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ANTH161 Old World Civilizations

ANTH161 Old World Civilizations. Dr. Marco Meniketti marco.meniketti@sjsu.edu sjsu.edu/people/ marco.meniketti /courses/ OldCiv. A few words about the course. Archaeological structure Foundations A few great civilizations Maritime focus Trade and interaction Environmental underpinnings.

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ANTH161 Old World Civilizations

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  1. ANTH161Old World Civilizations Dr. Marco Meniketti marco.meniketti@sjsu.edu sjsu.edu/people/marco.meniketti/courses/OldCiv

  2. A few words about the course • Archaeological structure • Foundations • A few great civilizations • Maritime focus • Trade and interaction • Environmental underpinnings

  3. Syllabus • Assignments • Group Activities • Topical paper • Texts • Supplemental readings and web sources. • Exam

  4. Ancient Geography • Hecataeus of Miletus • Herodotus • Cognitive geography • Strabo, Tacitus, • Pliny the Elder, Ptolemy • Concepts of symmetry and aesthetics played a major role in the cognitive map of the world—most all were wrong.

  5. The world according to Hecateaus of Miletus

  6. Uncertainty about shape of earth, size of earth, distances to different regions continued to have implications for human populations until the last century. • Medieval geography filled in knowledge gaps with mysterious islands, strange peoples, and bizarre creatures.

  7. Time • Fernand Breudel • longue dureeand conjunctures • Deep structure of time and global/geographic cycles are foundation on which float human scales of time.

  8. World Systems • Immanuel Wallerstein • World System Approach • Core and Periphery • Theoretical approach was devised to explain modern capitalist world, but has applications for understanding the past.

  9. Economic/Social Value • Trade relations governed by concepts of value. • Values may be conferred based on scarcity, exotic qualities, labor input, necessity, prestige, cultural values, favors sought, and context (in the dry desert water is more precious than gold). • Core / Periphery model

  10. Maritime connections • Strong evidence to support assessment that there were seafarers before there were farmers. • The Mediterranean World has a maritime connection. • If we think of Europe as a peninsula surrounded by water and cut through with North/South rivers, we can imagine how mobility and trade were facilitated, and conflict magnified.

  11. Viewed from this perspective Europe is a large peninsula surrounded by seas on three sides. Altering our cognitive map helps us understand population movements.

  12. By what means was early water travel accomplished? Left: prehistoric Scandinavian rock carvings. Above; Australian indigenous bark canoe.

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