Most visions of the Mesopotamian state involve centralized control and vertical hierarchy (Adams 1966, 1981; Adams and Nissen 1972; Wright and Johnson 1975; Wright 1977; Nissen 1988). Focus is on the material evidence of elites and of state economic administration - public buildings and art, seals, bullae (clay tags), and tablets which recorded movement of goods, and mass-produced pottery. There is assumed to have been efficient gathering and redistribution of agricultural products, textiles, and other manufactured items, grounded in an urban core and a rural periphery.
Scholars see the Mesopotamian state as urban, typified by Uruk in the Late Uruk period around 3100 bce, at about 250 hectares or 620 acres and with population estimates of up to 40,000 inhabitants (Nissen 2002). But what do we know of south Mesopotamia beyond Uruk, and what of Uruk beyond its size and the layout of its religious quarter in the final phase?
Urbanization also ‘‘ruralizes.’’ Pre-urban and post-urban villages may appear similar, but small villages within a larger system have a new counterpoint in urban sites, and the land between sites takes on a new meaning (Yoffee 1995). The Uruk period with its four-tier hierarchy of site sizes which is visible in survey around Uruk (Adams and Nissen 1972; Nissen 2002) may not exactly match a power hierarchy but does translate into variability in settlement character. Craft production and centers of religion and secular administration may be displaced to urban centers, creating a system of rural dependency. Pottery and flint tool production remained at the village level of production in the Uruk period at Abu Salabikh (Pollock, Pope, and Coursey 1996). But metallurgy seems to have been restricted to urban sites, while centralization of textile production, often assumed, remains unproven. We know a great deal about the vertical inequalities of the Mesopotamian state but need more research into rural sites and into household and private economies. The shift in terminology from ‘‘state’’ to ‘‘complex society’’ in archaeological discourse is welcome, with its emphasis on horizontal variation as well as vertical structures. But it must be applied more comprehensively to the Uruk period situation.
And the vertical inequalities may not necessarily mean exploitation and oppression, as is often supposed. It is notable that images of leaders in the Uruk period generally did not dominate, but rulers were depicted as unifying and protecting. There are a few seal impressions representing a ruler with captives, but the majority of artworks showed him in ritual contexts or symbolic scenes with animals or building projects. Texts interpreted as ration lists for enslaved or disenfranchised workers may equally be lists of payment for part-time work, in an economy where staple goods acted as money.
One recent theory avoids definitions and looks to ‘‘effects’’ of states: ‘‘identification, legibility, and spatialization’’ (Trouillot 2001). Legibility is particularly apt for the early Mesopotamian state, with its new visible language, written and iconographic ruler images, cylinder seals and clay tablets, temple complexes, and the urban sites themselves. It is unclear whether Mesopotamian states brought a new spatialization, with borders and enforced population movements, inside to outside, outside to inside, or displacement within. Population movements were certainly a feature of late Mesopotamian states like the Neo-Assyrian empire. And for fourth millennium BCE Uruk, we see a suddenly larger urban center and depopulation of its immediate surroundings (Adams and Nissen 1972). It is unlikely that this was merely the result of a need for protection or the draw of employment opportunities. But Uruk was an anomaly, and the smaller city-states of Nippur and Adab, mostly built through incremental growth, may be more typical. The identification effect - all individuals within a state identifying as members of it - is related to one of Childe’s traits of civilization, which sees membership based on location, rather than kinship. We do not yet have the equipment to assess to what degree early inhabitants of cities and their hinterlands identified themselves as citizens of Uruk or Nippur. But the strength of family relations in Mesopotamia into the first millennium bce and beyond suggests that identification was negotiated through both physical location and kinship.
World History
