author : Norman Yoffee

Books

• Archaeological Theory: Who Sets the Agenda?. 1993, with Andrew Sherratt
• Myths of the Archaic State. 2005

Books : reviews

Norman Yoffee, Andrew Sherratt.
Archaeological Theory: Who Sets the Agenda?.
CUP. 1993

Since the 1960s, archaeology has become increasingly taught in universities and practised on a growing scale by national and local heritage agencies throughout the world. This book addresses the criticisms of post-modernist writers about its social role, and asserts its intellectual importance and achievements in discovering real facts about the human past, which are common to all thinking people. It looks forward to the creation of a truly global consciousness of the origins of human societies and civilizations.

Norman Yoffee.
Myths of the Archaic State: evolution of the earliest cities, states, and civilizations.
CUP. 2005

In this ground-breaking work, Norman Yofifee challenges prevailing myths underpinning our understanding of the evolution of the earliest cities, states, and civilizations. He counters the emphasis in traditional scholarship that the earliest states were large and despotically controlled and their evolution can be adequately modeled by ethnographic analogies. By illuminating the creation and changes in social roles – not simply of male leaders but also of slaves and soldiers, priests and priestesses, peasants and prostitutes, merchants and craftsmen – Yoffee depicts an evolutionary process centered on the concerns of everyday life. Drawing on evidence from ancient Mesopotamia as well as from Egypt, South Asia, China, Mesoamerica, and South America, the author explores the changes in human societies that created the world we live in.