City and Empire Growth/Decline Sequences in
Ancient Mesopotamian and Egyptian World-Systems
Christopher Chase-DunnDepartment of Sociology
University of California, Riversidechriscd@mail.ucr.edu
and
Thomas D. HallDepartment of Sociology

DePauw University

Greenncastle, Indiana

thall@depauw.edu

Presented at the International Studies Association meeting, Chicago, Feb. 24, 2001 PANEL:Analyzing Early International Systems: Southwest Asia and Egypt Sponsors International Political Economy (9234 words) Thanks to Guillermo Algaze, Claudio Cioffi, Jerry Cooper and Peter Peregrine for comments on an earlier version.

INTRODUCTION:

This paper extends work we began at last year's ISA meeting, combining elements of both our separate papers (Chase-Dunn 2000; Hall 2000), and builds on work of David Wilkinson (2000), William R. Thompson (2000. n.d.), and Guillermo Algaze (1993, 2000a, 2000b).We are still exploring the inter-relations of climate change, nomad relations, state/empire size, populations, and cycles of centralization/decentralization in the dynamics of Southwest Asian and Egyptian systems.

The theoretical underpinnings of our investigation are presented in Chase-Dunn and Hall (1997, 2000, 2001).In a nutshell our argument is that there have been systemic relations among different peoples [or societies] since at least the first human permanent settlements by the Natufians some twelve thousand years ago.We further argue that these inter-relations are systemic, though to be sure the logic of the system changes over time, and that it is necessary to understand these systemic relations in order to understand what happens in any one part of the system.We further argue that those components of the system that form intermediate roles and positions, semiperipheral societies or peoples, often play a crucial role in system change.In the times we are examining, approximately the Bronze Age, the formation, differentiation, and development of nomadic peoples in tandem with sedentary states and empires play a crucial role.Nomads are often the catalysts of system change who mediate the often complex and indirect effects of such factors as climate (e.g., mean temperatures, mean rainfall, mean river levels, etc.).

Karl Butzer (1997) observed, with respect to Levantine processes, that the existence of cycles is prima facie evidence of some sort of system.We have noted that world-systems or core-periphery systems are marked by a number of such cycles.Prime among them is pulsation, the tendency to expand and contract, or at least expand more, and then less, rapidly through time.Furthermore, once states appear there are cycles of rise and fall of states.Furthermore, even among non-state, yet hierarchical societies, typically labeled chiefdoms, the are also cycles of rise and fall or what might be described as analogs of Wilkinson's and Thompson's cycles of centralization/decentralization (see Hall 2001 for a summary).In Rise and Demise (1997) we showed that there was such coordination of cycles across Afroeurasia for several millennia.We were surprised, however, to find that the South Asia, or Indic, world-system did not follow these cycles (Chase-Dunn and Hall 1998; Chase-Dunn, Manning, and Hall 2000).While we offered various speculations as to why this would be so, this lack of coordination remains a bit of a puzzle.Our first suspicion -- as always when working with ancient data -- is that the data may be faulty.However, only by using whatever data are available, their faults notwithstanding, can we begin to explore these issues, and point to critical areas where more refined data needs to be collected.

Following the work of David Wilkinson on Central Civilization, we note that Mesopotamia and Egypt eventually became part of one larger system.As this merger occurred -- for sure this is not a one shot deal, but a cyclical process itself -- we would expect various cycles to come into association, what physical scientists call entraining.This does not necessarily mean that they danced to precisely the same rhythm.They may have moved countrapuntally or in syncopation.Still, such coincidence should be apparent in correlations of major processes:territorial size of polity, size of population, population density, political centralization/decentralization, etc.

One area worthy of further examination is the effects of climate, especially of such things as mean temperature, mean rainfall, and mean levels of rivers on system characteristics.However, as Thompson has shown (n.d.) [see his Figure 1] climate change may affect various system variables in complex, and at times contradictory, ways.Thus, among other things, evidence that does not show correlations of cycles may not mean there is no system.Rather, it could be an infelicitous situation in which different effects mask each other.In principle, at least, this could be demonstrated by showing the lesser linkages that mask each other. That said, we now turn to a brief discussion of the processes we seek to study.

