The shadow empires: imperial state formation along the Chinese-Nomad frontier / Thomas J. Barfield --
Written on water: designs and dynamics in the Portuguese Estado da Índia / Sanjay Subrahmanyam --
The Wari empire of Middle Horizon Peru: the epistemological challenge of documenting an empire without documentary evidence / Katharina Schreiber --
The Achaemenid Persian empire (c. 550-c. 330 BCE): continuities, adaptations, transformations / Amélie Kuhrt --
The Aztec Empire and the Mesoamerican world system / Michael E. Smith --
On the edge of empire: form and substance in the Satavahana dynasty / Carla M. Sinopoli --
Dynamics of imperial adjustment in Spanish America: ideology and social integration / Kathleen Deagan --
Politics, resources, and blood in the Inka Empire / Terence N. D'Altroy --
Egypt and Nubia / Robert Morkot --
Coercion, resistance, and hierarchy: local processes and imperial strategies in the Vijayanagara Empire / Kathleen D. Morrison --
Aztec hearts and minds: religion and the state in the Aztec empire / Elizabeth M. Brumfiel --
Inventing empire in ancient Rome / Greg Woolf --
The reconfiguration of memory in the eastern Roman empire / Susan E. Alcock --
Cosmos, central authority, and communities in the early Chinese empire / Robin D.S. Yates --
The fall of the Assyrian empire: ancient and modern interpretations / Mario Liverani --
The Carolingian empire: Rome reborn? / John Moreland --
Cuzco, another Rome? / Sabine MacCormack.

Empires were the largest political systems of the ancient and early modern world. Empires have "risen" and "fallen" in all parts of the globe over several millennia, yet there has been surprisingly little comparative analysis of them. This book is designed to fill that gap by bringing together distinguished scholars in anthropology, archaeology, history, and the classics. The empires discussed are drawn from Central and South America, the Mediterranean, Europe, the Near East, South East Asia, and China, ranging from the first millennium BC to the early modern era