Event: Friday Seminar: "Seals and Social Interaction at Kültepe in the Early 2nd Millennium BCE


Date & Time

January 20, 2017 - 4:00pm to 6:00pm
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Contact Information

Matthew Swanson
mswanson@ioa.ucla.edu

Location

Fowler A222

Event Type

Friday Seminar

Event Details

Speaker: Dr. Agnete Lassen, Associate Curator, Yale University Babylonian Collection

Focusing primarily on seals, this talk will investigate the formations and transformations of social identity in cultural encounters, using the Assyrian merchant colonies in Anatolia as a case. Almost seventy seasons of archaeological excavations at the site of Kültepe in Central Anatolia have revealed the remarkable remains of a thriving city consisting of an acropolis with temples and palatial structures, as well as a surrounding lower town with compact industrial and residential quarters with narrow winding streets, small squares and more than a hundred multi-storied houses; perhaps as many as 25,000 people lived in this multi-cultural metropolis. Life in Kültepe is colorfully evidenced by more than 20,000 cuneiform documents preserved in separate archives found in houses in the city’s lower town. They show that Assyrians, from far-away Assur in present day Northern Iraq, established themselves in merchant colonies to do business with the local elites. Some of these foreigners brought their families or married into the local population, and some even took up local crafts and agriculture. Central to the commercial practices of the time was the use of personal seals to verify economic and legal documents. This talk will focus on seals that were carved in Assur and in Anatolia at the time of the merchant colonies, and investigate how these seal styles interacted with each other, and with the Assyrians and Anatolians who used these seals.