Pulsation, Rise and Fall and Semiperipheral Development in the Southwestern Asian System

In this paper we survey Southwestern Asia and the Mediterranean Levant. The time period is from the emergence of mesolithic sedentism (about 10,000 BCE) to the point at which the growing Southwestern Asian political/military network (PMN) became linked with the Egyptian PMN by the Hyksos conquest of Egypt (about 1500 BCE).We will consider the hypothesis of semiperipheral transformative action in the context of a discussion of the processes of polity-formation, technological change, the rise and fall of larger polities, the pulsation of interaction networks and the transformation of the very logic of social integration from kin-based normative regulation to state-based institutionalized coercion.The hypothesis of semiperipheral development asserts that semiperipheral regions in core-periphery hierarchies are fertile sites for innovation and the implementation of new institutions that sometimes allow societies in these regions to be upwardly mobile and/or to transform the scale (and sometimes the qualitative nature) of institutional structures.This is not simply the notion that core traits diffuse toward the periphery. It is rather the idea that semiperipheral innovation enables upward mobility and occasionally transforms whole systems. This notion is further explicated in Chase-Dunn and Hall (1997: Chapter 5).

This period of 8500 years in Western Asia witnessed the emergence sedentary forages, the neolithic farming revolution, the emergence of the first hierarchical societies, the first multi-tier settlement systems, and eventually the first cities and states. The Southwest Asian world-system developed the first relatively stable core-periphery hierarchy in which imperial core states exploited and dominated peripheral peoples.This region also witnessed the first instance on Earth of a core-wide empire resulting from the conquest of a set of older core states – the Akkadian Empire. As will be seen, our earlier characterization of this as an instance of a semiperipheral marcher state erecting a pristine empire (Chase-Dunn and Hall 1997: 84-89) needs to be modified in some important respects

Semiperipheral development may be seen in the emanation of neolithic village communities of farmers in the context of adjacent mesolithic villages.As well, the emergence of the first archaic states occurred in Lower Mesopotamia, a region that may have been semiperipheral to an adjacent interchiefdom system in the Susiana Plain.Thus late prehistoric and ancient Southwestern Asia and the Levant is a key region for testing hypotheses about the processes of the evolution of world-systems. The systematic comparison of this region with other regions, in which similar but interestingly different processes occurred, is vital for understanding the conditions and processes that led to these kinds of transformational development.

Pulsation is the expansion and contraction of interaction networks. Rise and fall refers to the increase and then decrease in size of the largest polity in a region. Semiperipheral development denotes the tendency for transformative action and upward mobility to originate in regions that are semiperipheral to core regions (Chase-Dunn and Hall 1997:274).

What follows is an analytic narrative that uses these ideas to pose hypotheses about the development of social complexity and hierarchy in prehistoric and ancient Southwestern Asia and the Levant. The rapid and dramatic emergence of states, cities and writing in the West Asian system in the fourth millennium was built upon a set of prior developments that spread from the adjacent Levant over the previous five thousand years. The metaphor of ecological succession is relevant for understand the evolution of world-systems. Small plants breaking down rocks create soil. This produces what is necessary for larger plants and trees to grow. The analogue of soil is socially produced surplus and the institutional structures that allow human societies to become larger and more hierarchical. But as with ecological succession, this is not a smooth upward accession from small to large. Regressions and collapses, and the areas in which the first break-throughs occurred are most usually not the same locations in which later, larger-scale developments emerged punctuate it. Nevertheless, it is the process of uneven development and the diffusion of innovations, as well as reactions to them, within a macroregion that creates the economic, transportation and communication bases for yet even larger, more complex and more hierarchical human systems to emerge. The soil first formed in the prehistoric Levant and ancient Southwestern Asia. 

The Hilly Flanks

The Mesolithic invention of relatively permanent village life based on differentiated gathering of vegetable resources, as well as fishing and hunting of small game, occurred in a context in which the villagers continued to cooperate and compete with more nomadic foragers.The Natufian culture of the Levant is the earliest known example of Mesolithic sedentism based on diversified foraging – this around 9000 BCE (Bar-Yosef and Belfer-Cohen 1991; Moore 1982). [1] Sedentary foragers probably invented territoriality as well as a more active intervention in the productive cycles of nature. In other regions they are know to have used fire to increase the growth of cereals and foraging areas that would attract huntable animals. These activities have been termed "protoagriculture" (Bean and Lawton 1976). A similar Mesolithic culture, dated to around 8650 BCE, has been found at Shanidar Cave and village sites in the Zagros Mountains on a tributary of the Tigris (Solecki and Solecki 1982). 

