This Historical and Archaeological Atlas of the Ancient Near East brings together accurate and high-quality maps and reports on the latest research findings. It responds to a pressing need for the entire international scientific community working on the pre-classical Near East. The atlas covers the period from the beginning of the Neolithic, around the 10th millennium BC, to the extinction of cuneiform writing at the turn of our era. The geographical area chosen is globally that of the extension of cuneiform writing: from Eastern Anatolia to Western Iran, the Arabian Peninsula and the Gulf. The maps take into account the relief, the variations in the layout of the sides and the course of the rivers. They highlight the boundaries of the different political entities, as well as, in a hierarchical manner, the communication routes and the main cities (the maps of about twenty cities are thus detailed). Each map is accompanied by a short commentary explaining the cartographic choices, the limits of knowledge and the advances in research in the field of historical geography over the last twenty years.
After the map book, a chapter brings together the sources and a selection of the most up-to-date bibliographical references for each contribution. In addition, there is a geographical index listing the modern and ancient names of the sites and their different variants, as well as an index of proper names. In total, the project, directed by Martin Sauvage, an archaeological research engineer at the CNRS, brings together some fifty contributors: university lecturers in France and abroad, CNRS researchers and engineers, students and post-doctoral students, mainly attached to three teams of the UMR (Unité mixte de recherche) ArScAn but also to 5 other UMRs in France and 5 universities abroad.
