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Archaeological Landscapes of the Near East
by Tony J Wilkinson
Although most of the ancient cities and cultures of the Near East have been widely studied, what has been lacking is a broad synthetic approach to how these interacted with and brought change upon the landscape. Tony Wilkinson's study offers both theoretical and methodological perspectives and guidance on more than 10,000 years of Near Eastern archaeology tracing trends and themes in how humans have interacted with and altered the landscape. Examining archaeological evidence for `landscape signatures', including human settlement, territorial boundaries, artefact scatters, roads and tracks, he describes and explains landscape change and provides a context for the development of the first states and empires in the Near East. Despite the rather strange three-column layout, the book is well written and well presented. Heralded as a ground-breaking study: `the field will never be the same after this book is published' - Robert McC. Adams. 260p, many b/w figs, tbs (University of Arizona 2003)
Review Quote
"Following in the tradition of Land Behind Baghdad, Heartland of Cities and The Uruk Countryside Tony Wilkinson’s new book Archaeological Landscapes of the Near East offers us the first up-to-date synthesis in English of landscape archaeology in the ancient Near East. Working on a broad canvas stretching from Yemen in the south to Turkey in the north, from Sinai in the west to Iran in the east, he paints a picture of the ways in which humans have modified landscapes and they have, in turn, shaped human life from the earliest complex societies in the sixth millennium BC to the early Islamic states of the tenth century AD. In the space of ten chapters, Wilkinson takes us first through a history of approaches to landscape archaeology, the regional environmental context, the practice of landscape archaeology and the elements encountered in fieldwork in the region, before charting the development of various landscapes in a broadly chronological sequence: irrigation, tells, dispersed settlement, desert and highlands. Drawing on thirty years’ fieldwork experience, Wilkinson’s book is deeply engaged with the practice of landscape archaeology in the region. Superficially similar in scope to Malcolm Wagstaff’s The Evolution of Middle Eastern Landscapes (1985), Wilkinson’s book is more detailed and more interested in human involvement, suggesting that the detailed evidence -- both archaeological and textual -- in the area offers the possibility not only of a detailed and subtle understanding of human relations with shifting environments, but also a deeper appreciation of cultural landscapes. This should be required reading for anyone interested in landscape archaeology anywhere in the world, but it also offers those interested in the development of human societies a broad perspective neither limited by text nor by a focus on individual sites. In this sense it is the true legacy of R. McC. Adams’s work cited above."
John Bennet, Sinclair & Rachel Hood Lecturer in Aegean Prehistory, Inst of Archaeology, Oxford
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