Centre and Periphery in the Ancient World

by Michael J. Rowlands , Mogens Larsen , Kristian Kristiansen

• ISBN13: 9780521108423
• ISBN10: 052110842X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-04-09
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This collaborative volume is concerned with long-term social change. Envisaging individual societies as interlinked and interdependent parts of a global social system, the aim of the contributors is to determine the extent to which ancient societies were shaped over time by their incorporation in - or resistance to - the larger system. Their particular concern is the dependent relationship between technically and socially more developed societies with a strong state ideology at the centre and the simpler societies that functioned principally as sources of raw materials and manpower on the periphery of the system. The papers in the first part of the book are all concerned with political developments in the Ancient Near East and the notion of a regional system as a framework for analysis. Part 2 examines the problems of conceptualising local societies as discrete centres of development in the context of both the Near East and prehistoric Europe during the second millennium BC. Part 3 then presents a comprehensive analytical study of the Roman Empire as a single system showing how its component parts often relate to each other in uneven, even contradictory, ways.

Table of Contents

Preface

Theoretical Perspectives

Centre and periphery: a review of a concept

Regional Systems and the Genesis of Dependency

The ancient economy, transferable technologies and the Bronze Age world-system: a view from the north-eastern frontier of the Ancient Near East

Cedar forest to silver mountain: social change and the development of long-distance trade in early Near Eastern societies

On tracking cultural transfers in prehistory: the case of Egypt and lower Mesopotamia in the fourth millennium BC

Regional Interaction and Crisis

Commercial networks in the Ancient Near East Mogens

Aspects of ceremonial exchange in the Near East during the late second millennium BC

The collapse of the Near Eastern regional system at the end of the Bronze Age: the case of Syria

Centre and periphery in Bronze Age Scandinavia

Imperial Expansion and its Hinterland: zonal contrasts

Imperial expansion under the Roman Republic

Culture process on the periphery: Belgic Gaul and Rome during the late Republic and early Empire

Empire, frontier and the barbarian hinterland: Rome and northern Europe from AD 1-400

Bibliography

Index

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