In the Late Uruk phase, the Lower Mesopotamian cities achieved considerable advancements both in terms of social organisation and resources. This allowed them to engage in a type of long-distance trade that was significantly innovative compared to the one attested in the previous Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods. The first factor causing this change was the increased need for raw materials, essential for the new technological and organisational developments taking place at the time: from metals (mainly copper) for tools and weapons, to timber for temples and semiprecious stones. The latter in particular were used for seals and ornaments, which were essential for the specialisation of socio-economic roles, the desire to display wealth ostentatiously and for cultic furnishings.
Another innovative aspect was the structure of long-distance trade, which continued to develop along the same lines throughout the Bronze Age. The great organisations were always the ones initiating trading activities, exchanging their surplus for products that were inaccessible otherwise. However, these organisations did not directly exchange food for raw materials, since the former was difficult to transport and of low value. Therefore, food surplus had to be converted into goods more suitable for trading, such as textiles and other processed products. Moreover, great organisations also began to appoint experts in trading activities: merchants or, better, commercial agents. Each year, the agent left the city with a stock of processed products and travelled to regions rich in raw materials. Once there, he exchanged his products for metals, semiprecious stones, or vegetal products. Subsequently, he returned to his city, where he would work out with his administrators whether the value of the acquired goods was equal to the ones exchanged, following the current charts of correspondences.
Despite being useful to get an idea of the basic dynamics of trade, this brief reconstruction remains heavily biased towards the city acquiring raw materials. One possible correction of this view concerns the existence ofprivileged trading centres. These acted as intermediaries between Lower Mesopotamia and the regions providing raw materials. Another correction concerns the latter regions, which began to organise their export activities in view of the increasing demand for raw materials from the cities, constituting an unusually large market for the period. Consequently, the export of raw materials increased significantly and was adapted to the demand from the cities. Some materials even began to be sold in semi-processed form (smelted metals or polished stones), or even fully processed. Therefore, trade also had a positive impact on the development of regions located far from the centre.
So far, trade might seem to have been a ‘planned’ activity, characterised by a direct interaction between the organisation (the palace and the temple) seeking products, and the specialised merchants. However, this view does not cover the whole sequence of operations making trade possible. For instance, distant centres or regions rich in raw materials might have exchanged goods in ways that remain unknown to us, maybe even in a ceremonial form, following the rules of, for instance, gift exchange. Similarly, it remains impossible to evaluate the reasons for exchange in marginal areas. The latter might have had different interests from the ones of the palace or temple administrations, thus providing merchants and other intermediaries with scope for personal earnings.
Whatever the exact practices for exchange and the role of regions rich in resources and intermediary centres were, the administered trade of the cities mostly avoided intermediary steps. It therefore organised commercial expeditions sent directly to the area of origin, concentration, or manufacture of the desired product, thus effectively saving time and cutting down costs. The expeditions mainly took place via navigation (on the Tigris and the Euphrates, as well as the Persian Gulf), and then continued in caravans pulled by donkeys and at times escorted by armed forces.
It has already been mentioned that goods exchanged over long distances had to be valuable enough in relation to their size, and that cereals were not exported. This forced each area to survive on its own food supplies. In this regard, the lack of archaeological data and the existence of attestations from later textual sources documenting trading activities in this period have caused several misunderstandings. In terms of archaeology, imports (metals and semiprecious stones) are far better attested than exports, since the latter were perishable materials (such as textiles) spread across a vast territory.
The problem of the invisibility of exported goods has often been explained through the assumption that these goods were mainly foodstuffs. This conviction is supported by several written sources (especially on the trade between Uruk and Aratta) describing long caravans delivering cereals. In reality, exported goods are invisible to us both because they were perishable and delivered in small quantities and because they were omitted in the texts. Moreover, the small amount of exported goods indicates a typical case of unequal exchange. In other words, the more advanced party (both in terms of technology and organisation) received considerable quantities of raw materials in exchange for small quantities of crafted objects and cheap commodities. This type of trade thus benefited from the different values given to the commodities by the two parties.
It is also possible that written sources did not mention exports because they were ideologically irrelevant. In fact, following the ideology of the early states, raw materials were not seen as obtained through payment. They were seen as acquired through the prestige and power of the city-god and the king, who was the former’s human representative and economic administrator. The less inhabited regions in the periphery were therefore seen as the providers of those resources fundamental for the successful functioning of the centre and its symbolic core, namely, the temple of the city-god. Allowing equal exchanges between the centre and the periphery would have meant accepting the existence of other equal political centres. This view would have subverted the idea of the universal centrality of the city and its city-god and the opposition between the civilised and uncivilised world. From this point of view, then, the only acceptable exportable good was food, seen as a product able to ‘give life’ to those who received it, thus forcing the latter to become part of the redistributive system centred on the urban temple.
Early state formation therefore had a centralising effect on trade, which was only partial in terms of the materials traded and the way trade was pursued, but absolute on an ideological level. It is undeniable that the formation of urban communities in Lower Mesopotamia, characterised by an unprecedented concentration of the population and a marked increase in its needs, caused a significant polarisation in the influx of commodities towards these centres. However, as previously noted, this polarisation does not indicate a total centralisation of resources. It rather indicates the development of a complex system in which the regions rich in resources and the intermediary centres played a prominent role (an aspect which will be better explored later on).
Nonetheless, at least on an ideological level, this composite and polycentric system was seen as univocal, placing the city at the centre of the known world and its resources as distributed around it. The initiatives for the procurement of resources pursued by the centre became the sole motive for exchange. Ideologically, the centre certainly exaggerated this polarity, but at the same time it shows an awareness of the innovative elements of early urban trade: the coordinated exploitation of a series of resources which were underused in their places of origin; the rise of specialised cultivation in response to the demands of the centre; and the unequal aspect of trade, where the imbalance in technical advancement paved the way for a political and cultural inequality.
World History
