Livestream Masterclass- Ancient Middle Eastern Warfare in the Archaeological Record

Previous participation and previous knowledge are not required. 

How do archaeologists study warfare in the ancient past?

The factors behind the change from interpersonal violent interaction on a small scale to state-sanctioned violence and killing of the “other” on a larger scale remain an intense controversy in modern anthropological and archaeological scholarship. Added to this is a lack of textual evidence from the time in which warfare became entrenched in societies, with data derived solely from the archaeological record. In the ancient Middle East, the Early Bronze Age period (ca. 3000-2000 BCE) saw many changes in how power was wielded, how settlements were laid out, and how various groups interacted with each other, all of which became increasingly enmeshed with warfare and violence and the rise of urbanization. In this session, we will look at how we study warfare in the archaeological record, with special emphasis on the ancient Middle East. 

In this masterclass we will study evidence of warfare in the prehistoric archaeology record, and how archaeologists use this to reconstruct the place of violence in past societies.

Led by Dr. Stephanie Selover. Stephanie studies sachaeology of the Ancient Middle East, particularly ancient Turkey and the Levant. She holds a PhD from the University of Chicago (2015).