Societies and Cultures in the Ancient Near East: analysis of the sources

The research line is focused on the study on how ideas, institutions, social structures and material culture have been formed, developed, interacted and transformed in the ancient Near East, as well as how they have intertwined with their respective environments and how they have moved forward across the social and geographic space.

The line raises questions such as how the different sources, both written and material, reflect the diffusion of religious and cultural practices, the migration of technologies and objects, the circulation and making of ideas, traditions and aesthetics, the transmission of legal practices and the dynamics of social changes.

The analysis of the written and material sources is essential for the later preparation of a cultural and historical study and the approach of the problems set out above. Thus, a priority of the research line lies in the publication of first editions or re-editions of written sources which may contribute somehow to a higher knowledge of societies and cultures of the ancient Near East.