The course provides an overview of the history of art, architecture, urban planning, main monuments, repertoires of daily used objects of the Mesopotamian cultures, between the rise of the urbanism and the Iron Age, studying illustrative cases of different periods and areas. The first part of the course introduces general subjects and basic concepts concerning the archaeology of Mesopotamia and Arabia peninsula. Analysis of the documents coming from both excavations and surveys, the interpretation of the scholars and the current research trends will allow us to consider the contribute of the archaeology to the debate on the development of proto-historical cultures, the rise of farming, the dynamics at the ground of the social stratification, the appearance and collapse of urban life, the ‘core-periphery’ relationship, the links between sedentary and nomadic communities, the archaeology of religion, funerary archaeology and the archeology of early empires.
