Social structure: Did you mean...?

The society in the Byzantine Empire (4th-15th century CE) was dominated by the imperial family and the male aristocracy but there were opportunities for social advancement thanks to wars, population movements, imperial...

Women were involved in all aspects of the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917 when radical socialists and other sections of society challenged the authoritarian rule of Tsar Nicholas II (reign 1894-1917). As writers...

A ziggurat is a form of monumental architecture originating in ancient Mesopotamia, which usually had a rectangular base and was built in a series of steps up to a flat platform upon which a temple was raised. The...

Ancient India in the Vedic Period (c. 1500-1000 BCE) did not have social stratification based on socio-economic indicators; rather, citizens were classified according to their Varna or castes...

Mycenaean society was strictly hierarchical, valued family lineage, and awarded higher social status to those involved with religious or military activities and palatial administration. The lower classes contained craftsmen and...

The popular view of life in ancient Egypt is often that it was a death-obsessed culture in which powerful pharaohs forced the people to labor at constructing pyramids and temples and, at an unspecified time, enslaved...

In 88 BCE, Lucius Cornelius Sulla (138-78 BCE) marched on Rome and entered the city's sacred inner boundary, the pomerium, bearing arms. Breaking this taboo, he sought to gain political power and control of the army of the...

Herod's Harbor was a giant port built between 22 and 15 BCE by Herod the Great (r. 37-4 BCE), Rome's client king. Situated on the lower eastern Mediterranean coast north of Alexandria and south of Tyre, with Rome's largess and...

The Jade Museum (Spanish: Museo del Jade y de la Cultura Precolombina) in San José, Costa Rica houses the world's largest collection of ancient jade from the Americas. With nearly 7,000 pieces in its collection...

The threshing floors of the Bible were outdoor stone floors, usually circular in fashion, used by farmers to process the grain of their crops. For the larger community, like watermills of the recent past, they could...