ISAW Hosts Conference, "Material Worlds: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Contacts and Exchange in the Ancient Near East"
Trade and exchange, movements of people, goods and ideas – these issues sound quite familiar to moderners. The Ancient Near East, a Western Asiatic contact zone par excellence and a big market place, for most of its parts under extreme climatic conditions and a high degree of ecological variability, is characterized by the existence of multiple ways of exchange for more than 10 millennia. Based on most recent findings in the northwest Arabian oasis of Tayma, Saudi Arabia, an interdisciplinary conference was held at ISAW on March, 7th, organized by 2015-16 Visiting Research Scholar Arnulf Hausleiter of Berlin’s German Archaeological Institute (DAI) and funded by ISAW.
The discoveries at the site of Tayma, namely ceremonial Bronze weapons in the the context of late 3rd / early 2nd millennium BC burials, suggest a much closer relation of this part of the Near East with the Levant, Syro-Mesopotamia, Egypt and the Gulf, than previously expected. In addition, archaeometric results from subsequent periods, namely the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages, indicate that the Northwest of the Arabian Peninsula maintained its contacts to locations providing raw materials all over the Peninsula, rather than exclusively focusing on the Levant.
With this new evidence in mind, our conference addressed a number of research questions, which were dealt with a series of case studies presented by leading specialists of their fields: investigating the validity of models explaining economic exchange between Ancient Near Eastern economic systems in the Middle Bronze Age (G. Barjamovic, Harvard University); the role of the production of knowledge for exchange based on textual records in the Old Babylonian period (B. Pongratz-Leisten, ISAW); Egyptian sea-trading activities towards the land of Punt (K. Bard, Boston University); economic and cultural relations between Cyprus, the Levant, and Arabia and pertaining settlement developments as seen from archaeological data, namely pottery-bearing contexts of MBA / LBA date (C. Bergoffen, CUNY; M. Luciani, ISAW, R. Homsher, Harvard University); models for explaining political constellations in allegedly peripheral regions of highest economic significance for the 1st millennium BC Assyrian Empire (M. Masetti-Rouault, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris); the expression and social meaning of certain object classes within the political entity of the Assyrian empire and beyond (A. Hunt, University of Athens, GA). The evening lecture focused on the ancient center of Qasr Shamamok in Iraqi Kurdistan (O. Rouault, University of Lyon).
The interdisciplinary case studies illustrated a high degree of economic, cultural and politicial dynamics within the region and the extreme ability of adaptation of the involved agents. The applicability of universal explanatory models was critically discussed. Central settlements, within these systems, functioned as hubs, and it is clear now, that the Arabian oases were not at all as isolated as suggested by the romantic ideas of early travelers together with present day climatic conditions. Again it became evident, that border regions provide a high potential for investigating the mechanisms of contacts in a region, which is characterized, for large parts, by the existence of all-encompassing communication routes (on land and sea), facilitating various types of exchange for the fulfillment (not only) of the economic needs of its populations.
The well attended workshop involved ISAW faculty members (L. D’Alfonso) a number of graduate students of ISAW (I. Soto, J. Valk), NYU (N. Highcock) and the University of Pennsylvania (L. Saladino Haney) as chairpersons and discussants, leading to a vivid debate within the audience.
The workshop was concluded on March 8th with A. Hausleiter’s Visiting Research Scholar Lecture on Re-Defining a Near Eastern contact zone: Northwest Arabia in the 2nd millennium BC.