ANT 2340 - Bronze Age Civilizations (3)

When Offered: Spring
GEN ED: Social Science Designation; Integrative Learning Experience (Theme: “From Empire to Globalization”)
What explains the rise and fall of past civilizations? How did the first cities promote increasingly global scales of economic and cultural interaction? And how do early states and empires reflect on our own experience of citizenship and globalization in the 21st century? This course follows in the footsteps of archaeologists to explore these questions through a comparative survey of ruins, artifacts, and texts from complex societies across Eurasia during the so-called Bronze Age circa 3500-1000 BCE. Focusing on case studies from Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Scandinavia, India, and China, the course lectures and readings will outline common trajectories, historical differences, and growing interconnections among the ancient societies of these regions.