Book•
Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity
01 Jan 1997-
TL;DR: The nature and expression of ethnicity: an anthropological view 3. The discursive dimension of ethnic identity 4. Ethnicity and genealogy: an Argolic case-study as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: 1. Phrasing the problem 2. The nature and expression of ethnicity: an anthropological view 3. The discursive dimension of ethnic identity 4. Ethnography and genealogy: an Argolic case-study 5. Ethnicity and archaeology 6. Ethnicity and linguistics 7. Conclusion.
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TL;DR: The psychology of intercultural adaptation was first discussed by Plato as discussed by the authors, and many modern enculturation theories claim that ethnic minorities (including aboriginal natives, immigrants, refugees, and soj...
Abstract: The psychology of intercultural adaptation was first discussed by Plato. Many modern enculturation theories claim that ethnic minorities (including aboriginal natives, immigrants, refugees, and soj...
826 citations
Cites background from "Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity"
...(Tacitus, 1909, p. 32) Indeed, the Greeks were ambivalent about foreigners and their influence on the customs of the nation (ethnos) and on the rationality of civic law (polis) (E. Cohen, 2000; J. M. Hall, 1997)....
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Book•
01 Jan 2005TL;DR: Yoffee as discussed by the authors argues that early states were not uniformly constituted bureaucratic and regional entities, but had slaves and soldiers, priests and priestesses, peasants and prostitutes, merchants and craftsmen.
Abstract: In this ground-breaking work, Norman Yoffee shatters the prevailing myths underpinning our understanding of the evolution of early civilisations. He counters the emphasis in traditional scholarship on the rule of 'godly' and despotic male leaders and challenges the conventional view that early states were uniformly constituted bureaucratic and regional entities. Instead, by illuminating the role of slaves and soldiers, priests and priestesses, peasants and prostitutes, merchants and craftsmen, Yoffee depicts an evolutionary process centred on the concerns of everyday life. Drawing on evidence from ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, China and Mesoamerica, the author explores the variety of trajectories followed by ancient states, from birth to collapse, and explores the social processes that shape any account of the human past. This book offers a bold new interpretation of social evolutionary theory, and as such it is essential reading for any student or scholar with an interest in the emergence of complex society.
314 citations
TL;DR: Yoffee as mentioned in this paper argues that the focus on the origins of the state has stifled rather than stimulated our understanding of early state development, and stresses the diversity of the early Mesopotamian state.
Abstract: For more than a century, archaeologists have frequently been drawn to understand the human past in broadly evolutionary terms, applying Darwinian thinking to the development of human societies. The unilinear models of human development that often result typically regard the state as the culmination of human progress, the end-point of a journey through intervening stages of bands, tribes and chiefdoms. Neo-evolutionary thinking was especially prevalent from the 1940s onwards, in the work of Julian Steward and others writing on the origins of the state. In the volume reviewed, Norman Yoffee challenges the former dominance of the neo-evolutionary approach, arguing that over the past half century it has stifled rather than stimulated our understanding of early state development.Yoffee contests the idea that states develop through a series of programmatic stages from less complex kinds of society. Instead, he stresses the diversity of the archaic state, drawing heavily on his specialist knowledge (drawn from texts as well as archaeology) of early Mesopotamia. Here we see city-state societies in which heterarchies play a role alongside hierarchies, and in which the varieties of lived experience varied considerably from place to place, even though all may at some level be considered to have been part of a shared Mesopotamian civilization.Yoffee's book is not, however, concerned solely with Mesopotamia; far from it, he draws comparative evidence from Egypt, South and East Asia and Central and South America to demonstrate the diversity and fluidity of the entities he is describing. Few of them conform to models that might be drawn from ethnography, and each state may in many ways be considered unique. Yet in a broader perspective, all states arise through a widespread pattern of change that has taken place in human society since the end of the Pleistocene in which individuals and groups have competed for control of resources.Yoffee concludes that ‘The central myth about the study of the earliest states ... is that there was something that could be called the archaic state, and that all of the earliest states were simply variations on this model’. The methodological alternative is to consider each society (of whatever type) as individual and unique, and constantly in a state of flux. In this review feature we invite a series of archaeologists specializing in the study of early states to address this and other issues raised by this important book. We begin, however, with an opening statement from the author himself.
