From Villages to Empires in Ancient Mesopotamia

HART 222 traces how human societies in Mesopotamia transformed over roughly ten millennia, from the first sedentary villages of the late Epipalaeolithic to the bureaucratic empires of Assyria, Babylon, and Persia, asking how domestication, urbanism, writing, and organized violence reshaped the relationship between people, landscapes, and power. Expect a mix of lectures and readings-driven seminars where you discuss sites and material culture, sit a midterm and oral exam, and write an essay engaging directly with secondary literature. As a required autumn course in Year 2, it gives Archaeology students the long-term Near Eastern framework that later period- and theme-specific courses assume you already have.