Topoi – Berlin Studies of the Ancient World/Topoi – Berliner Studien der Alten Welt

Tumuli were the most widespread form of monumental tombs in the ancient world. Their impact on landscape, their allurement as well as their symbolic reference to a glorious past can still be felt today. The need of supra-regional and cross-disciplinary examination of this unique phenomenon led to an international conference in Istanbul in 2009. With almost 50 scholars from 12 different countries participating, the conference entitled TumulIstanbul created links between fields of research which would not have had the opportunity to meet otherwise. The proceedings of TumulIstanbul revolve around the question of the symbolic significance of burial mounds in the 1st millennium BC in the Eastern Mediterranean and Black-Sea regions, providing further insight into Kurgan neighbours from Eurasia.

This study focuses on the long-neglected relation between metal deposit and find spot. It examines the spatial dimension of Copper and Bronze Age deposit practices between the Danube and Po rivers from a socio-archeological perspective.

Questions concerning mobility and migration as well as subsistence strategies of past societies have always been of major importance in archaeological research. The West Eurasian steppes in the Eneolithic, the Early Bronze and the Iron Age were largely inhabited by cultural communities believed to show an elevated level of spatial mobility, often linked to their subsistence economy. In this volume, questions concerning the mobility and potential migration as well as the diet and economy of the West Eurasian steppes communities during the 4^th, the 3^rd and the 1^st Millennia BC are approached by applying isotope analysis, specifically ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr, δ¹⁸O, δ¹⁵N and δ¹³C analyses. Adapting a combination of different isotopic systems to a study area of vast spatial and chronological dimension allowed a wide variety of questions to be answered and establishes the beginning of a database of biogeochemical data for the West Eurasian steppes. Besides the characterisation of mobility and subsistence patterns of the archaeological communities under discussion, attempts to identify possible Early Bronze Age migrations from the steppes to the steppe-like plains in parts of Eastern Europe were made, alongside an evaluation of the applicability of isotope analysis to this context.

The Western globular amphora culture represents a heterogeneous cultural complex, marked by the juxtaposition of regional and trans-regional elements. This study uses an innovative approach for spatiotemporal differentiation, combining statistical with GIS-based analysis. The ability to assign dates to regional influences in a transregional developmental schema facilitates insights about their origins and pathways of dissemination.

This book contains a collection of papers discussing questions related to space and movement in the framework of computational archaeology, landscape archaeology, historical geography and archaeological theory. The contributions, written by recognized experts in the field, show how the study of settlements pattern and movement has been dramatically transformed by the use of technology like Geographic Information System (GIS). The papers focus on the ways to approach past movement using GIS in archaeological landscape studies: theoretical, technical and interpretative issues are addressed and explored. They provide the state of the art in theory and methodology and show, by using case studies, the potential of the developed approaches for the understanding of factors and effects of landscape formation and transformation in the long term.

Does the soul have parts? What kind of parts? And how do all the parts make together a whole? Many ancient, medieval and early modern philosophers discussed these questions, thus providing a mereological analysis of the soul. Their starting point was a simple observation: we tend to describe the soul of human beings by referring to different types of activities (perceiving, imagining, thinking, etc.). Each type of activity seems to be produced by a special part of the soul. But how can a simple, undivided soul have parts? Classical thinkers gave radically different answers to this question. While some claimed that there are indeed parts, thus assigning an internal complexity to the soul, others emphasized that there can only be a plurality of functions that should not be conflated with a plurality of parts. The eleven chapters reconstruct and critically examine these answers. They make clear that the metaphysical structure of the soul was a crucial issue for ancient, medieval and early modern philosophers.

During the 8th century BC, power gradually shifted from the central government to local rulers, who had nearly autonomous control over their areas of dominion. This study assembles for the first time all known sources regarding this period and analyzes them with respect to their description of the sociocultural interactions between the king and local population. The author demonstrates the kinds of knowledge about governance that was used to consolidate rulers’ personal power and the discernible space, power, and knowledge relationships of the potentates.

For the first time, this study examines the full range of spatial expression used in the Hittite world through a fruitful combination of insights from Hittitology, cognitive linguistics, and Indo-European studies. The volume includes an introduction to the field as well as annotated and translated texts, thus making it accessible to a heterogeneous audience.

