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      Global archaeology and microhistorical analysis. Connecting scales in the 1st-milennium B.C. Mediterranean

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      Archaeological Dialogues
      Cambridge University Press (CUP)

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          Abstract

          Recently, voices have been raised regarding the challenges of Big Data-driven global approaches, including the realization that exclusively tackling the global scale masks social and historical realities. While multi-scalar analyses have confronted this problem, the effects of global approaches are being felt. We highlight one of these effects: as classical scholarship struggles to decolonize itself, the ancient Mediterranean in global archaeology pivots around the Graeco-Roman world only, marginalizing the non-classical Mediterranean, thus foiling attempts at promoting post-colonial perspectives. In highlighting this, our aim is twofold: first, to invigorate the debate on multi-scalar approaches, proposing to incorporate microhistory into archaeological analysis; second, to use the non-classical Mediterranean to demonstrate that historical depth at a micro level is essential to augment that power in our interpretations.

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          Connected Histories: Notes towards a Reconfiguration of Early Modern Eurasia

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            The dawn of everything - A new history of humanity

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              Between domestication and civilization: the role of agriculture and arboriculture in the emergence of the first urban societies

              The transition to urbanism has long focused on annual staple crops (cereals and legumes), perhaps at the expense of understanding other changes within agricultural practices that occurred between the end of the initial domestication period and urbanisation. This paper examines the domestication and role of fruit tree crops within urbanisation in both Western Asia and China, using a combination of evidence for morphological change and a database that documents both the earliest occurrence of tree fruit crops and their spread beyond their wild range. In Western Asia the domestication of perennial fruit crops likely occurs between 6500 bc and 3500 bc, although it accompanies a shift in location from that of the earliest domestications within the Fertile Crescent to Mesopotamia, where the earliest urban societies arose. For China, fruit-tree domestication dates between ca 4000 and 2500 bc, commencing after millet domestication and rice domestication in Northern and Southern China, respectively, but within the period that led up to the urban societies that characterised the Longshan period in the Yellow River basin and the Liangzhu Culture in the Lower Yangtze. These results place the domestication of major fruit trees between the end of the domestication of staple annual crops and the rise of urbanism. On this basis it is argued that arboriculture played a fundamental role within the re-organisation of existing land use, shifting the emphasis from short-term returns of cereal crops into longer term investment in the developing agricultural landscape in both Western and East Asia. In this respect perennial tree crops can be placed alongside craft specialisation, such as metallurgy and textiles, in the formation of urban centres and the shaping the organisational administration that accompanied the rise of urbanism. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1007/s00334-019-00727-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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                Author and article information

                Journal
                Archaeological Dialogues
                Arch. Dial.
                Cambridge University Press (CUP)
                1380-2038
                1478-2294
                June 2022
                June 16 2022
                June 2022
                : 29
                : 1
                : 1-14
                Article
                10.1017/S1380203822000101
                a107948a-9332-4e6f-8b5a-bfac302f481a
                © 2022

                Free to read

                https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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