The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Anatolia (Oxford Handbooks)
J**F
A valuable (if naturally limited) resource whose cover isn't commensurate with its contents.
The voluminous Oxford Handbook of Ancient Anatolia, which boasts five sections, 52 chapters, and 54 authors, truly covers every topic that can be dealt with in 1,174 typewritten pages. Unfortunately, the attempted geographic and temporal scope - the entirety of the Anatolian peninsula over the course of nearly 10,000 years - would require several volumes this length to cover in full. As a result, some time periods, peoples, and geographic areas were necessarily dealt with only in passing, or omitted altogether, in order to fit this study into a single volume. The editors acknowledge this shortcoming in the book's introduction, writing that, "While we recognize that there may remain topics or issues in the study of ancient Anatolia which are not addressed in this volume, we have sought the optimal balance of chapters on archaeological, historical, and philological topics" (p. 4). In other words, the editors write, "this volume is meant to be comprehensive, within reason" (ibid).Comprehensiveness "within reason" is, of course, a subjective matter, and there will certainly be students and scholars of ancient Anatolia who find that their specific area of interest has been given short shrift. A clear example of this is the Achaemenid period, which lacks its own chapter; another, from the point of view of the present reviewer, is the unfortunately brief (though expertly summarized) treatment of the dynamic Late Bronze Age in Western Anatolia (pp. 363-375).However, none of this is meant to suggest that this is not a rich, useful, or incredibly informative work. It is each of those in spades, with top scholars in various facets of Anatolian studies offering valuable summaries of the subtopics they were tasked with treating, and offering perhaps even more valuable bibliographies of each topic, which can be utilized by the scholar seeking to conduct further reading and research. The chapters are generally of very high quality, and the information presented in them will be valuable to students and scholars alike who wish to engage with topics of Anatolian history, archaeology, and prehistory for the first time or as a part of ongoing research, or who wish to catch up on the present state of the field.It is because this volume is destined to be so heavily used by students and scholars (and because its price tag will largely limit its distribution to libraries) that the relatively low-quality cover and binding are a concern. This reviewer's copy began to tear slightly along the spine simply from the normal wear and tear of one person's reading and shelving - a fact which suggests that copies of this book in University libraries will have difficulty surviving the wear and tear put on them by hundreds of students and by the passage of time. However, though the quality of the book's cover is not commensurate with its price, the contents of the volume will make The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Anatolia a valuable addition to any scholarly collection.(Read a full review at my website, available via my Amazon user profile)
