The development of centralised societies in Greater Mesopotamia and the foundation of economic inequality (original) (raw)
Tag un g e n d e s L a nd e s m u s eum s f ür Vo r g e s c hi c h T e h a L L e • B a nd 13 • 2016 Summary After briefly considering the various forms and degrees of social differentiation that may be included in a generic concept of »inequality«, the type of »unequal social relations« will be outlined. The paper focuses on the potential of certain social differences to evolve into real socioeconomic disparities and forms of permanent political authority, looking both at some specific types of social conditions which lie at the root of those inequalities and at the different conditions and requirements of subsistence economies in different environments. The next step is an attempt to analyse the nature of the first unequal and hierarchical social relations in Middle Eastern societies by identifying their economic and/or political bases, with particular reference to the Mesopotamian and peri-Mesopotamian world in the 4 th millennium BC. This region shows very interesting examples of the transformation from ranked to truly hierarchical societies, based on a growing centralisation of primary resources and labour, and also offers relevant data for the study of the dynamics of change that led to the formation of early state societies. The paper analyses the historical roots of the changes that occurred in southern Mesopotamia, from forms of hierarchical kinship ties, recognisable in the Ubaid period (5 th millennium BC), to the establishment of unequal economic and politi cal relations in the Late Uruk phases. Such changes resulted in the formation of strong centralised power systems. Since inequality involves subordinate relations, it goes hand in hand with the rise of »power« and differentiated access to resources; a process which also took place in other regions in northern Mesopotamia and southeastern Anatolia, which are comparatively analysed. Finally, the case of Arslantepe, in the Upper Euphrates region, is presented in detail, as a meaningful example of the transition from prestige to power and from the use of reli-gious/ideological consensus in public ceremonial practices to the exercise of power in more secular and direct forms, seen here in a very precocious example of a fully fledged palace dated to the end of the 4 th millennium BC. This transition is seen as a crucial stage in the rise of the state and the consolidation of unequal socio-political and economic relations. But the centralised system at Arslantepe, albeit very powerful , probably did not have the solid foundation for a differentiated and hierarchical system of social and economic relations that only an urban society can guarantee. It therefore collapsed as soon as it was born.
Sign up for access to the world's latest research.
checkGet notified about relevant papers
checkSave papers to use in your research
checkJoin the discussion with peers
checkTrack your impact
Related papers
Different Trajectories in State Formation in Greater Mesopotamia: A View from Arslantepe (Turkey)
Journal of Archaeological Research - Springer, 2018
Long-term excavations at Arslantepe, Malatya (Turkey), have revealed the development, in the fourth millennium BC, of a precocious palatial system with a monumental building complex, sophisticated bureaucracy, and a strong centralization of economic and political power in a nonurban site. This paper reconsiders, in comparative terms, the main features and organization of the earliest states in Greater Mesopotamia. By looking at the social and economic foundations of the emergence of hierarchies and unequal relations, the dynamics and degrees of urbanization, and the role of ideology, I highlight the common aspects and the diversified trajectories of state formation and outcomes in three main core regions— southern Mesopotamia, northern Mesopotamia, and Upper Euphrates valley. Keywords State formation Greater Mesopotamia Political economy Social hierarchies Urbanization Arslantepe palace
The Age of Opportunity: Social and Political Transitions in Mid-Second Millennium BC Mesopotamia
Constituent, Confederate, and Conquered Space, 2014
In this brief essay I consider aspects of the conference papers on the "transition to Mittani". The papers have discussed the history of periods and places before the formation of the Mittani state (including Ebla, the Old Assyrian period, Shemshāra and Leilan and Mari) and roughly contemporaneous material from Hittite archives and from Alalakh and other Levantine sites. There were also discussions of environment and subsistence patterns and about pastoral nomads and archaeological data, especially changes in settlement patterns. The organizers asked the participants to focus on the interrelations among local politics ("constituent space"), regional interconnections ("confederate space"), and imperial strategies ("conquered space"). This sense of place is in recent years a regular subject of inquiry, certainly among archaeologists. 1 For these and many other authors, including geographers and historians, landscapes are constructs of the mind as well as physical and measurable entities. Landscapes are ways of seeing that are projected onto the land and express cultural attitudes. Furthermore, politics operates through space, according to Adam T. Smith (2003), in which space reproduces structures and/or constrains agents. 2 History is where events occurred as well as when they occurred, and landscapes are constant reminders of history. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, of course, the hero tells his audience that if they doubt his story, they have only to look upon the walls of Uruk to see its verification. Landscapes of the past are also created by historians. The cartography of political landscapes is mainly approached in this volume by those papers (and in some histories of Mesopotamia) that portray the transition to Mittani rule as the aftermath of a crisis in which landscapes change utterly. This is in particular reference to the end of the Old Babylonian period in Mesopotamia and the long period between the end of the Old Assyrian period and the resumption of centralized political systems in the Middle Assyrian period (under Assuruballit) and the Mittani state. This is often referred to as a "dark age" (since we have no documents from Assyria for several hundred years). In Babylonia the term dark age is now less apt, for reasons to be discussed below. In this paper I wonder about the usefulness of the term dark age, as well as summarizing the presented
Modern historians of ancient Mesopotamia are chiefly concerned with the deeds of the kings and mainly use sources which reflect conditions at the apex of Mesopotamian society. This paper attempts to investigate possible traces of discontent and opposition as well as the criteria involving the loss of the legitimacy of power in Early Mesopotamia. We will deal with two major types of sources: the early curse formulas in “royal” inscriptions, and the school-based tradition of Sumerian proverbs. Especially the latter allow for a more socially-balanced understanding of history.
So-called control mechanisms as a basis of social power shall be compared in four societies in Europe and Asia which were in coexistence during the middle and later 3rd millennium BC. While in some cases (southern Mesopotamia) we have good indications for social power operating largely from above, such notions cannot easily be adduced from the archaeological record in other regions (Indus Valley, Aegean), in which there were possibly many different levels on which social power was exercised on an everyday basis. Finally, in the fourth region (Bell Beaker Central Europe) it is hard to recognise not only clear signs of social power, but also any possible basis for distinctions in social power. It will be argued that the establishment of control mechanisms was fundamental to achieve institutionalized and long-term inequality in the societies discussed in this article. The adoption of such control mechanisms enabled a group of people (the elite) to regulate and hence dominate resources. Some of the best archaeological indications are writing, the practice of sealing and the invention and standardisation of metrological systems. The open question is how many members of the given society were able to participate in the regulation of power. The archaeological indications often do not imply a strongly hierarchical society, or a society where a single person (king or chief) and/or his clique could dominate. Instead the archaeological record points to flexible and fluctuating power relations. Therefore, it is argued that some early complex societies of the second half of the 3rd millennium BC (like Greece or the Indus Valley) can be better described as heterarchical than hierarchical. For prehistoric Europe it is argued that social power was highly fluid and that no long-term systematization of power relations is traceable before the Iron Age (and even then it is often debatable). Therefore, any claim for the existence of simple or complex chiefdoms in prehistoric Europe (outside the Aegean) during the Copper and Bronze Age seems to be misleading.
Loading Preview
Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.