Southwest Asia: village to empire

Matthews, R., Fazeli Nashli, H. and Rasheed Raheem, K. (2024) Southwest Asia: village to empire. In: Scarre, C. (ed.) The Human Past: World Prehistory and the Development of Human Societies. Thames and Hudson, London, pp. 392-427. ISBN 9780500296318

Abstract/Summary

From around 10,000 BCE, communities in Southwest Asia developed an increasingly settled way of life supported by farming and animal husbandry. Demographic and social changes underpinned increasingly complex societies, until, between 4000 and 3000 BCE, Southwest Asia hosted the emergence of a new kind of society: the first city states. Urban life in Southwest Asia developed in association with mechanisms of social control, including early writing and bureaucracy, social hierarchy, elite ideology, and the formation of states and empires. In this chapter we follow the story over 5,500 years, from the expansion of farming settlements around 6000 BCE to the age of empires beginning in Mesopotamia in 2300 BCE and continuing to the conquest of the Persian empire by Alexander the Great in 330 BCE.

Item Type	Book or Report Section
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/116219
Item Type	Book or Report Section
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Science > School of Archaeology, Geography and Environmental Science > Social Archaeology
Publisher	Thames and Hudson
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