Ebook: Contact and Exchange in the Ancient World

Do civilizations independently invent themselves or are they the result of cultural diffusion? The contributors to this volume do not attempt to provide a definitive answer to this contentious question, one of the most debated issues of the past century. Instead, they shift the focus from theory to reality by presenting empirical evidence on a wide range of cultural phenomena in history and prehistory, thereby demonstrating the processes whereby cultural traits are acquired and modified - the dynamics of transmission and transformation. The range of topics covered in this volume is of extraordinary breadth. Attention is paid to biological organisms at the cellular level on the one hand and to developments spanning an entire continent on the other. Employing an impressive battery of disciplinary approaches (history, archaeology, art history, linguistics, philology, biology, anthropology), the contributors have created a picture of the human past that is certain to stimulate future research.