Age of Empires: Archaeology of Ancient Powers

Undergraduate

Empire is one of the most complex political forms in human history, reshaping landscapes, economies, technologies, and ideologies across vast territories. This seminar examines premodern empires prior to European colonialism through their material signatures: cities, agrarian systems, craft production, infrastructure, ritual landscapes, and provincial integration. Using comparative case studies from Qin/Han China, Angkor, the Aztec and Inka, Achaemenid Persia, Egypt, Vijayanagara, Mongol polities, and others, students analyze how imperial centers projected authority across diverse geographies and how provincial communities negotiated autonomy. The course concludes with examination of imperial fragility, environmental stress, transformation, and memory. We adopt a comparative anthropological archaeology framework and emphasize material evidence—settlement archaeology, bioarchaeology, geospatial analysis, archaeometry, and production systems—as the primary basis for interpretation. The course complements existing Yale offerings on empire and social complexities by foregrounding archaeological method and non-European case studies within a global comparative framework. HU , SO TTh 9:25am-11:20am