Single exposure measurements

The term “Uruk Expansion” refers to the expansion of material culture items derived from southern Mesopotamia (then in the Uruk Period) into western Iran and

Northern Mesopotamia during the fourth millennium B.C.; particularly, a repertoire of ceramics and cylinder seals, which is frequently taken to indicate the spread of either people, or an economic network of Southern Mesopotamian origin (Algaze 1993;

Algaze 2005; Algaze 2008). The distribution of this material has been a subject of research since the 1970s (Johnson 1973; Adams and Nissen 1972; Wright 1969). In 1989, Schwartz (1989, 283) summed up the picture to date by arguing that there were four types of sites in Northern Mesopotamia (and both the Central Zagros and Susiana Plains regions could be included in this description): ‘(1) “colonies” with complete southern assemblages, (2) sites with a substantial portion of southern material culture, but also with local material culture, (3) sites with primarily local, but some southern material culture, and (4) sites with only local material culture’. That same year, however, an important paradigm shift occurred in research of this expansion of southern Uruk material culture.

1.4.1 The Uruk Expansion and World Systems Theory

In 1989, Algaze (1989a, 1989b) described the Uruk Expansion in terms of World Systems Theory, a complex socio-economic theory developed by Immanuel

Wallerstein (1974) fifteen years earlier. The aim of Wallerstein in creating this theory was to describe and understand the late 20^th century world economic system by tracing its development over the course of four chronologically-ordered volumes starting with 16^th century Europe in the first volume titled, Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century. In this work, Wallerstein differentiated between a world system and a world economy. Generally, a world economy is a term that describes a spatial economic (rather than political) unit that is larger than any political unit (nation state, city state, etc.), consisting of a core and the core’s peripheral regions (Wallerstein 1974, 15–21, 349). While Wallerstein

8 listed examples of past world economies that ‘transformed into empires’ (China, Persia, and Rome), he argued that the first true world system did not begin until the 20^th century A.D. (Wallerstein 1974, 16–17). The modern world system is a socio-economic system (Wallerstein says it is a social system), rather than a strictly economic one (Wallerstein 1974, 351). It is truly global and reinforced through consolidated class systems and what Wallerstein calls ‘status groups’¹ that extend beyond political boundaries and are reinforced by the economic conditions, resulting in a more stable system that does not either collapse or transform into a political empire (Wallerstein 1974, 351–57).

Algaze (1989, 1993, 2008) argued that the first world system occurred much earlier, writing in his original article on the subject that:

‘The expansion of Uruk societies bears some resemblance to the colonial expansion of European societies into less developed areas of the Third World.

The Uruk phenomenon may be characterized as an early instance of an

“informal empire” or “world system” based on asymmetrical exchange and a hierarchically organized international division of labor that differs from modern examples only by degree’ (1989, 571).

This resemblance of the Uruk world system to later time periods requires a very simplified version of world system theory that is reduced to the unequal or

asymmetrical trade between a core and its relatively underdeveloped periphery for necessary items, including those needed to maintain the existing socio-political structure of the core and the legitimacy of elite residing in that core (Algaze 1993, 7–

9; Algaze 2005, 7–9)². Herein lies a central contrast between Algaze and Wallerstein:

their interpretation of the words “need” and “necessity” that for Wallerstein (1974) is

1 For example, international bankers, but also farmers and many others that identify and unite with each other independent of political boundaries (Wallerstein 1974, 352-53).

2 In fact, Algaze (1993, 7; 2005, 7) criticizes Wallerstein, writing: ‘Perhaps the most important [crucial point] is that Wallerstein does not recognize that the processes of asymmetrical exchange and cross-cultural interdependence that he documents for areas of the Third World transformed by modern European imperialism apply also to earlier periods and non-Western peoples (Chase-Dunn and Hall 1991; Kohl 1979; Schneider 1977).’ Algaze then argues that ‘Wallerstein (1974, 20-21) establishes a dichotomy between what to him is largely immaterial ancient exchange based principally in

“preciosities” and what he considers to have been profoundly destabilizing modern trade founded on bulk staples, bullion, and other essentials’ (1993, 7-8, 2005, 7-8).

9 better described as what is required to provide food, water, and shelter for the

masses. When the exchange of goods is cut off, everyone suffers, not just the elite.

This central tenet of World Systems Theory is made extremely clear in an explanation of why Poland is considered to be a part of the European world-economy (note: not world system) in the 16^th century A.D. as a periphery, but Russia is considered its own world-economy (including both core and periphery), despite the presence of trade between Russia and Europe.

