The Near East was first explored for its historical archaeology and importance for Biblical and Classical traditions, and there are firmly rooted culture-history and text-based approaches that color study of its prehistory. But problem-driven archaeological research since the 1960s has had a tremendous impact on work in the region, and scholars working in the Near East have led the way on the key questions of agriculture and state origins (Matthews 2003). However, this ‘‘big picture’’ research has a legacy in the lingering assumption of a unilineal trajectory toward agriculture-based complexity, marginalizing alternative economies and political systems in deserts, marshes, and fringes of agricultural communities. Farming-hunting or herd-ing-gathering blended economies and loose tribal groupings were viable long-term possibilities, rather than temporary stages (Zeder 1994), but these alternatives remain under-researched.
Although many archaeologists continue to ask cultural and historical questions, Watkins (1992) and Cauvin (2000) have explored the symbolic revolution in the Near Eastern Neolithic (12,000-6300 bce), focusing on psychological changes rather than economic, social, and political ones. Beyond fashions in archaeological theory, one of the most difficult problems in reconstructing Near Eastern prehistory is our vision of the region’s inhabitants. Are the innovations we see active, brought about by individuals, or reactive, the result of inexorable systemic changes or imbalances? Most importantly, what is the nature of the state when it emerges: benevolent or tyrannical? Are Western scholars who characterize Ancient Near Eastern states as oppressive and exploitative subliminally affected by their opinions of the modern states of Iraq, Syria, and Turkey?
World History
