Description:
Ever since the early 2nd millennium BCE, Pre-Classical Anatolia has been a crossroads of languages and peoples. Indo-European peoples - Hittites, Luwians, Palaeans - and non-Indo-European ones - Hattians, but also Assyrians and Hurrians - coexisted with each other for extended periods of time during the Bronze Age, a cohabitation that left important traces in the languages they spoke and in the texts they wrote. By combining, in an interdisciplinary fashion, the complementary approaches of linguistics, history, and philology, this book offers a comprehensive, state-of-the-art study of linguistic and cultural contacts in a region that is often described as the bridge between the East and the West.
With contributions by Paola Cotticelli-Kurras, Alfredo Rizza, Maurizio Viano, and Ilya Yakubovich.
Brief description:
Federico Giusfredi is associate professor of Ancient Near Eastern Studies at the University of Verona. His research focuses on the languages, texts and cultures of Pre-Classical Near East.
Alvise Matessi is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Verona. His research focuses on cultural and political landscapes and historical geography of the Pre-Classical Near East.
Valerio Pisaniello is a postdoctoral researcher of Linguistics at the University of Verona. His main research interests focus on Indo-European studies and on linguistics and philology of the ancient Anatolian languages.
Review Quotes: This volume is a worthwhile synthetic account of the language and cultural contacts in the complex world of Bronze Age Anatolia and its adjacent areas, which follows and builds upon recent works that go beyond traditional philological analysis. It will be of interest to experts, but undoubtedly, even less versed readers will benefit by reflecting on similarities and differences between Anatolia of the second-millennium BCE and later cases of multilingual/-cultural milieus. By Panagiotis Filos, University of Ioannina, in BMCR 2025.04.14, https: //bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2025/2025.04.14/