Art of the Bronze Age: Southeastern Iran, Western Central Asia, and the Indus Valley - Softcover

Pittman, Holly

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0300199554 ISBN 13: 9780300199550

Verlag: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2013

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Reseña del editor:

The ancient cultures of the Near East have become known to us slowly. Before cuneiform inscriptions were deciphered in the middle of the ninteenth century, we depended on the much later biblical, Greek, and Roman sources to reveal glimpses of the lands, cities, and rulers of ancient Mesopotamia, the land between the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers, traditionally considered the heartland of the ancient Near East. Beyond Mesopotamia, other cultures, mostly without written languages, also thrived. To the west were those of the Levant and Anatolia; to the east, those of the Iranian plateau, Central Asia, and the valley of the Indus River. Until the turn of the twentieth century these apparently peripheral cultures were known by little more than a few odd pieces, objects that floated without context on museum shelves, understood only as historical curiosities. Although there are still large gaps in our understanding, our knowledge about these regions has increased greatly, and we now know that major independent, complex cultures thrived there, not peripheral to others, but core areas themselves.

With the opening of the permanent installation of the galleries of ancient Near Eastern art, visitors to the Metropolitan Museum are able to see ancient artifacts and works of art from these lands far from Mesopotamia. This publication is meant to describe objects assigned to regions far to the east of the Tigris and Euphrates where, during the period known as the Middle Bronze Age (about 2500 to 1600 B.C.), cultures thrived in eastern Iran, western Central Asian, and the valley of the Indus River, the inhabitants of each developing a way of life distinguished by its own organization and material culture. [This book was originally published in 1984 and has gone out of print. This edition is a print-on-demand version of the original book.]

Biografía del autor:

Holly Pittman (Ph.D. Columbia University) is Professor of Art History at the University of Pennsylvania where she teaches art and archaeology of Mesopotamia and the Iranian Plateau. She also serves as Curator in the Near East Section of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Previously she served as a curator in the Ancient Near Eastern Art Department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She has written extensively on the art and culture of the Bronze Age in the Middle East and has participated in excavations in Cyprus, Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran where she currently works. Her research investigates works of art as media through which patterns of thought, cultural development, as well as historical interactions of ancient cultures of the Near East are reconstructed.

Über diese Auflage

• Verlag: Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0300199554
• ISBN 13: 9780300199550
• Einband: Tapa blanda
• Anzahl der Seiten: 99