Polities and power
Subtitle: archaeological perspectives on the landscapes of early states
By: edited by Steven E. Falconer and Charles L. Redman.
Contributors: Falconer, Steven E.; Redman, Charles L.
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Published: 2009
Place of publication: Tucson
Language: eng
Number of pages: 277
ISBN-13: 9780816526031
Subjects: Landscape archaeology -- Case studies; Social archaeology -- Case studies; Political anthropology -- Case studies; Cities and towns, Ancient -- Case studies; Power (Social sciences) -- History -- To 1500; India, South -- Antiquities; Andes -- Antiquities; Mexico -- Antiquities; Iraq -- Antiquities; Africa, East -- Antiquities
Genres: Case studies
Description: "This distinctive book is the first to address the topic of landscape archaeology in early states from a truly global perspective. It provides an excellent introduction to - and overview of - the discipline today. The volume grew out of the Fifth Biennial Meeting of the Complex Societies Group, whose theme, States and the Landscape, paid tribute to the work of Robert McC. Adams. When Adams began publishing in the 1960s, the interdependence of cities and their countrysides, and the information revealed through the spatial patterning of communities, went largely unrecognized. Today, as this useful collection makes clear, these interpretive insights are fundamental to all archaeologists who investigate the roles of complex polities in their landscapes." "Polities and Power features detailed studies from an intentionally disparate array of regions, including Mesoamerica, Andean South America, southwestern Asia, East Africa, and the Indian subcontinent. Each chapter or pair of chapters is followed by a critical commentary. In concert, these studies strive to infer social, political, and economic meaning from archaeologically discerned landscapes associated with societies that incorporate some expression of state authority. The contributions engage a variety of themes, including the significance of landscapes as they condition and reflect complex polities; the interplay of natural and cultural elements in defining landscapes of state; archaeological landscapes as ever-dynamic entities; and archaeological landscapes as recursive structures, reflected by palimpsests of human activity."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: The archaeology of early states and their landscapes / Steven E. Falconer and Charles L. Redman; title: Changing cultural landscapes of the Tungabhadra Valley, South India / Carla M. Sinopoli, Peter Johansen, and Kathleen D. Morrison; title: Marking landscapes : the Tungabhadra project from history to prehistory / Rita P. Wright; title: Agriculture as metaphor of the Andean state / Christine A. Hastorf; title: Metaphor, monumentality, and memory : the imagery of power on the ancient landscape / Katharina Schreiber; title: Landscape and the Tarascan state : labor, intensification, and land degradation / Christopher T. Fisher; title: Tarascan land degradation and alternative traditions in Americanist landscape archaeology / Arthur A. Joyce; title: States, landscapes, and the urban process in Upper Mesopotamia : inter-polity alliances, competition, and ritualized exchange / Patricia Wattenmaker; title: The Bronze Age political landscape of the southern Levant / Steven E. Falconer and Stephen H. Savage; title: Political landscapes and states in Upper Mesopotamia and the Levant / T.J. Wilkinson; title: Landscape at two scales : economy and trade in East Africa / Chapurukha M. Kusimba; title: Agency, dependency, and long-distance trade : East Africa and the Islamic world, ca. 700-1500 CE / David Killick; title: African archaeology in world perspective / Peter Robertshaw.