Excavating Asian History
368 pages, 6 x 9
Hardcover
Release Date:26 Oct 2006
ISBN:9780816524181
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Excavating Asian History

Interdisciplinary Studies in Archaeology and History

The University of Arizona Press
Although history and archaeology each seek to elucidate the past, both sets of data are incomplete and ambiguous and thus open to multiple readings that invite contradictory interpretations of human activity. This is particularly true when scholars of each field ignore or fail to understand research in the other discipline.

Excavating Asian History contains case studies and theoretical articles that show how archaeologists have been investigating historical, social, and economic organizations and that explore the relationship between history and archaeology in the study of pre-modern Asia. These contributions consider biases in both historical and archaeological data that have occasioned rival claims to knowledge in the two disciplines. Ranging widely across the region from the Levant to China and from the third millennium BC to the second millennium AD, they demonstrate that archaeological and historical studies can complement each other and should be used in tandem.

The contributors are leading historians and archaeologists of Asia who present data, issues, and debates revolving around the most recent research on the ancient Near East, early Islam, India, China, and Southeast Asian states. Their chapters illustrate the benefits of interdisciplinary investigations and show in particular how archaeology is changing our understanding of history. Commentary chapters by Miriam Stark and Philip Kohl add new perspectives to the findings.

By showing the evolving relationship between those who study archaeological material and those who investigate textual data, Excavating Asian History offers practical demonstrations of how research has been and must continue to be structured.
Norman Yoffee is Professor in the Department of Near Eastern Studies and the Department of Anthropology at the University of Michigan.
1 Historical Archaeology in Asia An Introduction
Norman Yoffee and Bradley L. Crowell
2 Berenike Crossroads The Integration of Information
Willemina Z. Wendrich, Roger S. Bagnall, René T. J. Cappers, James A. Harrell, Steven E. Sidebotham, and Roberta S. Tomber
3 The Rise of Secondary States in the Iron Age Levant Archaeological and Historical Considerations
Alexander H. Joffe
4 Reconstructing theWorld of Ancient Mesopotamia Divided Beginnings and Holistic History
Richard L. Zettler
5 Archaeology and the Early History of Islam The First Seventy Years
Jeremy Johns
6 In the Beginning Was the Word Excavating the Relations between History and Archaeology in South Asia 191
Thomas Trautmann and Carla M. Sinopoli
7 Jinan in the First Millennium bc Archaeology and History
Li Min
8 On the Use of Archaeology and History in Island Southeast Asia
Peter V. Lape
9 Textualized Places, Pre-Angkorian Khmers, and Historicized Archaeology 307
Miriam T. Stark
10 The Materiality of History Reflections on the Strengths of the Archaeological Record
Philip L. Kohl
Contributors
Illustration Credits
Index
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