Summary
Mesopotamia in the Era of State Formation:
Aiming for Consensus
The earliest state-level society developed in Mesopotamia. By 3500
B.C., true states are thought to have evolved in the southern region
of modern Iraq and southwestern Iran. Urban systems emerged, a process
of commodification began, social stratification arose, and writing
developed. States in the south began to experience cultural and economic
contact outside their local orbit, possibly causing the population
movements of the so-called "Uruk expansion"—sometimes
suggested to be an early world system or economic empire.
Although explaining the origins of complex societies
has been a core issue of anthropological research for many years, basic agreement
on some essential issues has remained elusive. The March 1998 advanced seminar "Mesopotamia
in the Era of State Formation" included participants chosen for their expertise
on each subregion of Mesopotamia. Terry D'Altroy, an Andeanist, presented a contrasting
case of cultural development and provided an "outsider's" perspective
on Mesopotamian state formation.
The seminar made clear progress on two fronts—first
and foremost, agreement on a common chronological framework for the fourth millennium
B.C. "Our first task was to put all the new excavations and surveys into
a single framework with older research in order to understand the temporal steps
in the development within each subregion and for the region as a whole," said
seminar organizer Mitchell Rothman of Widener University. "We agreed on
a scheme that appears to fit carbon-14 dates and relative chronologies based
on pottery and on stamps and cylinder seals, known as the earliest evidence of
administrative elaboration and control mechanisms."
Second, participants reviewed current interpretive and
theoretical models and assumptions for this period over the Greater Mesopotamian
region, which encompasses varying ecological zones, unevenly distributed natural
resources, and different trajectories of societal change. After revisiting some
broadly accepted interpretations of contact in fourth-millennium-B.C. Mesopotamia,
participants agreed that the northern Mesopotamian societies were far more complex
than previously recognized. Earlier theories had proposed that the south was
substantially more complex economically, administratively, and socially than
the north.
"After our discussions, despite much new agreement,
we continued to disagree" about a number of issues, Rothman said. Among
them were whether trade was a significant reason for founding sites and being
in the north, the degree to which southern-style cultural artifacts meant the
physical presence of southerners in the north, and the importance of long-distance
trade as a cause of change.
In the end, participants identified a series of steps
for continuing the leaps in interpretation begun by their week of discussion,
from publishing more complete samples of dated artifacts and building plans from
Syrian and eastern Turkish sites to researching the preceding third-millennium
Kurban V period. An active e-mail dialogue continues as the chapters of the resulting
book are put into final form.
