Old Babylonian Alalaḫ:Social Class and Food: A Comparative Analysis in relation to Methodology, Archaeology and Text
2022 (English)Independent thesis Basic level (degree of Bachelor), 10 credits / 15 HE credits
Student thesis
Abstract [en]
The present study has as its key aim to examine and attempt to derive and determine social classes from sources relating to food in Old Babylonian Alalaḫ, modern day Tell Atchana, and its environs. The study will additionally place emphasis on how spatial conditions affect class, and what implications theory and method has for class. Firstly, the study will cover a few pieces of relevant contemporary research in order to contextualize Alalaḫ. Secondly, the study will discuss a selection of theoretical and methodological frameworks with an emphasis on; discourse by Bernbeck and Pollock, modernized “Asiatic Modes of Production”-models by Zaccagnini, and Mann’s IEMP-model. The present study analyses a wide range of data: grain ration lists, legal documents (relating to food), terminology relating to food and class, archaeobotanical data, nutritional data, landscape data, and excavational data. Finally, these are correlated to each other, the present aim and methodological discourse. The study demonstrates the difficulties of deriving classes from food, and how one approaches the data may alter interpretation, and the methodological difficulties that are inherent when deriving and discussing class from the results. The result(s) in the study provides nuanced insights in what impact food may have had on social stratification. Concludingly, the study duly notes that the study of class requires further research to properly derive class from food.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2022. , p. 38
Keywords [en]
Alalaḫ, Assyriology, Old Babylonian, Middle Bronze Age, Grain ration, Class.
National Category
Sociology
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-484039OAI: oai:DiVA.org:uu-484039DiVA, id: diva2:1693401
Subject / course
Assyriology
Educational program
Bachelor's Programme in Archaeology and Ancient History
Supervisors
Examiners
2022-09-152022-09-062022-09-15Bibliographically approved