Global Antiquity

About the Cluster

Faculty and graduate students in this cluster are interested in comparative historical analysis of ancient civilizations around the globe. Such analysis may involve the comparison of chronologically contemporaneous societies or regions, whether they are in direct contact with each other (for example, Mesopotamia and the Aegean) or they are separated by thousands of miles (for example, the Han and Roman Empires). Or, it may focus on specific processes or developments (for example the growth of state centralization and bureaucracy, or the creation of universalizing religion) in chronologically non-contemporaneous societies. Researchers in this cluster employ a wide range of sources, including transmitted/received literary texts, inscriptions on stone and metal, documents on bamboo and papyrus, coins, archaeology, art history, comparative anthropological and sociological evidence, and more.

Members of this cluster also study how people around the globe have engaged with, interpreted, and used the ancient past during the 19th-21st centuries as a means of shaping group (national or ethnic, for example) and individual identities.