All artefacts bear the sign of events that occurred at the time they were created and of the functions they performed within the community. They are fragments of everyday life: traces of religious rituals, economic activities, and people’s relationships with the environment. Like shards of a mirror, such objects reflect an image of what we have been and help us to make sense of the past. Years of work are required to tie together the threads of such distant and unfamiliar worlds. And, in fact, the renowned archaeologist who wrote this book spent over 30 years at the Arslantepe (or Melid) site in Anatolia, where the oldest public building in the world still stands. She accompanies readers on a journey through time (dating back six millennia or more) and space (in Anatolia and throughout the Fertile Crescent) to discover the first human civilizations and the political and social phenomena that still shape our lives. The book offers ten lessons drawn from ancient archaeology to help understand how we got here and what future awaits us.

A member of the Italian Accademia dei Lincei and the British Academy, Marcella Frangipane teaches Prehistoric and Protohistoric Archaeology at the Sapienza University in Rome. For 30 years she directed the excavations at the Arslantepe site in Turkey, recently named a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

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