Which are the deepest roots of that mix of cultures that we use to call ‘Mediterranean Civilization’? Which are comminglings and exchanges which produced its most complete fruit, i.e. the city, a place for landscape-modelling communities? And which elements did contribute to build up that baulk of customs, ideas, and innovations which compelled to confrontation and hybridizations different peoples for millennia? What did it made, from pottery to metallurgy, from gastronomy to architecture, from art to religion, of a sea a cradle of civilization? Archaeology may help in disentangling such questions, seeking unexpected answers , by tinkering what ancient Mediterranean peoples left buried in the ground. A privileged point of view of our course is the ancient Phoenician city of Motya, located exactly at the centre of the “sea in the middle”. Throughout the live experience of excavation, with images taken on the field, this course will let you touch the many tesserae of the great mosaic of the Mediterranean Civilization. The field diary of the archaeologist, and the handpick will be the two tools, which will lead us across the sea to discover what such early cities actually were, and how their contribute is still a major part of our shared memory.
2.1 Jericho and the Levantine city
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Del curso dictado por Sapienza University of Rome
At the Origins of the Mediterranean Civilization: Archaeology of the City from the Levant to the West - 3rd-1st millennium BC
90 calificaciones
Sapienza University of Rome
90 calificaciones
De la lección
Concept of the city
Conoce a los instructores
Lorenzo NigroProf.
Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia
[MUSIC]
Tell es-Sultan, the ancient Jericho in Palestine
is a brilliant example of how the city developed in the ancient Levant.
So, we can give a glance to it, just to grasp the idea of what was the city,
and how it grow in the time, in ancient time.
The foundation of the city was intensive agriculture,
Jericho was at the heart of an oasis, and
the people of Jericho was able to cultivate it in a very skilled way for
producing great quantity of cereals, especially barley, but also wheat.
And with this they could gather wealth to be
reinvested in other activity of the city.
So, at the base of the city there is agricultural production,
which is shown in archeology, by a distinct series of silos
that are these devices for storaging agricultural products.
Actually, the economic foundation of the city,
were basically the availability of fresh water that mantles of cultivable land,
the accumulation of these food supplies, which could be used for
feeding the population, and the animals, so letting the city growing,
it's very simple, but it's very basic at that time.
And then of course, were all these people, and all these demographic groups,
and all this wealth accumulated into the city.
The city itself, the power could reinvest, with this phenomenon,
which is called a centralization of raw materials, that means acquiring
by means of trade, some basic material, which were not present in the oasis,
such as wood, specially wood, which was needed for architecture.
Metal, and many other stuff,
which became to be very important in the life of a city such as salt,
sulphur, bitumen, and other precious stuff from the Dead Sea, and
Saudi Arabia, the Arabian Peninsula, which was rich of drugs,
which were very needed by the population of a growing city.
So, this is shown by very important finds,
such as artifacts, such as this bald heads which you saw before.
And what was the basic feature of a city?
It was the city wall, and Jericho of course, is a good example of this.
The earliest city wall is made of light yellows bricks,
and is in line of around two meter wide wall,
which is as a length over one kilometers, and silk all the side, and
even the ancient spring which rose giving life to the site itself
Along the city wall, horseshoe shaped protruding towers were added,
for protecting it at regular intervals.
Around 2800 BC, this was a major feature of the city,
and we should always remind that the city used to represent itself,
by means of the city wall, the city wall was the only architecture,
public architecture, which was visible from outside.
And so it was a in some ways a symbol of the city, as the city is appearing in
the landscape for the first time in the history of the human kind of this time.
Beginning of the third millennium, in the old Levant,
of course the city wall was the symbol of this innovation,
was the symbol of this institution which was going to dominate the landscape.
In the case of Jericho, a crucial point was the city gate,
as the city gaze was giving together access to the city itself,
and to the spring of freshwater.
So, all people living in the oasis, and
all travelers were forced to go get in the city, to go to the spring,
and for this reason they had to possibly to pay taxes, and
this made the city actually, the physical structure controlling water.
That is the secret of the power of the city, and
was also something prompting it to grow very fast,
irrespective of previous millennium of the village economy.
During 2010, and in the following years, the expedition at Tell es-Sultan, together
with the Palestinian spotters, conducted a survey of the area of the spring.
Because they were refurbishing works all around the spring,
which is one of the most famous of the ancient near east, and
it's a spring which is producing 5,000 liters of freshwater per minute.
So, if you can imagine this river of freshwater,
and this survey was basic for understanding that the city
during the whole life of Jericho was included in through the city wall.
It was part of the city, this was possibly one of the two sides of the heart
of the city, one was the spring, the other was what is called the spring hill.
That means the place in which gold depositories
of the rulers of the city lived.
And, all around the ottoman pool,
which is nowadays how the spring looks like,
actually down of this structure there were old remains of all periods of history,
which were superimposed in that spot, in that crucial spot of the site.
This city, at the beginning of urbanization,
was able to domesticate, and to breed cattle.
The introduction of cows was very important for agriculture.
First of all, because they could use cows and oxen to carry,
and to plow into the oasis.
And secondly, because with cattle milk, with milk from cows,
the human community could grow at a speediness which was as
much as ten times in the previous period.
So, this generated demographic boom,
which supported the city growth,
in the sense that the city needed of course labor, by means of workers,
and the growing population produces these labor, and these workers.
This labor and. [MUSIC]
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