The chapters in this volume represent the contributions of a group of archaeologists, anthropologists, and historians who, in march 2008, gathered at a seminar at the Oriental institute of the university of chicago. Our aim was to present and discuss ways to integrate approaches to and ideas about the roles of pastoral nomads and tribe-state interactions in the ancient near east. These concerns are by no means new; they have been of interest to researchers for decades, and recent work continues to be shaped by the classic theories of ibn Khaldun, Kupper (1957), and rowton (e. g., 1973; 1974; 1976), along with accounts and ethnographies of near eastern nomads in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries too numerous to list. however, despite calls for the integration of archaeology, anthropology, and history in the study of ancient pastoral nomadism in the near east (LaBianca and Witzel 2007: 63), each discipline has been addressing these issues in relative isolation. although great strides have recently been made,1 a pressing need remains for cross-disciplinary dialog to establish a common framework for the study of pastoral nomadism and tribe-state interactions specific to the ancient near east.
It was this overriding concern that lay behind the Oriental institute seminar and the contributions in this book. The goal of the seminar was to find commonalities among the work of those studying nomadic and tribal groups throughout the greater near east, from iran to egypt, and from prehistory to the early islamic period. Where approaches and theories differed, we aimed to evaluate those differences in order to learn new ways to think and talk about nomads and tribes in our own research. This book thus represents an attempt to bring disparate scholars together to push forward a new agenda for studying pastoral nomads, tribes, and the state in the ancient near east.
One particularly thorny problem associated with organizing a small seminar on such a large topic presented itself from the outset: how to convey the themes of the seminar without falling into the semantic trap of establishing social categories that may not represent reality. for example, the term “tribe,” itself, and many of the attributes associated with it, such as segmentary lineages and egalitarianism, notions that have troubled anthropologists for some time, seem even more fluid and amorphous according to recent literature. in recent years, scholars of both texts and archaeology have acknowledged a degree of integration between urban and pastoral sectors, and between tribes and states that rowton’s standard dimorphic model did not anticipate (Fleming 2004; McClellan 2004; Porter 2002, 2004). Although this approach appears to capture more accurately the complexity of ancient tribe-state interactions,
University of California, Los Angeles, conference on the achaeology of mobility (Barnard and Wendrich 2008).
It also introduces questions about the very categories we use to describe pastoral nomadic tribes. Did such bounded categories really exist in antiquity, or are they fabrications or idealizations created by modern ethnographers (Abu-Lughod 1989; Marx 1992; salzman 1999)? If so, should they be applied to mobile and sedentary communities in the past? Does it even make sense to discuss tribe and state as separate social, political, or economic sectors? As the division between tribe and state in antiquity continues to blur, we may seem hyperaware of the inadequacy of those terms that make up the title of this book: “nomad,” “tribe,” and “state.” One is often compelled to define or defend their use at the outset of a publication (abdi 2003: 398; Bar-Yosef and Khazanov 1992: 2; Leder 2004; saidel and van der steen 2007: 2). As a way to frame the issues with which the following chapters grapple, this introduction avoids offering specific definitions of the terms, but focuses on an examination of why these terms are so contentious.
Nomads
The term nomad, or more precisely pastoral, or sheep - and goat-herding nomad, is itself a complex concept, and scholars have long struggled to identify and overcome the multiple biases that affect interpretations of Near Eastern nomadism. Although the word “nomad” no longer conjures up the image of mythic and inscrutable creatures, fiercely independent and existing outside the purview of the civilized world, this romantic notion was not easily vanquished, and one can trace a long tradition of Western travelers and scholars who perpetuated the myth of the stateless nomad, along with a false binary state-nomad opposition. A second myth that has been put to rest is that of the barbaric nomad, sweeping in from the desert to occasionally overwhelm bucolic villages and their defenseless inhabitants.
In place of the mythical noble nomad and the barbaric nomad, scholars have focused not on the nomad per se, but on the nature of pastoral nomadism as an economic adaptation. This focus on pastoral economies has brought to light the fact that there are indeed many different types of pastoral nomadism in the Near east, depending in part on the natural environment. As Alizadeh (this volume) shows, the variety of pastoral economies has diverse ramifications, so that one pastoral nomadic community is not always comparable to another. For the most part, however, whether they deal with nomads in the highlands of southwest iran, the Syrian steppe, or the Negev Desert, the chapters in this book are primarily concerned with multiresource pastoral nomadism, an economic adaptation that depends upon a variety of resources that are acquired from a variety of economic pursuits in addition to pastoralism: small-scale cultivation, trade, crafts, raiding, smuggling, or other activities. That is, as Salzman (1971: 190) puts it, “to say ‘pastoral’ does not necessarily entail ‘nomadic,’ and to say ‘nomadic,’ does not necessarily entail ‘pastoral.’”
