Evans-Pritchard Lectures 2026: Lecture 5. Fragments Recomposed

Location: Old Library

The fifth, and final, lecture brings together the conclusions reached in the previous lectures of the series. It draws a big-picture interpretation of political development in the three selected regions based on common features observed across the three case studies, casting light on shared structural factors that underpinned socio-political transformations in Greece, Anatolia, and the Levant during the Iron Age. Detected common features span from the social profiles of the new political actors to the fluidity of socio-political hierarchies, and include the criteria of political legitimacy as well as the modes of institutionalization of political leadership. Immune to teleological implications, these common features are intended as analytical tools for a cross-cultural investigation of processes of socio-political development and their human protagonists.