslie Alcock's account of the pottery from the 1950 excavations by Sir Mortimer Wheeler. University Museum Monograph, 53
Archaeology and World Religion is an important new work, being the first to examine these two vast topics together. The volume explores the relationship between, and the contribution archaeology can make to the study of 'World Religions'. The contributors consider a number of questions: * can religious (sacred) texts be treated as historical documents, or do they merit special treatment? * Does archaeology with its emphasis on material culture dispel notions of the ideal/divine? * Does the study of archaeology and religion lead to differing interpretations of the same event? * In what ways does the notion of a uniform religious identity exist and is this recognisable in the archaeological record? Clearly written and up-to-date, this volume will be an indispensable research tool for academics and specialists in these fields.
Three terms, Order, Legitimacy and Wealth, delineate a comparative approach to ancient civilizations initially developed by John Baines, Professor of Egyptology at the University of Oxford, and Norman Yoffee, Professor of Archaeology and Near Eastern Studies at the University of Michigan, in 1992. In an influential paper, they compared and contrasted the nature of social and political power in Egypt and Mesopotamia. This was the first analysis of the impact of wealth and high culture on the development of states. The contributors to the present book, first published in 2000, apply the classic Baines/Yoffee model to a range of ancient states around the world, providing documentary and archaeological evidence on the production and uses of 'high culture', literature and monumental architecture. There are chapters on Mesoamerica, the Andes, the Indus Valley, the Han Dynasty of China, and Greece during the Roman empire, while others expand on the original Egypt-Mesopotamia comparison.
From the Euphrates Valley to the southern Peruvian Andes, early complex societies have risen and fallen, but in some cases they have also been reborn. Prior archaeological investigation of these societies has focused primarily on emergence and collapse. This is the first book-length work to examine the question of how and why early complex urban societies have reappeared after periods of decentralization and collapse. Ranging widely across the Near East, the Aegean, East Asia, Mesoamerica, and the Andes, these cross-cultural studies expand our understanding of social evolution by examining how societies were transformed during the period of radical change now termed “collapse.” They seek...
Some 5000 years ago, civilized societies emerged in the valleys of four great rivers: the Nile, the Euphrates, the Yellow, and the Indus. Of these primary Old World civilizations, that of the Indus remains the least known and the most enigmatic, though, paradoxically, it has left perhaps the most lasting influence on the societies that followed it. In this lucid account - abundantly illustrated with maps and photographs, including sixteen pages in full color - archaeologist Jane McIntosh addresses what we know about the rise and fall of the civilization of the Indus and Saraswati valleys, what it might be reasonable to speculate, and what we still hope to learn. While drawing on archaeological and linguistic evidence to create a portrait of the civilization from the inside, McIntosh also carefully pieces together a wider picture of the Indus civilization using evidence from its trading partners in Mesopotamia, the Persian Gulf, the Indian subcontinent, and Southwest Asia. The result is an outstandingly vivid recreation of one of the world's great but all-but-lost ancient civilizations.
This book provides a comprehensive research on Ancient Indian glass. The contributors include experienced archaeologists of South Asian glass and archaeological chemists with expertise in the chemical analysis of glass, besides, established ethnohistorians and ethnoarchaeologists. It is comprised of five sections, and each section discusses different aspects of glass study: the origin of glass and its evolution, its scientific study and its care, ancient glass in literature and glass ethnography, glass in South Asia and the diffusion of glass in different parts of the world. The topic covered by the different chapters ranges from the development of faience, to the techniques developed for th...