NES 2615 - [Archaeology of Empires]

(crosslisted)
(also ANTHR 2015, ARKEO 2015)(GHB) (HA-AS)

Fall. 3 credits.

Next offered 2014-2015.

L. Khatchadourian.

The word “empire” today evokes modern, capitalist, European, even American experiments in expansion and asymmetrical relations of power. This course considers the precursors of these modern imperialisms. It offers a comparative study of early empires of the Old and New Worlds, approached from an archaeological perspective. We confront broad theoretical problems of empire-what they are, what they do, why they fail-and address these problems through archaeological interventions into such topics as conquest, colonialism, kingship and ideology, identity and inequality, tolerance and domination, and the everyday workings of empire. Is the very concept of empire as a construct of political, social, or historical analysis useful across time and space? What is archaeology’s contribution to the study of these complex, expansive, and messy sociopolitical phenomena?