Christopher Edens

Bronze Age World System Cycles [and Comments and Reply]

This essay explores the geographical extent of the world system and dates its cyclical ups and downs during the Bronze Age and, in a preliminary way, the early Iron Age. The scope of these twin tasks is exceptionally wide and deep: wide in exploring a single world system that encompasses much of Afro-Eurasia, deep in identifying systemwide conomic and political cycles since more than 5,000 years ago.

Regional Differences in the Distribution of the Sub-Saharan, West Eurasian, and South Asian mtDNA Lineages in Yemen

Despite its key location for population movements out of and back into Africa, Yemen has not yet been sampled on a regional level for an investigation of sub-Saharan, West Eurasian, and South Asian genetic contributions. In this study, we present mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) data for regionally distinct Yemeni populations that reveal different distributions of mtDNA lineages. An extensive database of mtDNA sequences from North and East African, Middle Eastern and Indian populations was analyzed to provide a context for the regional Yemeni mtDNA datasets. The groups of western Yemen appear to be most closely related to Middle Eastern and North African populations, while the eastern Yemeni population from Hadramawt is most closely related to East Africa. Furthermore, haplotype matches with Africa are almost exclusively confined to West Eurasian R0a haplogroup in southwestern Yemen, although more sub-Saharan L-type matches appear in more northern Yemeni populations. In fact, Yemeni populations have the highest frequency of R0a haplotypes detected to date, thus Yemen or southern Arabia may be the site of the initial expansion of this haplogroup. Whereas two variants of the sub-Saharan haplogroup M1 were detected only in southwestern Yemen close to the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, different non-African M haplotypes were detected at low frequencies (approximately 2%) in western parts of the country and at a higher frequency (7.5%) in the Hadramawt. We conclude that the Yemeni gene pool is highly stratified both regionally and temporally and that it has received West Eurasian, Northeast African, and South Asian gene flow.

The Amuq Valley Regional Project, 1995-1998

The Amuq plain in southeast Turkey is of major importance to the development of Near Eastern cultural sequences. Recent investigations of geoarchaeology, settlement patterns, and individual sites now provide framework for the assessment of the original work by the University of Chicago and Sir Leonard Woolley. Geoarchaeological investigations provide a dynamic contest for the interpretation of settlement patterns and show that sedimentation over the plain has been variable and patchy. The density and patterning of settlement has changed through time, partly in response to changes in the local enviroument, partly as a result of developments in the political cconomy. Excavations at Tells Kurdu and al-Judaidah as well as section-cleaning operations at other sites in the area have started to provide a radiocarhon framework for the original chronology and are filling in gaps in that sequence. At the site of Kurda, approximately 15 hectares in area, domestic and perhaps public architecture are now being defined more coherently than in the first investigations, and the excavations are supplving insights in to a subsistence economy that tapped into a verdant mosaic of local environments.

Southwest Arabia during the Holocene : Recent archaeological developments

Recent fieldwork has considerably increased our knowledge of early Holocene settlement in Southwest Arabia. Neolithic settlement occurred within an environmental context of increased monsoonal moisture that continued during the mid-Holocene. A now well-attested Bronze Age exemplified by village- and town-scale settlements occupied by sedentary farmers developed toward the end of the mid-Holocene moist interval. The high plateau of Yemen was an early focus for the development of Bronze Age complex society, the economy of which relied upon terraced rain-fed and runoff agriculture. On the fringes of the Arabian desert, the precursors of the Sabaean literate civilization have been traced back to between 3600 and 2800 B.P., and even earlier, so that a virtually continuous archaeological record can now be described for parts of Yemen. In contrast to the highlands these societies relied upon food production from large-scale irrigation systems dependent upon capricious wadi floods. Bronze Age settlement, while showing some links with the southern Levant, now shows equal or stronger linkages with the Horn of Africa across the Red Sea. Although some regions of Yemen show breaks in occupation, others show continuity into the Sabaean period when a series of major towns grew up in response to the incense trade with the north. It is now clear that these civilizations grew up on the foundations of earlier Bronze Age complex societies.

Mitochondrial DNA Structure of Yemeni Population: Regional Differences and the Implications for Different Migratory Contributions

Yemen, in the southwestern corner of Arabian peninsula, lies at the crossroads between Africa and Eurasia. Genomes of present-day Yemenis were inherited from their progenitors, and may attest to the history of the region. Molecules of DNA can, therefore, shed light on how busy this crossroads was during the past millennia. Unfortunately, Yemeni populations have been neglected in genetic literature until recently. However, from the genetic point of view, there are several important questions that cannot be addressed without detailed genetic data. Do the present-day populations of southern Arabia contain genetic traces testifying to the first migration Out-of-Africa? Can such traces survive until today? What subsequent population movements may have affected the Yemeni gene pool? What is the proportion of more ancient (Pleistocene) and more recent (Holocene) population impacts to its genetic diversity? Did the specific geographic position of Yemen influence the genetic structure of its population?

Hammat al-Qa and the roots of urbanism in southwest Arabia

Prehistoric (Bronze Age) settlement has been little explored in the Yemen. Here, we report on new research at the small, semi-urban site of Hammat al-Qa in the Dhamar region of Yemen.

Transcaucasia at the end of the Early Bronze Age

Transcaucasia was the heartland of the Kura-Araxes, or Early Transcaucasian culture, which holds an important place in the culture history of eastern Anatolia. The transition from this Early Bronze Age culture to the more fragmented regional cultures of the Middle Bronze Age remains poorly defined. The transition is marked by a shift away from fairly autonomous village life, the appearance of evidence for enhanced social hierarchy, and the first use of tin-bronzes in Transcaucasia. Traditional chronology places the transition at the end of the third millennium B. C. However, radiocarbon evidence indicates a mid-third millennium date for the transitional cultures, thus aligning Transcaucasian developments more closely with those in eastern Anatolia and northwestern Iran (late Early Bronze Age) and in Ciscaucasia (Maikop). Transcaucasia seems to have continued to play an important interregional role even after the disappearance of the Kura-Araxes cultures.