This volume presents new research by the Topoi group "The Conception of Spaces in Language" on the expression of spatial relations in ancient languages. The six articles in this volume discuss static and dynamic aspects of the spatial grammars of Ancient to Medieval Greek, Akkadian, Hittite, and Hieroglyphic Ancient Egyptian, as well as field data on eight modern languages (Arabic, Hebrew, English, German, Russian, French, Italian, and Spanish). Among the grams discussed are spatial particles, motion verbs, case and, most prominently, spatial prepositions. All ancient language data are fully explained in linguistic word-by-word glosses and are therefore accessible to scholars who are not themselves experts on the respective languages. Taken together, these contributions extend the scope of research on spatial grammar back to the third millennium BCE.

In the past decade a range of formal spatial analysis methods has been developed for the study of human engagement, experience and socialisation within the built environment. Many, although not all, of these emanate from the fields of architectural and urban studies, and draw upon social theories of space that lay emphasis on the role of visibility, movement, and accessibility in the built environment. These approaches are now gaining in popularity among researchers of prehistoric and historic built spaces and are given increasingly more weight in the interpretation of past urban environments.

Spatial Analysis and Social Spaces brings together contributions from specialists in archaeology, social theory, and urban planning who explore the theoretical and methodological frameworks associated with the application of new and established spatial analysis methods in past built environments. The focus is mainly on more recent computer-based approaches and on techniques such as access analysis, visibility graph analysis, isovist analysis, agent-based models of pedestrian movement, and 3D visibility approaches. The contributors to this volume examine the relationship between space and social life from many different perspectives, and provide illuminating examples from the archaeology of Greece, Italy and Cyprus, in which intra-site analysis offers valuable insights into the built spaces and societies under study.

The Mittani empire is one of the most enigmatic political structures in Mesopotamian history. Reconstructing the emergence and the organisation of this state, whose territory encompassed Upper Mesopotamia touching the Levant and the piedmont plains of the Zagros in the East at the height of its power, is exceedingly difficult. Cuneiform specialists, archeologists and historians discuss the Mittani state with regard to modes of spatial organisation co- and preexisting in the region.

Unterschiedliche soziale Gruppen (Identitäten) nutzten den Raum nicht nur in spezifischer Weise, sondern entwickelten auch sehr eigene Raumkonzepte, die häufig parallel bestehen. Unter Betrachtung dieser parallelen, vielschichtigen Raumnutzung lässt sich die Dynamik der Prozesse im Raum besser abbilden. Die Beiträge des Bandes untersuchen diese Fragestellung aus mannigfaltiger Perspektive.

From ancient times until the present, spoliation and reutilization have played a waxing and waning role among the determinant factors in the evolution of urban landscapes. They have contributed significantly to shaping urban spaces, both physically and conceptually. This collection of essays describes and analyzes the diverse practical and semantic aspects of transposing and reutilizing materials.

This collection presents major portions of a Berlin conference on ancient geography. The volume is devoted to questions about the shape and size of the Greco-Roman Oecumene, including its boundaries and internal structure. Building upon on analysis of different literary genres, the articles contained in this volume help to unite dispersed and fragmentary knowledge about the subject, as well as to reconstruct and analyze the different contexts in which this knowledge was generated and preserved.

The texts of the Gromatici veteres raise a number of questions: what conclusions can be drawn from them regarding legal history? What are their underlying conceptions of world and place? How can we contextualize them historically and how were they received? All of the collected papers in this volume are devoted to addressing these questions based upon the latest research findings.

Images are more than just objects to be observed. In all periods they have had a direct influence on the way we perceive things and act, in particular in the course of ceremonies. In this volume, various archaeological disciplines consider a number of case studies of the relationships between works of art, spaces and actions in past cultures – including the Nasca-Palpa glyphs in South America, the Stone Age site of Göbekli Tepe, Minoan and Mycenaean palaces, and Greek and Roman towns. The aim is to develop a new methodical approach to the power and effect of works of art.

The essays in this volume, which are conducted across a broad geographical range, reveal the great potential of studying Bronze Age hoard sites. This volume provides a glimpse into current research on Bronze Age hoard sites between the Baltic Sea and Carpathian Basin while also opening up new perspectives on a phenomenon often regarded as fully researched.