In the small valleys of the rain-watered hills adjacent to the prime gathering regions of the Natufian peoples naturally occurring stands of grain were less productive.It is plausible that when nomads in these neighboring regions tried to emulate the sedentary life-style of the mesolithic villagers, they found those natural stands were quickly eaten up, and so they experimented with planting the seeds that they had gathered. The proto-horticulture of the diversified foragers may have been transformed into true horticulture by the adjacent neighbors of the original sedentary foragers (Hayden 1981). The study of the spread of diversified foraging and planting can reveal much about the processes of uneven development and enable us to test the hypothesis of semiperipheral development as it may have operated among pre-chiefdom societies. 

The techniques of gardening spread both east and west, raising the number of people that could be supported by a given area of land. Eventually community sizes grew in rain-watered regions and population growth led to migration of farmers away from the original heartland of gardening.Horticultural techniques also diffused from group to group. This was the Neolithic “revolution.” 

There is indication from the Chesapeake region of indigenous North America that migration of planters or in situ adoption of planting does not always immediately lead to greater complexity and hierarchy (Chase-Dunn and Hall 1999). It appears that the arrival of corn planting in the Chesapeake allowed the “mesolithic” diversified foragers living in rather large villages to redisperse into widely spread farmlets and to reduce the intensity of their trading and ritual symbolization of group identity and social hierarchy. So technological change can, under some conditions, lead to deconcentration and less social hierarchy.This possibility needs to be kept in mind as we examine the spread of gardening across Southwestern Asia.

As villages eventually grew larger, trade networks did as well and craft specialists began producing for export and importing raw materials.Trade networks probably expanded and contracted along different spatial dimensions, as was the case in other small-scale world-systems (Chase-Dunn and Mann 1998).It is known that obsidian (volcanic glass) was an important lithic material for the production of cutting tools and weapons in regions adjacent to the Levant and Southwestern Asia (Torrence 1986). Obsidian tools and debitage (waste materials that are by-products of tool making) can be chemically fingerprinted so that the original quarries can be identified. And obsidian hydration rinds can be used as an indicator of the period in which the tool was formed. These techniques can be used to indicate the patterns of obsidian trade and procurement networks and how they changed over time.Similar methods are also available for other lithic materials. These techniques have not been fully exploited for studying the emergence and pulsation of trading networks in the prehistoric Levant and Southwestern Asia.

Some regions began displaying mortuary practices that indicated the emergence of social stratification. In Northern Mesopotamia this kind of society is evident in the Hassuna/Samarra archaeological tradition from 6000 BCE to 5500 BCE.Precious minerals were traded over larger and larger regions, and regionally defined pottery styles developed. The Halafian archaeological tradition in Northern Mesopotamia (5500 BCE-5000 BCE) had even larger villages and some have argued that these were chiefdoms, yet they lacked clearly defined public buildings and definitive evidence of stratification.

On the Flood Plain

According to Nissen (1988: Chapter 3) the first three-tiered settlement system in Southwest Asia emerged on the Susiana Plain in the Ubaid period (5500-4000 BCE).This indicates the presence of complex chiefdoms, and Wright (1986) points to the importance of the existence of complex chiefdoms in a region as the necessary organizational prerequisite for the emergence of pristine states.In other words, first states do not emerge directly from egalitarian societies. Evidence from Uqair, Eridu and Ouelli shows that there were also Ubaid sites on the Lower Mesopotamian flood plain that were as large as the sites on the Susiana Plain at this time. The Early Ubaid phase at Tell Ouelli shows remarkably complex architecture as early or early as anything in Susiana. Thus there was an interregional interaction system based on a mix of rain-watered and irrigated agriculture.

