Proceedings of the 6th International Congress of the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, vol. 1: Near Eastern Archaeology in the Past, Present and Future; Ethnoarchaeological and Interdisciplinary Approach; Visual Expression and Craft Production in the Definition of Social Relations and Status.

• Author: Emberling, Geoff
• Position: Book review

Proceedings of the 6th International Congress of the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, vol. 1: Near Eastern Archaeology in the Past, Present and Future; Ethnoarchaeological and Interdisciplinary Approach; Visual Expression and Craft Production in the Definition of Social Relations and Status. Edited by PAOLO MATTHIAE; FRANCES PINNOCK; LORENZO NIGRO; and NICOLO MARCHETTI. Wiesbaden: HARRASSOWITZ VERLAG, 2010. Pp. xxvii + 1026, illus. [euro]128.

Proceedings of the 6th International Congress of the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, vol. 2: Excavations, Surveys and Restorations: Reports on Recent Field Archaeology in the Near East. Edited by PAOLO MATTHIAE; FRANCES PINNOCK; LORENZO NIGRO; and NICOLO MARCHETTI. Wiesbaden: HARRASSOWITZ VERLAG, 2010. Pp. xxvii + 768, illus. [euro]98.

Proceedings of the 6th International Congress of the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, vol. 3: Islamic Session; Poster Session. Edited by PAOLO MATTHIAE; FRANCES PINNOCK; LORENZO NIGRO; and MICOLO MARCHETTI. Wiesbaden: HARRASSOWITZ VERLAG, 2010. Pp. xxvii + 537, illus. [euro]68.

The first International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East (ICAANE) was held in Rome in 1998, and the proceedings were published in 2000 in two massive volumes totaling 125 papers and 1843 pages of text, all edited by Paolo Matthiae and his colleagues. In his introduction to that volume, Matthiae explained that ICAANE was formed in order for Near Eastern archaeologists to allow for "comparative evaluations and wide historic judgments," discussion of field methods and cultural heritage protection, and to resist "subordination to philologists and historians." Archaeologists had grown dissatisfied with opportunities to discuss archaeological subjects at the Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, which had been the major conference of scholars working on the ancient Near East.

Since that first conference, ICAANE meetings have been held every two years as originally planned, in Copenhagen (2000), Paris (2002), Berlin (2004), Madrid (2006), again in Rome (2008), in London (2010), and in Warsaw (2012). Proceedings of the Berlin conference were published in 2008 in two volumes totaling 1088 pages edited by Hartmut Kuhne and colleagues, while the Madrid conference proceedings were published in three volumes of 2446 pages edited by Joaquin Cordoba. Publications of the other conferences have been promised, and papers from a workshop in the Copenhagen ICAANE have been...