2023 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

Historical archaeology on the ruling form and internal structure of the ancient Near Eastern empires focusing on the frontier region

Research Project

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Project/Area Number	20H01328
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B)
Allocation Type	Single-year Grants
Section	一般
Review Section	Basic Section 03030:History of Asia and Africa-related
Research Institution	Chubu University
Principal Investigator	NISHIYAMA Shinichi 中部大学, 人間力創成教育院, 教授 (50392551)
Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha)	渡部展也中部大学, 人文学部, 准教授 (10365497) 津村眞輝子 (財)古代オリエント博物館, 研究部, 研究員 (60238128)
Project Period (FY)	2020-04-01 – 2024-03-31
Keywords	アッシリア帝国 / 古代帝国 / 支配構造 / 歴史考古学 / サーサーン朝 / 境界域
Outline of Final Research Achievements	This research project focused on the border area of the ancient Near Eastern empires and studied the theme from history, archaeology, geographic information science, and numismatics. Such multi-disciplinary project on ancient empires have not been conducted before in the Japanese academic society. We intended to present a new image of ancient empires which often thought to be constructed by a centralized socio-political system. The main focus was placed upon two ancient empires: Assyrian and Sasanian empires. The actual field work was concentrated in Iraqi Kurdistan. However, we also studied recent historical and archaeological data which presented in Western Iran. The research results show that the ancient empires were not entirely centralized states. In the border zone of empires, at least, the local societies maintained some sort of autonomy and independence in socio-cultural system.
Free Research Field	考古学、古代西アジア史
Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements	本研究は、古代帝国の研究に文献学、考古学、地理情報科学、貨幣学の多様な知見を合わせて総合的歴史考古学研究を展開した点に学術的意義があった。特に西アジアの歴史研究においては、専門的分化が著しく、多様な分野の知見を合わせた研究が少ない現象を憂い、可能な限り諸学問分野の観点から古代帝国を新たに見直す研究であった。その結果、古代帝国が従来よく主張されてきたような中央集権的なものではなく、特にその境界域においては、ローカルな物質文化や支配形態が維持されていた可能性が高いと考えられ、従来の古代帝国の支配構造を見直す研究成果を提示できたと考える。