In the next period(Uruk or Late Chalcolithic from 4000-3100 BCE) the first true city(Uruk or Warka) grew up on the floodplain of lower Mesopotamia, and other cities of similar large size soon emerged in this region.Surrounding these unprecedented large cities were smaller towns and villages that formed the first four-tiered settlement systems (Adams 1981). This was the original birth of “civilization” understood as the combination of irrigated agriculture, writing, cities and states.[1] States also emerged somewhat later in the Uruk period on the Susiana Plain (Wright 1998 and these also developed four-tiered settlement systems (Flannery 1998:17). This was an instance of uneven development-- the transition from an inter-regional interchiefdom system to an inter-city-state system that emerged first in Mesopotamia and then spread to the adjacent Susiana plain. 

A System of States

The main architectural feature of these new cities was the temple and this structure has long been considered the primary institution of a theocratically organized political economy.Later evidence about Sumerian civilization shows that each city was represented by a god in the Sumerian pantheon and the priests and populace were defined as the slaves of god – this justifying the accumulation of surplus product (Postgate 1992).Flannery (1998) claims that even the earliest archaic states often also have palaces – residential buildings for the war-leader king.But in Mesopotamia most scholars think that palaces were a later development that emerged with competitive warfare among the city-states.Congruent with this is the evidence that shows an implosion of population from surrounding towns and villages to live within the protected confines of walled cities (Adams 1981). Thus was the early“peer polity” or “early state module” (Renfrew 1986) of co-evolving archaic states transformed into an intercity-state system of warring and allying states.

This transition from theocracy to the primacy of a warrior king was an important development in the emergence of state-based modes of accumulation.The Sumerian cities erected their states –specialized institutions of regional control – over the tops of kin-based normative institutions (Zagarell 1986). Assemblies of lineage heads long continued to play an important role in the politics of Mesopotamia. But the structures of institutional coercion became ever more important for maintaining power and accumulating wealth. One interesting apparent difference between the emergences of archaic states in Mesopotamia from other instances of pristine state formation is the apparent absence of ritual human sacrifice.A powerful way to dramatize the power of a king is to bury a lot of other people with him when he dies. Except for the EDIII period in the royal cemetery at Ur, there is little evidence of human sacrifice in Mesopotamia.The temple economy required contributions of goods and labor time, including animal sacrifices that were consumed in religious feasts.But the sacrifice of humans in Mesopotamia was, as with modern states, mainly confined to killing in battle. 

The story of the Uruk expansion is well known, though its exact nature remains controversial (Algaze 1993, 2000; Stein 1999.The emerging cities of Mesopotamia founded colonies and colonial enclaves within existing towns across a vast region in order to gain access to desired goods and to control trade routes (Algaze 1993; 2000).There is some disagreement as to the degree of direct control that these core city-states[1] were able to exercise over distant peripheral regions. 

Gil Stein’s (1999) confrontation of world-systems ideas with evidence was undoubtedly inspired by the work of Phil Kohl (1987a, 1992). What Stein has done is to go beyond Kohl to formulate testable alternative models of core/periphery relationships and to evaluate these with data that his research team in Turkey has been able to generate. His “distance-parity” model is indeed a major conceptual improvement over earlier work. And Stein’s careful research at Hacinebe has gone far to enlighten us about the true nature of Uruk trading stations in that part of the world. 

Despite Stein’s explicit denunciation of the comparative world-systems approach his work confirms the idea that core/periphery hierarchies in early state-based world-systems were limited in spatial scale and relatively unstable. Early states were not able to extract resources from distant peripheries because they were unable to project military power very far and they did not have elaborated capitalistic mechanisms for facilitating unequal exchange. 

Marcus (1998) points out that the interstate system of Mesopotamia exhibited a cycle of “rise and fall” in which the largest polities increase and then decrease in size, and that this phenomenon is also known in other cases of ancient state systems in the Andes and Mesoamerica.What Marcus does not notice is that all hierarchical world-systems exhibit a structurally similar cycle -- from the “cycling” of chiefdoms (Anderson 1994) to the rise and fall of great empires, to the rise and fall of hegemonic core states in the modern world-system.

Figure 1 : Territorial sizes of Mesopotamian States and Empires (Source: Taagepera 1978a;1978b)

Figure 1 graphs the territorial sizes of the largest states and empires in Mesopotamia from 3000 BCE to 1000 BCE as estimated by Taagepera (1978a, 1978b). The rise and fall phenomenon can clearly be seen. Also the great size of Akkadian empire (6.5 square megametres) was not equaled again until 800 BCE by the Neo-Assyrians, who then went on to create a state that ruled 14 square megametres in 650 BCE. This was a new level of political integration of territory more than twice the size of the Akkadian empire. We also have data on the sizes of many of the largest cities in Mesopotamia.The Pearson’s r correlation coefficient for the relationship between city and empire sizes based on 13 time points from 2800 to 650 BCE is .59. This indicates that, as would be expected, large empires build large cities and the processes that cause growth and decline phases affect both urbanization and empire formation.

