{"product_id":"the-tropical-turn-agricultural-innovation-in-the-ancient-middle-east-and-the-mediterranean-hardcover","title":"The Tropical Turn: Agricultural Innovation in the Ancient Middle East and the Mediterranean - Hardcover","description":"\u003cp\u003eby \u003cb\u003eSureshkumar Muthukumaran\u003c\/b\u003e (Author)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis book chronicles the earliest histories of familiar tropical Asian crops in the ancient Middle East and the Mediterranean, from rice and cotton to citruses and cucumbers. Drawing on archaeological materials and textual sources in over seven ancient languages, \u003ci\u003eThe Tropical Turn\u003c\/i\u003e unravels the breathtaking anthropogenic peregrinations of these familiar crops from their homelands in tropical and subtropical Asia to the Middle East and the Mediterranean, showing the significant impact South Asia had on the ecologies, dietary habits, and cultural identities of peoples across the ancient world. In the process, Sureshkumar Muthukumaran offers a fresh narrative history of human connectivity across Afro-Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the late centuries BCE.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eBack Jacket\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eHaving grappled with a complex, sometimes contradictory, and often obscure corpus of data spanning multiple fields of scholarship, Sureshkumar Muthukumaran offers the most comprehensive and up-to-date summary of the dispersal of ancient crops across South Asia and the eastern Mediterranean.--Robert N. Spengler III, author of \u003ci\u003eFruit from the Sands: The Silk Road Origins of the Foods We Eat\u003c\/i\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \"Accessible, rigorous, and interdisciplinary, Muthukumaran's\u003ci\u003e Tropical Turn\u003c\/i\u003e offers an absorbing plant-based historical journey from tropical Asia to the Middle East and the Mediterranean. This lucid, thought-provoking account of agricultural plant migrations--which variously affected labor regimes, landscapes, and cultural traditions--demonstrates how fascinating and relevant to understanding our globalized world crop histories can be.\"--Daniel Fuks, Research Associate, McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eAuthor Biography\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eSureshkumar Muthukumaran\u003c\/b\u003e is a historian of the ancient world. He is a Lecturer in History at the National University of Singapore and has previously taught at University College London and Yale-NUS College.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eNumber of Pages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 320\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDimensions:\u003c\/strong\u003e 0.9 x 9.1 x 6.2 IN\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication Date:\u003c\/strong\u003e March 14, 2023\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Books by splitShops","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42122767237255,"sku":"9780520390836","price":171.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0601\/2623\/2711\/files\/9cf833f5c819e3af4c536df554e2366d_902e8442-d4b1-4a11-9ab3-9212c6297072.webp?v=1732562222","url":"https:\/\/booksby.splitshops.com\/products\/the-tropical-turn-agricultural-innovation-in-the-ancient-middle-east-and-the-mediterranean-hardcover","provider":"Books by splitShops","version":"1.0","type":"link"}