The economic aspect of pastoral nomadism has occupied anthropological research for some time. Khazanov (1994; this volume), for example, has long held that pastoral nomadism is fundamentally an economic adaptation that entails mobility only as a by-product of a specialized pastoral economy. The work of Khazanov and others has also shown that economic necessity requires that nomadic communities are closely intertwined with village and city life. Emanuel Marx, for example, sees the integration of pastoral nomads with sedentary populations as so complete that he questions the relevance of the concept at all. He has asked in a 1992 article, “Are There Pastoral Nomads in the Middle East?”; in 1996, “Are there Pastoral Nomads in the Arab Middle East?”; and, as recently as 2006 (p. 93), “is the concept ‘pastoral nomads’ still useful”? What Marx is wrestling with is not only the utility of the term “pastoral nomad” itself, but with the very category of a distinct pastoral nomadic economy, which according to him is merely “an attenuated version of the city’s complex economic specialization and differentiation” (Marx 2007: 77).1
Marx’s question is perhaps a natural response to the ever-increasing evidence that the distinction between nomadic and sedentary communities is not always clear. It is now commonplace to assert that pastoral nomads operate along a continuum of economic and social activities, at times pursuing pastoral activities to a greater extent than other forms of subsistence, and at other times engaging in agriculture more than in pastoral production. The emphasis on either economic pursuit can often correlate with an individual’s or group’s level of mobility. since the 1970s, when Rowton (1973: 201) showed that ancient steppe and mountain nomads often comprised polities that represented “a curious blend of city-state, tribe, and nomadism,” a number of whose members were becoming sedentary and nomadic in varying proportions and at varying times, archaeologists have stressed even greater levels of integration between nomadic and sedentary populations. Thus, nomads may become sedentary without severing ties to their nomadic kin or even their nomadic identity. Furthermore, behind Porter’s (2004) notion of the “urban nomad” lies the suggestion that nomads can form, sustain, and dwell within urban locales. Does this mean that sedentary nomads and mobile nomads are both equally nomadic? At what point, if ever, then, does a sedentarized nomad cease to be a nomad (Whitcomb, this volume)? And, if identifying nomadic remains presents special challenges to archaeologists because of the nature of their mobile lifestyle (Barnard, this volume), what other challenges face archaeologists who seek evidence of ancient nomadism in urban contexts, perhaps in response to the economic and social demands of a nomadic livelihood (Lyonnet, Porter, this volume)?
These questions seem to revolve around two competing theories about the implications of the intimate integration of nomads into village, town, and city life. On the one hand, this integration means that, as an economic specialization, pastoral nomadism is so intertwined with the other sectors of a regional economy, that nomadic groups themselves are nearly indistinguishable from other elements of society. On the other hand, the integration of nomad and sedentary means that even sedentary nomads are still nomadic, in that they are culturally distinct from other members of a sedentary community. The conflict here is thus between understanding pastoral nomadism as either an economic or a cultural phenomenon. Yet neither of these factors alone is enough to explain the contrasts between nomadic and sedentary populations. Often, a nomadic community’s self-identity goes well beyond its economic base. A sedentarized nomad remains intimately bound to tribe and tribal kin who remain mobile. Tents commonly erected alongside a mudbrick house (Beck 2003: 293; Mortensen 1993: 118, fig. 6.54), or the re-creation of temporary tent plans in more permanent mudbrick structures (Beck 1991: 336-40; Katakura 1977: 74-76; Layne 1987), are visual expressions of a persistent nomadic identity even in the context of residential stability. Mobility, then, in addition to a pastoral economy, is indeed an essential component of pastoral nomadism, one which must have an effect on the social structures that develop within a mobile community (Porter, this volume).
Pastoral nomads in the Middle East?’] is emphatically yes, provided a new emphasis is given to the political-economic environment, and to the constantly changing conditions, in which pastoral nomads operate” (Marx 1996: 112; cf. Marx 2006: 93).
JEFFREY SZUCHMAN
World History
