The Creation of Inequality: How Our Prehistoric Ancestors Set the Stage for Monarchy, Slavery, and Empire (72 page)

When archaeologists encounter loose ceramic cones on a
tell,
or mounded ruin, they conclude that there is an eroded temple somewhere beneath the surface. The ruins of Susa, Chogha Mish, and at least six other communities had such cones lying on their surfaces.

The Middle Uruk settlements also produced thousands of artifacts related to the administrative duties of the state: seals and seal impressions, bullae and tokens, and beveled-rim bowls. To be sure, seals had already been used 1,500 years earlier at villages of the Halaf period. By Middle Uruk times, however, both the stamps and the clay blobs into which they were pressed had become more varied. Many Uruk seals were shaped like cylinders, carved in such a way that when they were rolled out over wet clay a complex scene was left behind. Seal impressions, no longer limited to the blobs that surrounded knots, now included clay casts of the wooden locks on storeroom doors.

Uruk officials had also invented the prehistoric equivalent of a bill of lading: a lightly baked clay sphere, filled with small tokens. Archaeologists have borrowed the Latin term
bulla
(plural,
bullae
) for these spheres, a reference to the ball of sealing wax attached to a papal bull. It is believed that the tokens, which came in many shapes, reflected the items in a shipment. The recipient would break open the bulla to make sure the tokens matched the items he had received.

Beveled-rim bowls, which were created during the Early Uruk period and became more widespread and numerous with time, may be the least attractive pottery vessels ever made. They were mass-produced by the thousands, the Uruk equivalent of a disposable Styrofoam cup. These bowls appear to be mold-made, and the characteristic beveled rim was produced by trimming excess material from the edge of the mold with a finger. At some Uruk sites in Susiana, beveled-rim bowls were discarded at a rate 11 to 47 times greater than that of any other pottery vessel.

Archaeologist Hans Nissen, drawing on what he knew from later periods in Mesopotamia, has suggested that these eminently disposable vessels might have been ration bowls, used to provide workers with their daily allotment of barley. We know from texts written in the later Akkadian period (roughly 4,200 years ago) that state workers of that era received such rations. The standard Akkadian unit was the
sila,
estimated to be 0.842 liters (0.889 quarts).

Intrigued by Nissen’s suggestion,
Johnson
measured hundreds of beveled-rim bowls from Susiana and found that they came in three modal sizes: 0.90 liters, 0.65 liters, and 0.45 liters. This strongly suggests that they were indeed ration bowls, produced in sizes corresponding to one unit of barley, two-thirds of a unit, and half a unit. The crudeness of the bowls likely reflects the fact that they were made quickly and cheaply, used once, and then discarded.

Here, then, is another analogy with Oaxaca’s first kingdom. We have seen evidence that Monte Albán used griddles to mass-produce tortillas for its workers. The Middle Uruk equivalent was a bowl for barley rations. Although both artifacts may have been invented to solve the problem of feeding urban workers, they eventually spread to smaller communities. Some workers took their beveled-rim bowls back to their home villages, where they were put to other uses. For their part, tortilla griddles eventually spread to virtually every household in highland Mexico.

Conflict and Colonization in the Late Uruk Period

As the Susiana plain entered the Late Uruk period, conflict broke out again between Susa and Chogha Mish. Hostilities in the area may have erupted when Chogha Mish decided to break away from Susa, reestablishing its control of the Shur River district.

There were several consequences to this power struggle. In the Late Uruk period, Chogha Mish grew from 20 acres to nearly 45 acres. Susa, on the other hand, shrank from 60 acres to 22 acres, about half the size of Chogha Mish. One of the most dramatic Late Uruk developments was the establishment of a no-man’s-land between these two large communities. A buffer zone eight or nine miles wide appeared in the center of the Susiana plain, leaving the productive Dez River floodplain virtually devoid of villages. Some 16 of Susa’s satellite communities, representing an estimated 4,500 people, were abandoned. Perhaps 19 villages in the Chogha Mish area, representing an estimated 6,600 people, were also abandoned.

The villagers of the Chogha Mish area may have taken refuge in Chogha Mish itself, accounting for its size increase. On the other hand, exactly where the villagers in the Susa district went is not clear.
Johnson
wonders if some of them left Susiana and emigrated to Southern Mesopotamia, a possibility to which we return later.

