Macquarie University

History Studies: Warfare in the Ancient Near East - AHPG830

This unit offers advanced study of a special topic in History. Topics will be chosen from issues identified in current scholarship, particularly those relevant to methodology in Ancient History, historiography and the study of material evidence. Where available, visiting scholars will participate in this unit. Students will be expected to master relevant scholarship and seek to go beyond it in their research paper.

The current topic is Warfare and Society in the Ancient Near East.

Conflict was a part of life in the ancient Near East. From local skirmishes to full-scale long-distance campaigns, people fought either to control or to protect each other and their resources. The ways in which they did this evolved over time, but the human condition remained the same. Thus, in any given period developments in warfare can be seen as both the cause and effect of change; there was an inseparable dialectic between warfare and other aspects of civilization—political structure, economic potential, social order, religious understanding, self-identification, technology, artistic expression—that were constantly reacting with each other. This unit will investigate the intimate relationship between warfare and these various aspects of ancient Near Eastern civilizations from the Bronze Age (ca. 3000 BC) to the Roman Period (1st c. AD) through use of both archaeological and textual records.