Humboldt-Forschungsstipendium für erfahrene Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftler

fellowship di 1 anno per studio concernente la seguente ricerca: researching aiming to investigate the dynamics of development of intitutionalised hierarchical societies in the Near East in the period preceding state formation, by focusing on the role that food production and consumption had in distinguishing and reinforcing social classes. Primary states in Mesopotamia (3300 BCE) base their political and economic power on the centralised control of primary resources (food); it is through the investigation of changing foodways that social and economic transformations of these societies will be followed from the origins of hierarchy to the dawn of the first states. Research shall be oriented to understand how and when food relations became an element of social and political diversification and how they were employed as a means of reinforcing inequality.