Poland is a periphery of the European world-economy due to the nature of its trade with western Europe and its dependency, as a nation, on that trade:

‘The rise of a Polish wheat-exporting economy meant, as we have seen, the rise of large domains with coerced cash-crop labor. It meant also the rise of the political strength of the nobility, whose economic interest in removing obstacles to trade matched that of western European merchants. Their combined efforts maintained Poland as an open economy. How dependent the prosperity of the Polish nobility was on this open trade was clearly

illustrated by the economic difficulties provoked by the blockade of the Vistula by Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden between 1626-1629, who sought thereby to

“cut the nerve” of Poland. The fact that “cereal export via the Baltic ports had rapidly taken on [in Poland] proportions such that it dominated the entire economic structure of the country is used by Jerzy Topolski then to explain the devastating effects of seventeenth-century regression in Poland, effects that varied in different parts of Poland according to the degree to which to the local economy was export-oriented.

It may be objected that the value of the wheat involved is rather small as a proportion of the total product of the European world-economy, but Boris Porchnev replies that “it is not the quantities of merchandise exported (not too great in point of fact) which ought to be the object of the attention of scholars, but rather the rate of profit which was shared between the merchant middlemen and the landed proprietors exploiting the labor of the serfs.” And Stanislaw Hoszowski points out that in the overall inflation of the sixteenth century, not only did Polish prices start to rise even before those of western of

10 central Europe, before the impact of American treasure on prices, but also, within Poland, it was the “landed proprietors who obtain(ed) the maximum benefit of [the rise in prices] while peasants and the townsmen only los(t) by it.” The counter part of this economic squeeze of the peasants was the frequency of peasant revolts’ (Wallerstein 1974, 304–5).

Meanwhile, Russia is in a very different position – despite also being a trading partner of western Europe at the time:

But what about Russian trade with the West? Did it not parallel Polish trade?

…It is true, on first glance, that what was happening in the sixteenth century was that “in her trade with the West, Russia exchanged raw materials and semi-finished goods for manufactured wares.” Russia exported various raw materials used for naval stores (flax, hemp, grease, wax) plus furs and

imported luxury articles and metal goods (including munitions). But in neither direction does it seem the trade was critical. For western Europe, not until the seventeenth century could it be said that Russia was important as a “reservoir of grain and forest products.” T.S. Willan sees Russia’s chief value for England, the western country with which Russia traded most in the sixteenth century,

“as a source of essential materials for the navy.” But he adds: “It is a little difficult to say whether the trade was equally valuable for the Russians. Their equivalent for the naval stores exported to England was perhaps the arms and munitions which the company was alleged to be sending to Russia, especially in the ‘fifties’ and the ‘sixties.’” …A.Attman suggests that the crucial import was not the metal goods but rather silver in form of bullion and of art objects.

He offers as verification of this hypothesis the extraordinary accumulation of silver in the churches, monasteries and palaces as well as important finds of metal bars. If one remembers that a major export was that of furs, “then the livery of dignity and wealth,” one of the so-called “rich trades,” we can consider the major portion of Russian-Western trade in the sixteenth century to be an exchange of preciosities, a method of consuming surplus rather than producing it, hence dispensable at moments of contraction, and consequently not central to the functioning of the economic system. This is not to say it was

11 unimportant. Middlemen profited by it. No doubt the state obtained some customs revenue from it. No doubt also it reinforced the system of social prestige accumulation. The point however is that if a blockade had occurred equivalent to that of Gustavus Adolphus of the Vistula in 1626, the impact on Russia’s internal economy would have been far less than on Poland’s’

(Wallerstein 1974, 306–7, bolded emphasis added).

Compare this to Algaze (1993, 7-8, 2005, 7-8):

‘Concerning trade, Wallerstein (1974:20-21) establishes a dichotomy between what to him is largely immaterial ancient exchange based in ‘precocities’ and what he considers to have been profoundly destabilizing modern trade founded on bulk staples, bullion, and other essentials. However, this

dichotomy is both false and irrelevant. It is false because, initially at least, the economic impetus for the early European voyages of discovery was not provided by demand for staples, but by the appetite of increasingly affluent European elites for exotic commodities, such as spices, sugar, and precious metals (Scammell 1989: 53). And while some of these commodities (e.g., sugar) were eventually transformed into staples (Mintz 1985), that

transformation was itself a consequence of the expansion. Moreover, early exchange was by no means limited to what Wallerstein would categorize as precocities. In the case of ancient Mesopotamian civilization, for instance, evidence derived from archaeological and textual sources indicates that imports historically consisted not only of “luxuries” for elite consumption, but also of commodities such as copper and wood that must by all accounts be considered essential to the maintenance of complex social organizations in the resource-impoverished alluvial environment of southern Iraq…’