David Wilkinson (2000) has coded the power configuration sequence of the ancient Southwest Asian state system from Early Dynastic II through the Kassite-Hurrain period. Wilkinson conceptualizes state systems in terms of a sequence of power configurations and we have recoded these in terms of degrees of centralization of power:

6: universal state (one superpower, no great powers, no more than two local

powers)

5 : hegemony (either one superpower, no great powers, three or more

local powers; or no superpowers, one great power, no more than one local

power)

4:unipolar (all other configurations with one superpower)

3:bipolar (two great powers)

2 : tripolar (three great powers)

1:multipolar (more than three great powers)

0 : nonpolar (no great powers)

It is reasonable to suppose that power configurations should be positively correlated over time with the territorial size of the largest empire. Figure 2 confirms this correlation for ancient Southwest Asian system.[1]

Figure 2: Power Configurations and the Territorial Size of the Largest Empire

The Jemdet Nasr and Early Dynastic periods saw the further growth of cities in Mesopotamia and seven centuries of an intercity-state system with the rise and fall of hegemonic core states but no successful formation of a core-wide empire.This sequence is quite different from what happened in Egypt, where the emergence of cities and large-scale agriculture led to much larger territorial states, and very soon to a core-wide empire (see Figure 4 below).[1] The explanations for these differences have long been alleged to be ecological, having to do with the differences in the communications and transportation possibilities in the two regions. Whereas the Nile is a single and quite navigable river, the Tigris and the Euphrates are much less navigable, and so communications and trade routes are more complex in Mesopotamia. In Egypt a state can easily get effective control of the entire agricultural heartland by controlling movement on the Nile, while in Mesopotamia central control of flows of information and goods is much more difficult to gain (Mann 1986).Thus the process of empire building took much longer in Southwest Asia than it did in Egypt (See Figure 4 below).

This ecological explanation is now often disparaged by those who compare Mesopotamia and Egypt (e.g. Baines and Yoffee 1998) in favor of cultural differences that may have led to the differences in political organization. But it is equally plausible that the cultural differences were themselves consequences of ecological and political structures. 

Sargon

Though there were several efforts by powerful states to conquer the whole core region of Mesopotamia, this goal was not reached until the emergence of the Akkadian Empire in 2350 BCE.Chase-Dunn and Hall (1997: 84-89) presented the case for this first core-wide empire as an instance of a semiperipheral marcher state conquest.This was based on the notion that the Akkadian-speaking conquerors were recently settled nomadic pastoralists in Northern Mesopotamia who used elements of political organization and military technology stemming from there formerly peripheral origins to conquer the old core city-states and erect a larger empire.This portrayal is challenged by evidence that the Akkadian language had long been present in both Northern and Southern Mesopotamia and that Agade, the capital of the Akkadian Empire was probably established after the Sargonic conquest rather than being a city populated by recently settled ex-nomads (Postgate 1992:36).

By the time of the Sargonic conquest the characterization of Northern Mesopotamia as semiperipheral is problematic. The northern part of the alluvium was more heavily urbanized than the south (Adams 1981) in the Early Uruk period, but the situation reversed toward the end of the Uruk period with the exponential growth of Warka. The north may have had a greater concentration of Akkadian speakers (Postgate 1992:38), but some of the northern cities, (e.g. Kish) had long been among the contenders for hegemony in the intercity-state system of the Early Dynastic period. These particulars favor an interpretation of the Akkadian conquest that is more based on class and ethnic cleavages in Mesopotamia than on the core/periphery dimension (Yoffee 1991).

