Meets Together with HISTART 689-003 / ANTHRARCH TBD

The potent heritage of empires employed by modern nation-states stems from millennia of imperial experiments in political infrastructures and political cultures. While empires the world over have emerged in profoundly different environments and taken profoundly different forms, many of these exhibit similar processes manifested in remains of the arenas and accoutrements employed for pronouncing imperial realms. This course dissects a series of empires in an effort to reconstruct patterns of imperial formation, expansion, and maintenance as evidenced through a broad spectrum of material culture. Students in this course will engage with archaeological discourses on the notions and processes of empires, and will investigate cases from the Near East, Mediterranean, East Asia, South Asia, Central Asia, Africa and the Americas.

Estimated cost of materials: $0.

HISTART Distribution Requirements: 1. Ancient, 2. Medieval, A. Middle East, C. Asia (includes China, Japan, India, South and Southeast Asia, and the Pacific)

Textbooks/Other Materials: readings posted on canvas.