The Western Semitic nomads, called Martu in Sumerian and Amurru in Akkadian (from which the name ‘Amorites’ comes from), played a crucial role in the erosion and definite collapse of the dynasty of Ur. The interaction between cities and nomadic groups was one that had existed for centuries, and this interaction was gradually adapted to the several administrative and economic developments affecting the two. Just like in the Nile Valley, so in the Mesopotamian plain the political and territorial supremacy of the cities and their economy based on agriculture and irrigation had entirely marginalised nomadic groups. They were thus seen as an ‘external’ presence, especially since farming activities had also become sedentary, or otherwise (whenever transhumance was still necessary) dependent on the economy of the cities.
In comparison, in the Syro-Levantine area, the nature of its environment had allowed the development of a more diverse and complex system, with areas characterised by low levels of urbanisation and intensive agriculture mixed with mountainous areas (with forests and pastures) or semi-arid steppes. Initially, these difficult areas, located between regions cultivated through rainfed agriculture and semi-arid areas, experienced visible growth in the second urbanisation. However, at the end of the third millennium bc, the process came to a sudden halt and a visible decline. It is difficult to understand to what extent this decline was due to the long-term collapse of a kind of urbanisation that was too expensive to maintain compared to its agricultural yields. Moreover, we do not know how much the fluctuations in rainfall actually impacted the overall situation. The latter factor was initially considered an unhistorical supposition. However, thanks to the recovery of more convincing paleo-ecologic evidence, it is gradually becoming more credible.
Following the course of the isohyets, this ecologically and economically ‘mixed’ Syro-Levantine area extended as far as Upper Mesopotamia. Michael Rowton defined the area as a ‘dimorphic zone’. This phrase is now commonly used in this discipline to define an area characterised by a mixed economy based on agriculture and farming. It has to be pointed out, however, that the phrase has been misused. Marcel Mauss first introduced it to define a completely different phenomenon, namely, ‘seasonal dimorphism’. The latter is encountered when the same area or population takes on different behavioural patterns at different times of the year. In this sense, our zone was not ‘dimorphic’ because pastoral groups coexisted with cities and agricultural villages. Rather, it was ‘dimorphic’ because the agro-pastoral population concentrated in the irrigated lands during the dry summers, and was much more dispersed in the pastures and steppes during the wetter winters and springs. It therefore followed those transhumant patterns that seasonally separated and reunited families and larger kin groups alike.
Consequently, the rise of urban settlements generated a similar rise in the pastoral component of the population. In the first urbanisation, the formation of city-states with an improved political structure had already caused, as a side effect, the formation and political unification of larger tribes. Similarly, the formation of large territorial states was paralleled by the birth of tribal confederations. Nonetheless, city-dwellers continued to see nomadic groups as barbarians devoid of the characteristic aspects of civilisation (such as houses and cities, agriculture and sedentariness, tombs and cults). Despite the ancient ethnographic stereotypes held against them (Text 10.3), however, these pastoral groups had their own culture and political organisation, which gradually become more visible when the sources allow us to catch a glimpse of their real, rather than their stereotypical, image.
World History
