Abstract
This essay discusses the history of women in the Middle East. The author examines this from the rise and fall of pre-Islamic matriarchal society, and concentrates on the status and role of women through the birth of Islam to the Umayyad and Abbasid Empires.

From the paper:

"Women were considered of equal, if not higher status than men in many pre-Islamic societies, they were matriarchal. Catal Huyuk, a Neolithic settlement from around 6000 B.C.E. is one example of a culture where there is strong evidence showing that women were of such status. Leila Ahmed also claims that studies of the region have showed that ?Supremacy of a goddess figure and elevated status of women were the rule rather than the exception?? According to Ahmed, ruins were found to have women in the larger burial platforms, and paintings and decorations mostly consisted of female figures."

Tags:abbasid, ite, kharijite, qarmation, shi, umayyad, culture, figure, islam

Abstract
This paper explains that, like archaeologists, art historians play the role of detective by studying, analyzing, and interpreting the earliest known works of art not only to explain their aesthetic beauty or significance, but also to demonstrate how they represent the unwritten history of humanity. The author points out that the art from the area called Catal Huyuk demonstrates both figurative and abstract components, showing that art was already conceptual at this time, being about ideas and not things. The paper relates that Cycladic art and the megalithic architecture, which are represented in structures of cromtech design, or circular and spiral arrangements like Stonehenge, reveal the unifying feature of art and its movement from Europe to the Middle East to Europe.

From the Paper
"Only when the context of a work of art is known can we go beyond an appreciation of its formal qualities and begin to analyze its place in the history of art - to trace the evolution of art through the ages" (23). Within this historical goal of the study of art, also being a study of human evolution, the Neolithic period is of great importance. This period of human evolution was among those that witnessed "the birth of art," and lasted from approximately 6000 BC to 3500 BC (25). The Neolithic paintings and artworks illustrate the way in which early man interacted with his environment, his level of development as in the tools he had fashioned, his culture, his vision of himself in relation to the world and other living creatures, and his beliefs, further providing a link between the different stages of human evolution and art development through analysis of the different techniques and materials used, and the different subjects portrayed as well as the differing methods of portrayal."

Tags:turkey, cycladic, evolution, beliefs, stonehenge

Abstract
The author addresses the arguments within the historical sciences, which include environmental archaeology, over the type of data, qualitative or quantitative, that is most appropriate for advancing knowledge in the field. In light of these controversies, the author suggests an approach that includes a revision of traditional qualitative approaches through the application of Eisler's cultural theories.

From the Paper
"Riane Eisler's The Chalice and the Blade, published in 1988, presents a new theory of human cultural evolution, as well as a new vision of reconstructed history. Eisler draws from archaeological discoveries made in the latter half of the 20th century, as well as from mythology and contemporary feminist re-interpretations of earlier archaeological discoveries and mythology. She develops an idea of cultural evolution based on the "chaos theory", which provides the rubric for her understanding of systems change. She calls her idea "Cultural Transformation Theory". It is based in basic biological principles and presents ideas about the ways in which humans have interacted with their environment over time. Her study is an interesting one for environmental archaeology as a science because it challenges the prevailing cultural theories in the field."

Tags:anthropology, archaeology, blade, catal, chalice, darwin, gould, huyuk, lamarck, riane