The Akkadian regime, called an "upstart dynasty" by Postgate (1992), made the Akkadian language the official language of record and, under Naram-sin (2291 BCE), imposed a standardized system of weights and measures across the Mesopotamian core.After the fall of the Akkadian dynasty there was a period of disorder in which the Gutians (nomadic hill people from the Zagros) infiltrated the Mesopotamian core region and contended for power. The north-south dimension of conflict continued to be a cultural and geopolitical fault-line.The Third Dynasty of Ur (2113 BCE) reasserted southern dominance and Sumerian culture. David Wilkinson (1991) notes a pattern that he calls "shuttling" in which centralized power shifted back and forth between two adjacent regions. This pattern of shuttling rise and fall, now increasingly composed of multi-city states, characterizes what happened in Southwestern Asia throughout the rest of the period until the Babylonian Empire and the end of the period I am studying in this paper. Subsequent Mesopotamian Empires until 1500 BCE were not larger than the Akkadian Empire had been (see Figure 1), and the location of the most powerful states shuttled back and forth between north and south.

Core and Periphery

The most serious incursions of peripheral tribes occurred during periods of political disorder in the core regions. There were probably both “push” and “pull” factors involved in this pattern of recurrent incursions. Disorder amongst the “civilized” states made them vulnerable and encouraged interlopers. And nomadic pastoralists and hill tribes probably had their own organizational dynamics (Hall 1991; 2000). We know from other areas that nomadic pastoralists have their own cycles of centralization and decentralization (Barfield 1989).And climate changes affected both the abilities of the agrarian states to produce food and the abilities of the nomads to raise herds.Thompson (2000: Figure 3) indicates that there is a fairly good correspondence over time between the size of the largest Mesopotamian state and the Tigris/Euphrates river levels.This is encouraging for the hypothesis that climate change is related to rise and fall, and it may be an important factor in peripheral incursions.

The Amorite tribes were nomadic pastoralists coming from the deserts of the northwest. In order to prevent their incursions the Ur III dynasty constructed a wall clear across the top of the Northern Mesopotamian core region (Postgate 1992:43).But there were also new invasions from the east by Elamites and it was a combination of Amorite and Elamite incursions that led to the fall of the Third Dynasty of Ur.There followed the Isin-Larsa period in which small independent states each had an Amorite ruling house, and the Old Babylonian period that followed was a system of rather larger multicity states. The Amorite kings of Babylon, including the famous Hammurapi, expanded their empire until Babylon was itself conquered in 1595 BCE by a new group of nomadic invaders, the Hittites, led by Murcilis.

Merchant Capitalism

During these developments trade networks continued to expand, albeit unevenly. Periods of peace and empire allow trade to become more intense and goods to travel farther.The commodification of goods and wealth had long been emerging within and between the states of Mesopotamia. Contracts of sale of lands and interest-bearing loans were know from the Early Dynastic period, and prices were clearly reflecting shortages in the Ur III period.In the Old Babylonian period we find a clear instance of a phenomenon that became more frequent and widespread in the later commercializing tributary empire systems -- the semiperipheral capitalist city-state (Chase-Dunn and Hall 1997:90-93).[1]This was the Old Assyrian merchant dynasty based in Assur on the upper Tigris, with its colonial enclaves of Assyrian merchants located in distant cities far up into Anatolia and beyond (Larsen 1987,1992). Assur was a merchant capitalist city-state with a far-flung set of colonies in the midst of an interstate system in which most states were still pursuing a strategy of territorial expansion.

The capitalist city-state phenomenon is clearly a different kind of semiperipheral development from that of the semiperipheral marcher state.These states pursued a policy of profit making rather than the acquisition of territory and the use of state power to tax and extract tribute.They emerged in the interstices between the territorial states in world-economies in which wealth could be had by buying cheap and selling dear (merchant capitalism). One of their consequences was the expansion of trade networks because their commercial activities provided incentives for distant producers and accumulators to use surpluses for trade and to produce surpluses beyond local needs for this purpose. Thus the capitalist city-states were agents of commodification and regional divisions of labor. 

