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Different types of egalitarian societies and the development of inequality in early Mesopotamia

2007; Routledge; Volume: 39; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/00438240701249504

1470-1375

Marcella Frangipane,

Eurasian Exchange Networks

Abstract Abstract There is no single form that equality takes in past societies. Some societies, horizontal egalitarian systems, manifest absence of hierarchy, but in other societies (vertical egalitarian systems) privileged status coexists with substantial equality. A detailed comparison of the Halaf culture of northern Mesopotamia and eastern Anatolia with the Samarra and Ubaid cultures of central and southern Mesopotamia, examining settlement pattern, economy and burial customs, reveals the ways the vectors of egalitarianism in these two contrasting systems and enables key variables determining the nature and distribution of equality to be distinguished. Keywords: Equalityhierarchy settlementhousessocial systemseconomyHalafUbaid Notes 1 Calibrated C14 dates bc are used. 2 The excavation of the Halaf settlement at Kazane is still limited to an extremely small area and is mostly unpublished. 3 Only an extensive excavation, stratigraphically connecting in detail the individual building phases recognized in different trenches, could actually prove the absence of shifting in the settled areas during the course of the same archaeological phase. 4 A certain quantity of charred grains has been found at Sabi Abyad in the area around these structures (Akkermans 1993 Akkermans, P. M. M. G. 1993. Villages in the Steppe, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. [Google Scholar]: 52–66). 5 We have suggested the use of the Latin term cretula to designate clay sealings and any kind of sealed administrative tools (Frangipane et al. in press). 6 This, rather than exchange or transhumant pastoralism (Wengrow 1998 Wengrow, D. 1998. ‘The changing face of clay’: continuity and change in the transition from village to urban life in the Near East. Antiquity, 72: 783–795. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), was in my opinion the main explanation for the Halaf ‘expansion’, also according with the extensive, gradual and capillary occupation by this culture of the Eastern Anatolian regions. 7 The exchange of valuables over long distances was certainly also intensified during the urbanization process in Mesopotamia and the exploitation of metals had undergone a clear intensification, starting from the end of the Ubaid period (see Değirmentepe – Esin 1989 Esin, U. 1989. “An early trading center in Eastern Anatolia”. In Anatolia and the Ancient Near East, Edited by: Emre, K., Hrouda, B., Mellink, M. and Özgüç, N. 135–138. Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu. [Google Scholar]) and more evidently in the Uruk period. The economic sectors that were subjected to an increasingly complex and sophisticated administrative apparatus – and were therefore under a real centralized control – were still, however, in the Late Uruk period, those related to the production of staples and the management of the labour force, as documented by the archaeological evidence, where it exists, in more than one site both in the north (Jebel Aruda, Arslantepe) and in the south (Uruk-Warka). I am therefore convinced that the basic sources of wealth for the emerging elites were primary products, whereas trade and production of valuables (the so-called ‘wealth finance’) accompanied this process as a consequence of the increased power of the high-rank units and their new requests for prestige and craft articles (Algaze 2001 Algaze, G. 2001. “The prehistory of imperialism”. In Uruk Mesopotamia and its Neighbors: Cross-cultural Interactions in the Era of State Formation, Edited by: Rothman, M. S. 27–83. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press. School of American Research Advanced Seminar Series [Google Scholar]; Frangipane 2001 Frangipane, M. 2001. “Centralization processes in Greater Mesopotamia: Uruk ‘expansion’ as the climax of systemic interactions among areas of the Greater Mesopotamian region”. In Uruk Mesopotamia and its Neighbors: Cross-cultural Interactions in the Era of State Formation, Edited by: Rothman, M. S. 307–347. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press. School of American Research Advanced Seminar Series [Google Scholar]; Frangipane and Algaze 2001 Frangipane, M. and Algaze, G. 2001. On models and data in Mesopotamia. Current Anthropology, 42(3): 415–417. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]).