During this period the scenes carved on cylinder seals became increasingly militaristic. One seal impression from Chogha Mish shows a ruler traveling by boat. He holds a mace in one hand; in the other, he holds a cord attached to what may be a pair of prisoners. Another seal impression shows an archer, with his weaponry rendered in great detail, and yet another shows a group of men marching in close formation.

Seal impressions from Susa display similar themes. One shows a line of captives with their hands tied behind their backs. Another depicts a bearded figure armed with a bow and arrow; in front of him are three men with arrows protruding from their bodies.

Johnson
suspects that these conflicts reduced Susiana’s political hierarchy from four levels to three. He points out that as the result of widespread abandonment, villages measuring five to seven acres (which had constituted Level 3 during the Middle Uruk period) no longer stood out as a separate level. Despite this reduction of administrative levels, other lines of evidence suggest that Chogha Mish’s seizure of power had not demoted Susiana from a kingdom to a rank society. Seals and seal impressions, bullae, tokens, and beveled-rim bowls all indicate that the state bureaucracy had survived, and workers continued to receive their rations. In addition, some Late Uruk administrators were beginning to keep their accounts by impressing numbers on clay tablets with a stylus. We would know more about these accounts were it not so difficult to read the earliest writing.

The fact that the apparatus of the state could survive wars (and perhaps the temporary loss of a four-level hierarchy) should not surprise us. We have seen that Maya cities such as Calakmul and Tikal could attack each other, seize each other’s Level 2 centers, and even capture royal family members, all without destroying the institutions of the state. Chogha Mish’s seizure of power from Susa 5,300 years ago may simply have been analogous to Tikal’s seizing of power from Calakmul 4,000 years later. Neither conflict eliminated social stratification and monarchy.

Further evidence of Susa’s continued vigor comes from an upper tributary of the Karkheh River. It appears that one of Susa’s Late Uruk rulers placed a trade outpost in the Kangavar Valley of the Zagros Mountains, 150 miles north of Susa and more than 4,000 feet above sea level. There, at the community of Godin Tepe, archaeologists T. Cuyler Young and Louis Levine found a fortified enclave of the Late Uruk period. This outpost was surrounded by a much larger community of local Kangavar families. The architecture of the fort was local in style, as was half of its pottery. The other half of its pottery (which included beveled-rim bowls) was Late Uruk in style, as were the cylinder seal impressions. The Godin enclave also included administrators who kept their accounts on clay tablets. The style of notation on the tablets resembles that of Susa.

The fort at Godin Tepe controlled a key pass along one of the Near East’s most important trade routes: the Khorasan Road, which led from the Tigris River into the Zagros Mountains and on to the Iranian plateau. This road would lead donkey caravans to sources of copper, turquoise, and lapis lazuli.

SOUTHERN MESOPOTAMIA

When we last looked at Southern Mesopotamia we were trying to reconstruct the society of the ‘Ubaid 4 period. We concluded that it was a rank society, but near the group-oriented end of Colin Renfrew’s continuum.

Some 5,700 years ago, Southern Mesopotamia entered the Uruk period. It would soon witness the rise of a first-generation state, one supported by irrigation canals from the lower Euphrates River.

Fortunately, the area between the lower Euphrates and Tigris has been the scene of one of archaeology’s greatest surveys. During most of three decades, Robert McC. Adams surveyed a strip of Mesopotamia more than 150 miles long. His survey included such ancient Sumerian cities as Sippar, Kish, Nippur, Adab, Shuruppak, Zabalam, Bad-Tibira, and Uruk itself.

Ancient Uruk

Near the modern Iraqi city of Nasiriya, the Euphrates runs east on its way to join the Tigris. Just north of the river lies the huge archaeological mound of Tell Warka. Occupied as long ago as 7,000 years, Warka had once consisted of a pair of mounds called Eanna and Kullaba. These twin mounds were swallowed up as Warka grew to become the ancient Sumerian city of Uruk.

The Euphrates channel at this point is 500 to 650 feet wide and easily navigated. The river has entered its delta and flows only ten feet above sea level, discharging more than 3,000 cubic feet per second during the September dry season. Uruk is surrounded by good alluvial soil that can be irrigated with canals from the left bank of the Euphrates.