264 citations
01 Dec 2016
248 citations
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TL;DR: The practice theory of ethnicity as mentioned in this paper is a theory of practice that allows richer interpretations of ethnic phenomena, individual and collective, than do conventional models of ethnicity, and has been proposed to give new unity to a fragmented field of study.
Abstract: A perusal of the contents of any social science journal will indicate that ethnicity has been a popular topic during the past two decades. Yet despite the volume of material produced, this period has not seen a notable increase in theoretical sophistication in the field (Drummond 1983:803; Young 1983). For the most part students of ethnicity remain mired in antique arguments about motivation that obscure as much as they illuminate. The following discussion attempts to break through some entrenched conceptual blinders by drawing on the theory of practice outlined by Pierre Bourdieu (1977). This theory avoids the explanatory gaps and fallacious reasoning and at the same time allows richer interpretations of ethnic phenomena, individual and collective, than do conventional models of ethnicity. Since individual and collective expressions of ethnicity have elicited divergent theoretical treatments, the practice theory of ethnicity promises to give new unity to a fragmented field of study.
321 citations
Book•
01 Jan 1989
TL;DR: In this article, an epistemological enquiry into some archaeological and historical interpretations of 17th century native American-European relations is presented, focusing on the relationship between cultural identity and archaelogical objectivity.
Abstract: List of contributors Foreword Introduction: archaeolgical appraoches to cultural identity Objectivity, Interests and Cultural Difference in Archaeological Interpretation 1. Ethnic concepts in German prehistory: a case study on the relationship between cultural identity and archaelogical objectivity 2. The Vandals: myths and facts about a Germanic tribe of the first half of the 1st millennium AD 3. Theory, profession, and the political role of archaeolgy 4. An epistemological enquiry into some archaeological and historical interpretations of 17th century native American-European relations 5. Matters of fact and matters of interest 6. The role of 'local knowledge' in archaeological interpretation Cultural Identity and its Material Expression in the Past and the Present 7. Material aspects of Limba, Yalunka and Kuranko ethnicity: archaeological research in northeastern Sierra-Leone 8. Multiculturalism in the eastern Andes 9. The property of symmetry and the concept of ethnic style 10. Patterns of learning, residence and descent among potters in Ticul, Yucatan, Mexico 11. Some ethnospecific features in central and eastern European archaeology during the early Middle Ages: the case of Avars and Hungarians 12. Ancient ethnic groups as represented on bronzes from Yunnan, China 13. The archaeology of the Yoruba: problems and possibilities 14. Ethnicity and traditions in Mesolithic mortuary practices of southern Scandinavia 15. Detecting political units in archaeology - an Iron Age example The Genesis, Maintenance and Disappearance of Ethnicity and Cultural Variation 17. Sociocultural and economic elements of the adaptation systems of the Argentine Toba: the Nacilamolek and Taksek cases of Formosa Province 18. Spatial heterogeneity in Fuego-Patagonia 19. Cultural and ethnic processes in prehistory as seen through the evidence of archaeology and related disciplines 20. Research with style: a case study from Australian rock art 21. Steppe traditions and cultural assimilation of a nomadic people: the Cumanians in Hungary in the 13th-14th century 22. An ethnic change or a socio-economic one? The 5th and 6th centuries Index
202 citations
Book•
01 Feb 1997TL;DR: The classic handbook for Homer studies as mentioned in this paper remains the standard handbook and remains the most widely used book for the study of the Greek language and its history, and is available in paperback for the first time.
Abstract: Now available in paperback for the very first time, this classic volume remains the standard handbook for Homer studies.
180 citations
176 citations