ИСТИНА

Проект посвящен комплексному изучению социальных структур древних обществ в свете современных достижений различных исторических дисциплин (эпиграфики, археологии, исторической антропологии, истории права) и основан на применении комплексного историко-филологического, а также корпусного и компаративного методов. Для достижения этой цели в проекте ставятся исследовательские задачи как теоретической, так и конкретно-практической направленности. В центре внимания находятся социальные статусы и ранги, их роль в функционировании древних обществ, а также способы обобщения и концептуализации феномена социальных статусов и рангов в языке. Теоретические задачи предполагают исследование типологической вариативности и единообразия в оформлении статусно-ранговых систем древних обществ на материале истории Ближнего Востока, Восточного и Западного Средиземноморья, Мезоамерики. Обращение к этим аспектам связано, во-первых, с тем, что иерархичность и стратификация являются неотъемлемыми характеристиками всех ранних обществ, однако параметры варьирования этих характеристик еще подлежат выявлению и анализу. Во-вторых, сопоставление генетически не связанных, но стадиально близких обществ обнаружило большой исследовательский потенциал, который на данный момент раскрыт далеко не полностью и зачастую недооценивается современной историографией. Конкретные исследовательские задачи заключаются в изучении терминологии, обозначающей различные правовые и социальные статусы в рамках древних обществ, сопоставительном анализе близких социальных статусов и рангов, включая элиту, свободных общинников, различные группы зависимых, с целью выявления общего и особенного в развитии общественных систем древности.

The project is devoted to the complex study of the social structures of the ancient civilizations in the light of recent achievements in different scholarly fields such as epigraphy, archaeology, historical anthropology, history of law and relies on the historical and philological as well as comparative and corpus methods. To achieve this goal the project sets forth several research objectives of both theoretical and practical nature. The focus of the study lies on the social statuses and ranks, their role in the functioning of the ancient societies, as well as the ways of generalization and conceptualization of the phenomenon of the social ranks and statuses in language. The theoretical objectives presume a study of typological variation and uniformity in formation of the status-and-rank systems in the ancient societies based on the data from the history of the ancient Near East, Eastern and Western Mediterranean, and Mesoamerica. It is important to address these issues, first, because hierarchy and stratification belong to the indispensable characteristic traits of all the early societies. However, the parameters of the variation of these traits are still to be recovered and analyzed. Second, a comparison of genetically not affiliated, but stage-close societies has proved to be very promising, but the potential of such a comparison has not been utilized in full and is sometimes underestimated. The concrete practical goals consist of studying terminology used to designate different legal and social statuses in the ancient societies, analyzing and comparing close social ranks and statuses, which includes elite, free commoners, different dependent groups, in order to highlight general and specific traits in the development of the ancient social systems. The topicality of studying social ranks and statuses in ancient societies is related to a number of circumstances. During the last three decades several areas of ancient studies witnessed an unprecedented flow of new sources which shed a new light on different aspects of the social structure. However, despite this situation very few studies emerged to take into account all these data both in the Russian academic scholarship as well as abroad. As a result, scholars continue to use old theoretical models which now contradict the empirical facts. Thus, a widely supported theory describing the social structure of the ancient Near East that was advanced in 1960—70s makes a special accent on the dependent social rank of the “royal subjects” (muškēnums). However, in more recent times new sources became available which led to a reassessment of this term. Only in the course of the last years, one may observe a new turn in the scholarly tradition from the study of ideology, mentality, symbolic and ritual practices of the ancient societies to the analysis of their fundamental economic and social structures. In this regard the proposed project complies with general trends of the current research. The topicality of the project should be also seen in connection to the strive for extension of the empirical base of research which is so characteristic of the modern scholarship. This trend presumes a use of wide cross-cultural parallels. A self-withdrawal to a narrow area of research prevents from putting a research object in a due typological perspective and recovering its universal character. The methodological topicality of the project is provided by its adherence to another important principle of the modern antiquity studies: a special attention will be paid to the self-description of rank-and-status systems created by the ancient cultures themselves. The innovative character of the project consists of analysis of a huge bulk of new sources which have not been previously exploited for the reconstruction of the rank-and-status systems of the ancient societies. This will be achieved by applying traditional methods of historical critics, as well as corpus and comparative methods. The interdisciplinary approach will be equally used. The project will offer for the first time a new analysis of the elite ranks and statuses in the early states of the ancient Near East and Mesoamerica, it will provide a new, up-to-date treatment of the phenomenon of the military and aristocratic states of the ancient Near East (Mittani and other Hurrian polities) and of their social structure. The evolution will be traced for some fundamental social terms such as Mesopotamian muškēnum “commoner”, Anatolian (LÚ)ILKI, “man of services” and LÚ (GIŠ)TUKUL, “man of weapon” which are traditionally associated with the low and middle strata of the respective societies. Several important aspects of the slave and other dependent statuses will be analyzed based on the data from the ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean societies. The question of the social status as reflected in the Greek epigraphic sources from the Northern Black Sea region will be touched upon. The phenomenon of euergetism in the Greek poleis will be equally studied. The scientific significance of the project will consist of interconnecting the efforts of the specialists from different disciplines in order to work jointly on the typologically close material related to the social ranks and statuses. From the theoretical point of view a significant aspect of the project is the enlargement of the field of comparative studies: if previously the historians focused themselves on comparing political structures developed in different ancient civilizations (cf. the typology proposed by I.M. Diakonoff and V.A. Yakobson which was subsequently applied for the study of Mesoamerican societies by V.I. Gulyaev), now, a possibility of a comparative analysis may be achieved for the phenomena of a lower level, i.e. social ranks and statuses. From the methodological point of view the significance of the project is connected to establishing the mechanisms for comparison of the typologically close, but chronologically and geographically distant societies. Another important methodological aspect is a special focus on a ranking of social statuses that was engendered and described by the ancient cultures themselves. The study of the logic and structure of such rankings will have priority in respect to classifications of ranks and statuses that were developed by scholars using abstract and sometimes irrelevant criteria. The practical significance of the project will consist of several case studies devoted to fundamental social ranks and statuses in the societies of the ancient Near East, the Mediterranean and Mesoamerica.

По результатам работы будет подготовлено четыре статьи для публикации в рецензируемых журналах. Также планируются одно выступление на международной конференции.

В качестве задела по проекту научный коллектив располагает всеми необходимыми инструментами исследования. Так, релевантные для проекта данные по клинописным источникам содержатся в электронных базах данных и корпусах на сайтах www.archibab.fr, www.hethiter.net, www.cdli.ucla.edu и некоторых других. Кроме того, каждый из участников обладает собственным, оцифрованным корпусом источников и литературы по проблематике гранта. Участники проекта уже неоднократно обращались к теме социальной структуры, социальных рангов и статусов в своих предшествующих исследованиях.