The Rise and Fall of Ancient Civilizations
Essay Assignment #1
Do you believe the beginnings of agriculture in the ancient Near East were a matter of necessity, choice, or accident? What evidence leads you to this interpretation? How strong is that evidence? Support your argument with specific archaeological data from lectures and the text.The Nitpicky Requirements:
Some Helpful (I Hope) Advice:
- 3-4 pages of text; word-processed, double-spaced, 1" margins on all four sides, 12-point type
- Add your name, your AI's name, and your section meeting time at the top of the first page.
- Due at the beginning of class on Monday, January 28. Late essays will be penalized at the rate of one-third of a letter grade per 24 hours. (That is, a paper with "A" content, turned in on time, gets an "A." Turned in after the beginning of class on Monday but before 10:10 a.m. on Tuesday, it gets an "A-," and so on.) Counts for 10% of course grade.
- Print out a copy of the grading sheet and attach it as a separate page at the end of your paper.
- Cite your sources following the example in the Guidelines on Paraphrasing, Citing, and Avoiding Plagiarism. That is, if you're citing something that appears on page 52 of the Lamberg-Karlovsky and Sabloff text, use (Lamberg-Karlovsky and Sabloff 1995:52). Use (Lecture, January 26) or (Section, February 2) for something you learned in class. Plagiarism or any other form of academic dishonesty earns a failing grade for the entire course.
- To help you, I am including a copy of my notes to Lectures 3 and 4. You may want to compare them to your own notes from those lectures.
- Remember, I've said the question is unresolved, and I'm not looking for any one "right" answer. Instead, I want to see you present an internally consistent argument supported by data.
- There is an extensive body of literature on agricultural origins, but for this paper I want you to use only the information available from the course itself (lectures and text). Archaeological interpretation--and social and historical analysis in general--often require you to develop an argument when you don't have all the data you'd ideally like to have. I'm limiting the data available to you here, not to thwart your research skills, but to add a touch of realism. Do the best you can with what you have.
- Basically, there are two ways to approach a problem like this one:
These approaches reinforce one another, and you should use both of them in your paper. Also, you should consider multiple points of evidence, not just one.
- You can try to confirm your interpretation by showing that it is consistent with all the available data (and not contradicted by any known fact). For example, you might argue: "If the adoption of agriculture was a choice, I would expect to see evidence that, within any given region, different groups were indeed able to make different choices. I see such evidence along the No'tal-ent River, where Reeves found that both sedentary farming villages and seasonal hunter-gatherer camps were occupied during the period 7500-7000 B.C. (Lamberg-Karlovsky and Sabloff 1995:52)."
- You can try to refute other interpretations by showing that they are contradicted by the data, or are at best questionably consistent with the available facts. For example, you might argue: "Reeves suggests that the adoption of farming in the No'tal -ent Valley was made necessary by an interval of warmer, drier climate ca. 7500-7200 B.C., which would have greatly reduced the zones suitable for wild wheat. However, McCarthy's analysis of the pollen sequence from Tepe Bohzo indicates that climate remained stable throughout the entire period 8500-6500 B.C. (Lecture, January 26)."
- When you examine the evidence available to you, it is crucial to separate fact from opinion. Just because an archaeologist is cited as an authority in the textbook, it doesn't mean that what he or she says is a fact. If the world-famous archaeologist Prof. J. McCarthy says that she found more sheep bones than pig bones in the earliest level of Tepe Bohzo, that is a fact (if Prof. McCarthy knows how to tell a sheep bone from a pig bone, which we'll assume she does). However, if she goes on to say that therefore sheep were domesticated before pigs in the No'tal-ent Valley, it is not a fact. It is her interpretation of the facts, and it may or may not be correct. It is an opinion, and it's open to question and debate.
Problems with Essay #1
This page discusses common mistakes students have made in the past on Essay #1 and offers advice on how to avoid those problems.
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Last updated: 22 January 2002
URL:http://www.indiana.edu/~ancient/essay1.html
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