Adams’s survey of the Uruk region covered some 300 square miles. During the ‘Ubaid 1 period (about 7,000 years ago) there were only three villages in the survey area. During ‘Ubaid 2 (about 6,500 years ago) the number had increased to seven. The number of villages remained steady at seven through ‘Ubaid 3 (6,400 to 6,200 years ago). About 6,000 years ago, during ‘Ubaid 4, the number of communities in the survey area rose to 11. The largest were towns in the 25-acre size range; the smallest were two- to three-acre villages.

A significant jump in population took place during the Uruk period. The number of communities rose to 18 in the Early Uruk period and surged to 108 by the Late Uruk period. This increase was so rapid that Adams suspects it included actual immigration from elsewhere. Late Uruk, of course, is exactly the period when
Johnson
suspects that thousands of families fled Susiana for Southern Mesopotamia. Future archaeologists may be able to use DNA and bone chemistry to determine whether Susiana was indeed the place from which the immigrants came.

Perhaps the most spectacular growth during this period took place at Uruk itself. It grew to 170 acres in the Early Uruk period and reached 250 acres in the Late Uruk period. This growth, too, implies immigration.

Johnson
believes that a political hierarchy of four levels appeared in the Late Uruk period. The city of Uruk (250 acres) was all alone in Level 1; Level 2 consisted of eight towns measuring 20 to 35 acres; Level 3 included all villages in the seven- to 15-acre range; and smaller villages constituted Level 4.

Adams is less convinced that a four-level hierarchy was present in the Late Uruk period. He has no doubt that it was present during the subsequent period, known as Jemdet Nasr (5,100 to 5,000 years ago). By that time Uruk surely exceeded 300 acres. Two smaller cities, less than half the size of Uruk, made up Level 2; Level 3 consisted of 20 towns, some of which had reached 50 acres in extent; and roughly 124 villages made up Level 4.

For our purposes here, it is not crucial to know whether Uruk’s four-level hierarchy emerged during the Late Uruk or the Jemdet Nasr period. Let us instead consider the following points:

  1. As far as one can tell from the archaeological record, the context in which Uruk’s leaders created a state does not seem to have involved a local conflict such as the one between Susa and Chogha Mish.

  2. The Susiana plain lost thousands of families during the Late Uruk period. The Uruk region gained thousands of families during the Late Uruk and Jemdet Nasr periods.

  3. Thus we might not be dealing with two independent cases of state creation, one at Susa and one at Uruk. We might be dealing, instead, with a chain reaction such as the one involving Monte Albán, La Providencia, Monte Negro, Cerro Jasmín, and Huamelulpan in Oaxaca, Mexico.

  4. The available information suggests that Susa’s crucial growth came first, during the Middle Uruk period, and allowed Susa to dominate both Chogha Mish and Abu Fanduweh. Uruk’s crucial growth came slightly later, during the Late Uruk and Jemdet Nasr periods. The scale of every process in the Uruk region, however, was greater than its counterpart in Susiana.

  5. Archaeologists, as mentioned earlier, once referred to Uruk as the cradle of civilization. Such Uruk-centrism now appears to be an oversimplification. Mesopotamian civilization is more likely to have been the product of the dynamic competition and alliance-building among several urban societies. One of the best ways to preserve one’s autonomy is to become huge. Once communities such as Susa, Chogha Mish, and Uruk had become cities, the chain reaction was on.

  6. Examples of inter-city competition include the following. During the Late Uruk period, according to Adams, Uruk seems to have suppressed the growth of other towns within a radius of nine or ten miles. During the Jemdet Nasr period, a newly irrigated area with several large communities appeared about 20 miles northeast of Uruk. Later, however, all these communities were abandoned, possibly because their populations were drawn into the rival city of Umma, 25 miles from Uruk.

  7. Some 5,000 years ago, at the start of the Early Dynastic period, Uruk grew to cover an unprecedented one-and-a-half square miles. Adams believes that much of its growth came from rural families taking refuge in the city. One motivation for such immigration may have been widespread violence; it is significant that Uruk built a defensive wall nearly six miles in length. Hans Nissen reveals that this wall had watchtowers at regular intervals and at least two gates into the city.

  8. The chain reaction of urban development did not end there. Some 4,700 years ago, perhaps five other cities—Umma, Shuruppak, Zabalam, Bad-Tibira, and possibly Larsa—had grown to the point where they could dilute Uruk’s influence over Southern Mesopotamia. From that point on, Mesopotamian cities would experience cycles of dominance and decline such as those already described for the Maya.