Algaze (1993, 8, 2005, 8) complained that ‘Wallerstein’s definitions are unnecessarily restrictive.’ Nonetheless, as already seen with the contrast between Poland and Russia, in World Systems Theory, the presence or absence of trade in items, precious or bulk, is not what qualifies a nation’s inclusion within a world economy, it is the

12 nature of that trade and how central it is to the internal economy of the nation in question (Poland vs. Russia).

Regardless of its adherence to the original World Systems Theory, this entirely new paradigm through which to understand the Uruk Expansion, has shaped and influenced research of the Uruk Period ever since.

Almost immediately, the idea of an Uruk World System was critiqued, most notably by Stein (1990a) who argued alongside Wattenmaker in the very next issue of Current Anthropology that:

‘Clearly, interregional exchange with Syria, Anatolia, and Iran has played an important role in Mesopotamian history, but it cannot be seen as more significant than endogenous factors in the maintenance and collapse of Mesopotamian complex societies…One can argue that […] internal dynamics structured the organization of long-distance trade rather than vice versa’

(Stein and Wattenmaker 1990a, 66).

Nonetheless, Algaze expanded his theory soon after with the now classic book The Uruk World System, which has since been updated in a second edition (Algaze 1993;

Algaze 2005). After its publication, others also engaged with and critiqued Algaze’s world system paradigm.

Joan Oates (1993) agreed that locations like Habuba Kabira, which have southern assemblages and are located at strategic route locations, can be viewed as

established trading settlements, but ‘in [other] situations where local polities already control developed networks’ she supported the trade diaspora model developed by Curtin (1984) rather than Algaze’s (1989, 1993) world system. She also acknowledged the similarities in ceramic styles across northern Mesopotamia from Kurban Höyük to Nineveh as evidence for ‘widespread northern social and economic interactions’ (J.

Oates 1993, 415). Four years later, Oates and Oates (1997) together argued, largely based on their excavations at Tell Brak, for the independent development of cities and complexity in northern Mesopotamia that was not dependent on contact with the south.

13 Meanwhile, Henrickson (1994) examined patterns in the Central Zagros and, similarly, found a correlation between sites with southern assemblages and strategic route locations. Like Oates, Henrickson (1994) found a different explanation for the presence of Southern Mesopotamian assemblages other than colonies. She argued the number of southern Uruk people present relative to the local population would have entailed a more equal economic arrangement, citing Algaze’s (1989, 591) own description of the situation at Godin Tepe where he envisioned ‘a group of

commercial specialists settled as aliens with their hosts’ approval in a foreign community’ and further described how ‘these lowland strangers would have had to reach a clear “understanding” quickly with the local village leadership’ (Henrickson 1994, 95). The southern Mesopotamians did not colonize the area and take control of the local copper mines, they simply positioned themselves strategically along the routes where they could obtain such resources (Henrickson 1994, 95–98).

One thing that has not changed since Algaze’s influential (1989) publication, however, is the accuracy of Schwartz’s (1989) four types of site in the area of expansion outside the southern Mesopotamian alluvium. This is despite another important development in the mid-1990s, which distinguished the local, Northern Mesopotamian ceramic chronology and defined what is now commonly known as the Sante Fe Chronology consisting of the Late Chalcolithic periods (LC 1 to 5)(Rothman 2001b). Prior to this chronology, it was impossible for researchers conducting surveys to distinguish the local ceramics dated to before the Uruk Expansion from the local ceramics of the later fourth millennium B.C.

1.4.2 The Uruk Expansion after the Sante Fe Chronology

Since the defining of this new chronology, evidence has gradually shifted to support a more diverse picture of how the Uruk Expansion was manifest in different regions beyond the southern alluvium (Stein 1999a; Stein 1999b; Frangipane 1997; Rothman 2001b).

