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Living under Empires: A View from Below - 01-02-03/12/2020, Helsinki (Finland)


All the successive Empires of the First Millennium BCE, in one form or another, claim to guarantee the collective well-being of the people living on their territory. Furthermore, providing this welfare to human beings is the main clause of the Kings contract with the gods, and hence, is the corner stone of the legitimation of their authority as rulers. What are we missing if we dismiss these claims as solely rhetorical and directed to an elite audience? Can we consider them as principles that guided concrete policies towards the population, as principles that were binding to the political elite itself?

FECHA /DATE/DATA: 01-02-03/10/2020

ORGANIZADOR/ORGANIZER/ORGANIZZATORE: Caroline Wallis (University of Helsinki); Marta Lorenzon (University of Helsinki); Sebastian Fink (University of Innsbruck).

INFO: web - livingunderempires@gmail.com

INSCRIPCIÓN/REGISTRATION/REGISTRAZIONE: gratis / free / gratuito


PROGRAMA/PROGRAM/PROGRAMMA:

TUESDAY 1.12.2020

10.00 - 10.20  Opening of the workshop  by Saana Svärd, director of CoE ANEE  and Marta Lorenzon on building complexity in ANE

10.20 - 10.50  Caroline Wallis: Investigating the agricultural and pastoral basis of New Year festivities: when life at the bottom explains the life on the top

11.00 - 11.30  Sebastian Fink: The advantages and disadvantages of an Empire

11.30 - 12.00  Johannes Bach: Folktales, popular sayings, riddles and humour: Lower strata of Assyrian and Babylonian society in literary testimony


14.00 - 15.00  Keynote 1: Claudia Glatz: Time to let the subalterns speak: complicated stories, presencing, and the future of Empire studies


15.10 -15.40  Bernhard Schneider: On the archaeological evidence of the impact of an empire change on some inhabitants at Nippur after 539 BC

15.40 - 16.10  Heather D. Baker: Investigating the urban poor in first millenium BC Babylonia

16.10 – 16.40 Melanie M. Gross: Trading communities in Sippar and their social circumstances during Achaemenid rule


WEDNESDAY 2.12.2020

11.30 - 12.00  Maria Gabriella Micale: Living "on top" of an Empire: the Persian building on the Acropolis of Tell Mardikh, ancient Ebla - architecture and function

12.00 - 12.30  Rocio da Riva: Mesopotamian Empires in southern Transjordan: a bottom-up approach

12.40 - 13.10  Kateryna Baulina: King's court, conquered and locals in the interpretation of the proskynesis ceremony in Assyrian and Achaemenid Empires


14.30 - 15.30  Keynote 2: Marc Van de Mieroop: Voicing dissent in Mesopotamian Empires


15.40 - 16.10  Caroline Waerzeggers: Managing populations from the Babylonian to the Persian Empire

16.10 - 16.40  Jessie De Grado: Habitus of Empire: the tribute scene in Assyrian art


16.40-17.10  Keynote 3: Concluding talk by Petri Ylikoski, Philosopher of social sciences

17.10 – 18.00 General discussion

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