Order, Legitimacy, and Wealth in Ancient States

by Edited by Janet Richards , Mary Van Buren

• ISBN13: 9780521776714
• ISBN10: 0521776716
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-01-29
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Three terms, Order, Legitimacy and Wealth, delineate a new 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 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.

Table of Contents

List of figures	x
List of contributors	xiii
Acknowledgements	xiii
PART I ORDER, LEGITIMACY, AND WEALTH IN ANCIENT STATES
Introduction: ideology, wealth, and the comparative study of ``civilizations''	3	(10)
Mary Van Buren
Janet Richards
Order, legitimacy, and wealth: setting the terms	13	(8)
John Baines
Norman Yoffee
PART II CIVILIZATIONS IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE
Society and individual in early Egypt	21	(15)
David O' Connor
Modified order, responsive legitimacy, redistributed wealth: Egypt, 2260-1650 BC	36	(10)
Janet Richards
Law courts and the mediation of social conflict in ancient Mesopotamia	46	(18)
Norman Yoffee
High culture, Mesoamerican civilization, and the classic Maya tradition	64	(13)
Rosemary A. Joyce
Political fragmentation and ideological continuity in the Andean highlands	77	(11)
Mary Van Buren
Wealth and socioeconomic hierarchies of the Indus Valley civilization	88	(22)
Jonathan Mark Kenoyer
Classical order, alternative orders, and the uses of nostalgia	110	(10)
Susan E. Alcock
Order, legitimacy, and wealth in ancient China	120	(11)
Bennet Bronson
PART III CONCLUSIONS
The politics of high culture: issues of worth and rank	131	(9)
Elizabeth M. Brumfiel
List of references	140	(19)
Index	159