Stein, for example, followed up his initial critique of Algaze’s application of World Systems Theory with multiple publications arguing that the expansion of Southern Mesopotamian (Uruk) material culture represents the presence of trade diasporas as exemplified by compelling evidence from Hacinebi Tepe in Anatolia (Stein et al. 1996;

14 Stein 1999a; see also Pearce 1999). Meanwhile, Frangipane (1997), working at

Arslantepe further north in Anatolia, has argued that the presence of southern material culture at the site represents emulation by local elites of the southern Mesopotamians whom they encountered as trade partners.

Stein’s direct critique of the application of World Systems Theory to the Uruk Period of Mesopotamia culminated in the publication of the book Rethinking World Systems (Stein 1999b). Arguing for a balance between internal development and external influence, Stein critiqued the World Systems paradigm that evolved, writing that:

‘Core-controlled exchange networks of the world-system variety are just one in a range of possible economic and political relations between two different regions. The extent to which a core area can influence the development of other polities is mediated by such factors as transportation economics, technological differences, the organization of production, and the balance of military power between the core and the periphery’ (Stein 1999b, 4).

Wallerstein (1974) would almost certainly agree, after all he does not deny the existence of other core-periphery type models prior to the world system, and even outlines pre-world system models through time starting with the 16^th century A.D.

and continuing on through later centuries in additional volumes (Wallerstein 1980;

Wallerstein 1988; Wallerstein 2011).

As alternatives to the world system paradigm, Stein (1999b) suggested, like Oates (1993) before, trade diasporas and, additionally, parity models. The distance-parity model is based on the simple principle that ‘power decays with distance’ (Stein 1999b, 61). The exact distance and rate at which power decays will be dependent on many factors, but it cannot be assumed that a core’s influence on its surrounding periphery is sufficient to ensure that the peripheral region develops a dependence (like Poland) on the core. The degree of influence the core has on the periphery will be dependent on the relative development of both regions and the distance between them (Stein 1999b, 62). However, the sociocultural complexity of the core is

described as more developed than that of the periphery (Stein 1999b, 62). The specific model by Stein (1999b, 62) is described as follows:

15

‘Under conditions of technological and demographic parity between two regions at different levels of sociocultural complexity, the power of the more developed (“core”) region to control its “periphery” will decay with distance, leading to the following:

1. A decline in core control over interregional exchange, causing a shift from asymmetric to increasingly symmetric conditions of exchange between the two areas.

2. A progressive reduction in the importance of long-distance exchange relative to local exchange and subsistence production in the political economy of the periphery.

3. A progressive reduction in the exchange of bulk goods relative to the proportion of prestige goods due to the latter’s high ratio of value to bulk/weight.

4. A progressive reduction in economic pressures/incentives toward the specialized production of surplus craft or subsistence goods for export.

5. A progressive restriction of core influence to peripheral elites, rather than the peripheral population as a whole.

6. Increasing restriction of the ability of the core to use its military, economic, and political influence in the periphery….

7. A progressive decline in the degree to which interregional interaction affects the organization and development of political systems in the periphery’ (Stein 1999b, 62).

Since the Sante Fe chronology and many intervening publications, Algaze has revised his initial arguments about the nature of the Uruk Expansion, particularly in reaction to the new evidence from Northern Mesopotamia at sites like Hacinebi Tepe and Arslantepe (rather than the southern alluvium or the Zagros and plains to the east of the alluvium). In the second edition of The Uruk World System, Algaze (2005) added a new chapter for the specific purpose of addressing areas where his ‘earlier

interpretations need to be expanded, modified, or reconsidered altogether’ (Algaze

16 2005, ix). Mainly, considering the evidence since the first edition, Algaze

acknowledged that ‘until the onset of the fourth millennium B.C. southern

Mesopotamia was but one of several competing regions across the ancient Near East where parallel strides toward complexity were taking place’ (Algaze 2005, ix).

Nonetheless, Algaze (2005) maintained his view that Southern Mesopotamia is superior in development. In the very next sentence after he acknowledged the

complexity present in other regions, he wrote: ‘This makes the emergence of multiple competing city-states across southern Mesopotamia in the fourth millennium all the more noteworthy, as this was the first time that the southern polities, both singly and in the aggregate, surpassed contemporary societies elsewhere in southwest Asia in terms of their scale and degree of internal differentiation, both social and economic’

(Algaze 2005, ix). Therefore, the world system theoretical paradigm is kept with the south as the core and surrounding regions as the periphery.

(Algaze 2005, ix). Therefore, the world system theoretical paradigm is kept with the south as the core and surrounding regions as the periphery.