Thursday 21.11. from 11:35, room B10
In the second half of the 3rd millennium BCE, the first political organisations defined as “states” emerged in Mesopotamia and Egypt. Conventionally, “Western” archaeology has assumed that state structures, implying institutions like slavery, taxes, armies, and inherited control of wealth, could not have appeared in Europe before Antiquity, except for the Minoan and Mycenean societies of the Aegean. Resorting to some extend on the methods and materials presented in the previous talk as well as on settlement and funerary evidence, I will compare the socio-economic fabric of the Minoan world, Únětice, and El Argar, all of which manifest an accelerated development between c. 2200-1500 BCE. Observable convergences and differences will be discussed in relation to state theory.
In the week from 18th to 22nd November, Prof. Roberto Risch will visit the Department of Archaeology FF UHK and give two lectures at the Department, to which we cordially invite you.
Roberto Risch is Professor of Prehistoric Archaeology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and ICREA Acadèmia Research Fellow. His research is mainly concerned with the economy, ecology and mobility of prehistoric societies. He has investigated and co-directed the excavations of several prehistoric sites in Spain, Germany and India and conducted ethnoarchaeological fieldwork in Ghana and Mali. He collaborates actively with the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig and the Landesmuseums für Vorgeschichte in Halle (Germany). In 2024 he curated the international exhibition ‘Dynasties. The first kingdoms of Prehistoric Europe‘ at the Archaeological Museum of Alicante.
