Ancient Egypt, the Near East, and the History of Globalization: Methodological Considerations, Broader Perspectives, and Current Debates

This article reviews and responds to two recently published monographs on ancient Egypt, the Near East, and the history of globalization. It sets out to offer a few perspectives on the origin and development of globalization to highlight the multiplicity and heterogeneity of social, political, and economic processes that contributed to the formation of the world in which human experiences have been situated for the past few thousand years. The plethora of evidence for global connectivity since prehistoric times suggests that diffusionism and, more specifically, the dichotomy between diffusion and independent invention, are unnecessary to prove the existence of an early form of globalization in antiquity. It will also be argued that the study of globalization could benefit significantly from the comparative analysis of place-specific situations, and comparison represents a fundamental heuristic device for any scholarly inquiry in the fields of history and archaeology.