Archaeologies of the Middle East : critical perspectives / edited by Susan Pollock and Reinhard Bernbeck.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

A cultural-historical framework / Reinhard Bernbeck and Susan Pollock -- Producing and disseminating knowledge about the ancient Near East / Reinhard Bernbeck and Susan Pollock -- Who has not eaten cherries with the devil? archaeology under challenge / Caroline Steele -- Archaeology and nationalism in the Holy Land / Adel Yahya -- Archaeology goes to war at the newsstand / Susan Pollock -- The past as fact or fiction from historical novels to novel histories / Reinhard Bernbeck -- Reassessing evolutionary "firsts" / Reinhard Bernbeck and Susan Pollock -- Bleeding or breeding : Neandertals vs. early modern humans in the middle Paleolithic Levant / John Shea -- Lumps of clay and pieces of stone : ambiguity, bodies, and identity as portrayed in neolithic figurines / Ian Kuijt and Meredith Chesson -- The state : the process of state formation as seen from Mesopotamia / Jean-Daniel Forest -- Archaeology, Bible, and the history of the Levant in the Iron Age / Israel Finkelstein -- Imperialism / Mario Liverani -- Constructing arguments, understanding perceptions / Reinhard Bernbeck and Susan Pollock -- Ethnoarchaeology, analogy, and ancient society / Marc Verhoeven -- The ancient Sumerians in the tides of time / Petr Charvát -- Reliquaries on the landscape : mounds as matrices of human cognition / Sharon Steadman -- Archaeology and texts in the ancient Near East / Paul Zimansky -- Representations, reality, and ideology / Jennifer Ross.

'Archaeology of the Near East', a collection of newly commissioned chapters written by experts in the field, seeks to provide an overview of this central area of archaeological research and teaching, and to provide a rich treatment of this fascinating subject.