Governance Policies and Political Landscapes in the Southern Levant under the Neo-Assyrian Empire - Gerda Henkel Stiftung
Progetto A large part of the human population in world history lived under imperial rule (Goldstone and
Haldon 2009). Imperial policies had a remarkable impact on the subjected landscape and the
communities and some scholars argue that the legacy of ancient empires persists in the modern world
(Bernbeck 2010; Hardt and Negri 2000). How did empires shape political landscapes? What was the
impact of changes in human population upon rural land-use intensity? How did this pressure drive
the transformation in the existing local social institutions, and how did this vary regionally? Today,
the grand project of European integration is frequently described as the expression of a “New Empire”
in media and other kinds of public discourse, and the topic is hotly debated with positions ranging
from ‘localist’ to ‘globalist’ (Behr and Stivachtis 2015; Bonacchi et al. 2018; Patel 2020). Therefore,
it is timely and important to investigate to what degree imperial strategies affected heterogeneous
local communities, contributed to building a long-lasting homogenous culture and identity, and
countered particularistic and centrifugal tendencies in the different provinces and peripheries of
empires.