Millennium Horizons
Øystein LaBianca (Behavioral Sciences)
Millennium Horizons in the Global History of the Ancient Near East
Global history is a perspective made possible by modern technology and inspired by seeing the earth from space. Unlike traditional world history, which tends to start with the histories of civilizations, empires and nations, global history studies the cumulative impact and career of humanity on planet earth. The purpose of this project is to facilitate collaboration among Andrews graduate students in archaeology and some seventy ASOR scholars on tracing millennium horizons in the human career and that of the planet in the Ancient Near East from late prehistoric times down to the present. To this end three Andrews graduate students will be hired and trained to search for and describe a wide range of global history stories latent in the archaeological reports submitted for review and affiliation with ASOR to the chair of ASOR’s Committee on Archaeological Research and Policy, namely O. S. LaBianca. To make possible such collaboration a Wiki has been created called ASOR100, which will facilitate uploading and cross-linking of these various stories. The end product of these exertions will be the institutionalization within ASOR and the ANE community of scholars of an on-going capability for collaboration on global history narratives and a public showcasing of this research on the ASOR100 web site. The methodology developed to accomplish this goal, as well as preliminary indications of the sorts of research results that can come from this research will be the subject of professional meeting presentation in Berlin (ICHAJ), Baltimore (ASOR) and Chicago (AIA) in the coming year.