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Understanding Ancient Interactions

Journal of World-Systems Research

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Title Understanding Ancient Interactions
 
Creator Schortman, Edward
 
Description Archaic State Interaction casts valuable new light on how extra-societal contacts may be implicated in processes of increasing social complexity. As the title makes clear, the contributors ground their discussions of interaction theory in the specific sequence of events dating to 3100-1000 BCE in that portion of the Mediterranean basin stretching from Italy to the Levantine Coast. Their goals, as stated clearly by Parkinson and Galaty in the introduction, are to consider how local social and economic changes, on the one hand, were related to: variations in the intensity of interactions occurring at differing spatial and temporal scales; changes in how, and by whom, such contacts were conducted; and, shifts in the routes these transactions followed. The result is less a consensus than a healthy, productive debate on these issues. The main points of contention concern: rates of socio-political change; how to translate patterns among static material remains into dynamic political and economic processes; whose interests drove and shaped the course of cross-border contacts; and what interpretive frameworks are best suited to modeling the latter interactions. With respect to the last point, a consistent theme running throughout the papers deals with the utility of world-systems theory (WST) in describing and understanding the developmental significance of inter-polity contacts.
 
Publisher University Library System, University of Pittsburgh
 
Date 2015-08-26
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
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Format application/pdf
 
Identifier http://jwsr.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/jwsr/article/view/402
10.5195/jwsr.2011.402
 
Source Journal of World-Systems Research; Volume 17, Issue 2, 2011; 532-537
1076-156X
 
Language eng
 
Relation http://jwsr.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/jwsr/article/view/402/414
 
Rights Copyright (c) 2015 Edward Schortman
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0