Doctoral defence: Cristina Barcina Pérez "Before Civilization: A Non-Evolutionist History of Community-Making in Southwest Asia"

On 26 May at 16:15 Cristina Barcina Pérez will defend her doctoral thesis "Before Civilization: A Non-Evolutionist History of Community-Making in Southwest Asia" for obtaining the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (in Religious Studies).

Supervisors:

Associate Professor Amar Annus, University of Tartu

Associate Professor Vladimir Sazonov, University of Tartu

Opponent:

Professor Karina Croucher, University of Bradford (United Kingdom)

Summary

This dissertation is a critical examination of the biases embedded in theories and narratives revolving around elitism, inequality, complexity, and similar themes, affecting the prehistory of Southwest Asia and the origins of Mesopotamian civilization models.

It is a diachronic analysis focusing on sedentism (community-making) since its beginnings. Agriculture, pastoralism, ceramics, metallurgy and the writing system are approached as consequences of the experience of living together, entailing experimentation, adaptations, and choices.

Collaboration, migration, and selective transmission or emulation are important factors throughout the analysis, and a heterarchical model of organization is postulated for the first aggregations that are conventionally studied under the umbrella of "protourbanism".

The Uruk phenomenon model is critically reviewed. It is argued that many of the so-called colonies of the Uruk period must have been founded by peoples leaving the cities in the Susiana.