What effect do spatial mobility and migrations have on the diffusion of knowledge? In this volume, papers dealing with the topic have been collected from various culture-historical and theoretical disciplines. Chronologically they range from non-literate cultures to an insight into contemporary research on economic innovation. The interdisciplinary contributions reveal in different ways the relationships between spatial mobility and the transfer of knowledge, thus allowing the phenomenon to be structured in both historical and non-literate ages.

This work investigates the Carthaginian territories in Sicily from the period of Punic settlement of the western portion of the island in the 6th century BC through the creation of the Roman province and the Augustan administration. It analyzes fundamental questions regarding the Punic and Roman presence in Sicily. Specific areas of emphasis include topography, town planning, fortifications, residential architecture, temples, and necropolises.

On the occasion of the 2000-year anniversary of the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, archeologists, historians, and art historians assembled at the Freie Universität of Berlin for a special lecture series. This volume documents this interdisciplinary conference and presents an exemplary range of different research perspectives for exploring this battle, including its context and legacy.

The ancient city of Rome can be understood as an ensemble of monuments, as a space of action for its inhabitants, as a literary construction. Communication took place in it, about it and through it; that is by means of furnishing it with a conscious programme of buildings and works of art. From the perspective of various classical disciplines, the papers in this volume analyse the relationships between these three forms of communication about the city of Rome from the beginning of the Principate to Late Antiquity.

Migrations and population dynamics are considered very problematic topics in the fields of ancient studies. Recent scholarship in (pre)historical population has generated new impulses by using scientific approaches using radiogenic and stable isotopes, and palaeogenetics, as well as computer simulation. As a result, the state of migration research has undergone rapid change. Several research groups presented papers at a conference held in Berlin in 2010, addressing specific historical aspects of population dynamics and migration, with no chronological or geographical restrictions, in the light of cutting-edge bio-archaeological research. This volume, divided into three larger thematic sections (isotope analysis, population genetics, and modelling and computer simulation), presents experiences and insights about methodological approaches, research results and prospects for future research in this area in a varied collection of papers. Scholars from widely diverse scientific disciplines present their approaches, findings and interpretations to an audience far broader than the circles of the individual disciplines.

The multidisciplinary contributions to this collection of papers look at Rome as the cultural and Milan as the political capital in the 4th and 5th centuries. In the literature of the time both cities were perceived as spaces in which the political and clerical power struggles, and the political and cultural changes which were so important for the Latin West took place. The cities are thereby understood as “stages‎” upon which the world theatre of the politics of power, culture and the church was produced. The reconstruction of both “stage settings” is based on texts, inscriptions and archaeological remains.

In a series of case studies, the contributions assess the extent to which in the Ancient World control over large territories relied on the settlement of active or retired soldiers. The central question is that of the link between the historical situation of the foundation, those involved, and the location of the settlement on the one hand and, on the other, the strategic importance which can be derived from these factors for the domination of territories on land and sea, roads, frontiers, other towns, a previous population etc.; in other words the connection between spatial conditions and historical events.

The ceremonial centers of the Syro-Hittite city-states (1200-700 BC) were lavishly decorated with large-scale, open-air figurative reliefs – an original and greatly influential artistic tradition that has captivated the imagination of its contemporaries as well as that of modern scholars. This volume explores how Syro-Hittite monumental art was used as a powerful backdrop to important ritual events, and it opens up a new perspective by situating the monumental heritage in the context of large public performances and civic spectacles of great emotional impact. The first part of the volume focuses on the sites of Carchemish and Zincirli, offering a close reading of the relevant archaeological contexts. The second part of the volume discusses the embedment of monumental art in ritual performance and examines how change in art relates to change in ceremonial behavior, and how the latter relates in turn to change in power structures and models of rulership.

In this collection of interdisciplinary papers, for the first time well-known scholars of Ancient Near Eastern Studies discuss Babylon from the point of view of the “culture of knowledge”. The volume is the result of a conference that took place on the occasion of the exhibition Babylon – Truth and Myth in Berlin. For the contemporary cultures of the Ancient World, Babylon was the epitome of learned scholarship. Yet in the processes of transformation of Late and post-Antiquity, to the same extent to which this culture of knowledge was forgotten after the collapse of the old oriental empires, Babylon became symbolic for the occult, for magic and esoteric knowledge.

As the first joint pilot project by Topoi and the publisher De Gruyter for the simultaneous publication in print and open access, this volume will, on publication, also be available via www.reference-global.de as an eBook “open access”.