Giorgio Buccellati

     As for the content of the reviewed publication: “The result of an important interdisciplinary effort, this volume gathers the contributions of a number of scholars with a variety of interests.
     The more obvious subdivision is that between ancient and modern data – four chapters being concerned with the former, and six with the latter. They all share equally an interest for archaeology and geography, and to a more limited extent for the ethnography.
     A marked difference between the two main sections of the book is the total absence of epigraphic concerns in the first part (whereas they are significantly present in the second” (p. 455).
     After the brief presentation of the singular chapters of the book, the author underlines how “it is clear even from this brief review that the chapters are rather disjecta membra than integrated components of an organic whole” (p. 455), seeking for a “true synthesis” (p. 456).
     The following two pages (pp. 456-457) are devoted to the concept of margins (i.e. the steppe) in relation/vs. the core of a political or geographical entity, pointing out four different stages in the notion of 'conquest' of peripheries: 1) pre-urban stage; 2) para-urban stage; 3) urban endogenous stage; 4) urban exogenous stage.
     On p. 457, a lack of any mention to Amorites in the review publication is criticised as “astonishing – and indicative”: “Astonishing, because the phenomenon associated with them (however one may wish to consider the question of their ethnic identity) overlaps fully the development covered in the first half of the book. And indicative, because it confirms the impression one quickly gains, namely that the authors of the first part of the volume do not make sufficient use of the contemporary written sources for the ancient periods” (p. 457).
     The author then recalls his definition of this phaenomenon as a “conquest of a new socio-economic niche, i.e. the exploitation of the steppe as range land and the development of tribal pastoralism” [see Buccellati 1994, paper delivered at a meeting in honour of Cyrus H. Gordon: cf. also Buccellati 1990] (p. 457).
     Urkesh is specifically mentioned on p. 457, as a reference to processes of urbanization in the late third millennium BC: “Urkesh, for example, has massive monumental architecture dating back to the early third millennium. Interestingly, both positions belie the notion that is put forth in the title of the volume, because what they support is the traditional view, of a conquest from, rather than of, the steppe”.

[M. De Pietri – November 2019]