Erken Ticaret Ağları ve Sosyal Karmaşıklığın Yeniden Değerlendirilmesi

Abstract

Archaeologists have been enormously successful in achieving increasingly detailed knowledge about the human past. Especially from the 1960s onwards a range of new scientific technologies combined with rigorous and systematic archaeological research, has resulted in great progress in our data and our capabilities (Kristiansen 2014). However, I argue that the development of archaeology in general, and that of West Asia in particular, is constrained by two pervasive and problematic myths. These myths simplify and compress the past and have formed the basis for our studies, despite much empirical evidence to the contrary. I will argue that to overcome these two myths it is crucial to decentre the archaeology of West Asia and practice a more inclusive study of the past. To illustrate this decentred approach, I will focus on the rise of exchange networks in the third millennium BCE in West Asia.