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Why are some things valuable while others are not? How much effort
does it take to produce valuable objects? How can one explain the
different appraisal of certain things in different temporal
horizons and in different cultures? Cultural processes on how value
is attached to things, and how value is re-established, are still
little understood. The case studies in this volume, originating
from anthropology and archaeology, provide innovative and
differentiated answers to these questions. However, for all
contributions there are some common basic assumptions. One of these
concerns the understanding that it is rarely the value of the
material itself that matters for high valuation, but rather the
appreciation of the (assumed or constructed) origin of certain
objects or their connection with certain social structures. A
second of these shared insights addresses the ubiquity of phenomena
of 'value in things'. There is no society without valued objects.
As a rule, valuation is something negotiated or even disputed.
Value arises through social action, whereby it is always necessary
to ask anew which actors are interested in the value of certain
objects (or in their appreciation). This also works the other way
round: Who are those actors who question corresponding objective
values and why?
This volume presents a vivid record in words and pictures of a dig
on the Anatolian borders of Mesopotamia that ended recently after
nearly two decades. Designed in the format of a survey book,
Ziyaret Tepe: Exploring the Anatolian frontier of the Assyrian
Empire captures the sense of intimacy and immediacy of the project.
Ziyaret Tepe, the ancient city of Tushan, was a provincial capital
of the Assyrian Empire, in its day the greatest empire the world
had ever seen. The excavations captured in this innovative book
uncovered the palace of the governor, the mansions of the elite and
the barracks of the rank and file, charting the history of the
empire from its expansion in the early 9th century BC to its fall
three centuries years later. The great mound of Ziyaret Tepe, with
its accumulated layers rising 22 metres above the surrounding
plain, is a record of thousands of years of human occupation. In
the course of 18 seasons of fieldwork, both the lower town and the
mound looming up over it yielded the secrets of Tushan, today in
southeast Turkey, near the border with Syria. This has always been
frontier country. Elaborate wall paintings, a hoard of luxury items
burned in a cremation ritual 2,800 years ago, and a cuneiform
tablet that hints at a previously unknown language are among the
team's exceptional finds. The story of the project is told by the
specialists who dedicated years of their lives to it.
Geophysicists, ceramicists, readers of cuneiform, experts in
weaving, board games and Neo-Assyrian politics joined
archaeologists, zooarchaeologists, archaeobotanists and many
others. But this is no dry field book of dusty digging. Both
accessible and scholarly, it is a lively, copiously illustrated
record of excavations involving the whole team, a compelling
demonstration of the collaboration - the science, artistry and
imaginative reconstruction - that makes modern archaeology so
absorbing.
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