Archaeology of the Near East

The Near East is considered the locus of many of the world’s most significant socio- cultural “firsts,” including the origins of agriculture, the earliest cities, the earliest writing system, and some of the world’s oldest empires. This course reviews the archaeology of the Near East from the Mesolithic (ca. 18,000 BC) to the aftermath of the Bronze Age (ca. 1000 BC), and discusses current academic debates over some of the sociocultural “firsts” attributed to it.