The Old Assyrian merchants, unlike most capitalist city-states, were not maritime specialists (as were e.g. the Phoenicians). But they did occupy a key transportation site that enabled them to tap into profit streams created by the exchange of eastern tin and Mesopotamian textiles for silver. Bronze was being produced in Anatolia using copper from the north and tin imported from the east, probably from regions that are now part of Afghanistan.The demand for tin was great and the worshippers of Assur were able to profitably insert themselves into this trade by negotiating treaties with the other states in the region that allowed them access to markets at agreed upon taxation rates.They also organized and carried out the transportation of goods over long distances by means of donkey caravans, and they produced an effective structure of self-governance. This is an early instance of what Philip Curtin (1984) has called a “trade diaspora,” in which a single cultural group specializes in cross-cultural trade.[1]

Most of the evidence that we have about the Old Assyrian city-state and its colonies comes from the Kultepe tablets at Kanesh, an archive of business records and letters that show how the Old Assyrians organized and governed their business activities (Veenhof 1995).The records show that these were merchants trading on their own accounts for profit, not agents of states carrying out "administered trade" akin to tribute exchanges.Though Karl Polanyi (1957) was wrong about the Old Assyrians in this regard, his larger perspective on the evolution of institutional modes of exchange remains an important contribution to our understanding of the qualitative differences between kin-based, state-based and market forms of integration.

The conquest empire of the Hittites was certainly a case of the semiperipheral marcher state strategy in which nomads overwhelmed an interstate system and created a new and larger empire.

The later history of Assur is also an interesting case that is relevant for our understanding of semiperipheral development. The Old Assyrians were conquered by an Amorite sheik. Their later re-emergence as the Neo-Assyrian empire was a fascinating instance of a semiperipheral capitalist city-state switching to the marcher state strategy of conquest,[1] and their success in this venture created an empire that was larger than any other that had been before it in Southwestern Asia (see Figure 1). 

Theoretical Concerns about Sedentary - Nomad Relations

Here we use nomad in the sense of foragers who do not occupy a fixed site, but move regularly and more or less continuously, and do not construct shelters with the intent of staying there very long.But what about transhumant pastoralists who herd animals, stopping for a season at each phase of their circuit?Are the sedentary or nomadic? A first point, it seems to me, is that nomad - sedentary are not dichotomous categories, but rather poles of a continuum of length of occupation. Butzer (1997) makes an implicitly similar claim, when he notes that there are many variants of nomadic and transhumant adaptations.We need to recognize that sedentary, nomadic, and pastoralists are or "fuzzy sets" (Kosko 1993; Cioffi 1981). That is, categories with overlapping memberships. A second point is that the ambiguity is real, not an artifact of poor conceptualization.I use the term "nomad" as a covering term for the entire range from pedal foragers, through nomadic pastroalists to transhumant herders (cf. Barfield 1993, Ch.1).

There are four points to be made here.First, if some social form originated, there must be a transitional period -- brief or long -- during which it formed.The nascent or inchoate form will not much resemble the final form.Second, again following Butzer (1997), if there is any systemness to the system, changes should permeate through it.Butzer makes precisely this kind of argument against the primal role of volcanic action for disruption of Near Eastern social relations in the third millennium B.C.E as argued by Weiss, et al. (1993).I read both Stein's and Algaze's accounts as being in accord with this principle.That, in itself, is the strongest evidence for some sort of system, albeit, nascent and ramshackle.Third, both Stein an Algaze recognize the importance of relations with nomadic peoples, but lament the lack of evidence with which to study them.Butzer, on the other hand does find some evidence, but he is working in a different area, and a millennium or more later.Fourth, clearly these "nomads" played some role in the processes that have been observed.To omit them from the analysis is to miss part of the action, but worse than that, is to miss what might be some of the strongest evidence for systemic processes.

A.Individuals may change, even while the groups they belong to may not.

Barth (1969), Haaland (1969), and Lattimore (1951) among others have noted that individuals, families, and occasionally groups may move from pastoralist to sedentary adaptations, sometimes more than once in a lifetime.They often change "ethnic identity" when they do so.Typically, this happens in transitional zones, or frontier regions, between arable and nonarable lands, keeping in mind that what is arable is a function of the interaction of climate, rainfall, crops, and agricultural technology.While individuals may change identity and adaptation, they surely do not empty their memories when they do so.Thus, such movement can be a mechanism whereby even complex and arcane knowledge may pass from one group to another.

B. Boundaries and Incorporation

As world-systems, core-periphery relations, or sedentary groups expand, they may create such transitional zones in the absence of clear or obvious ecological differences.These frontier zones, typically on far peripheries, are where what I have called "incorporation" takes place (Hall 1986, 1989b, 2000; Chase-Dunn and Hall 1997, Ch. 4).Such world-system boundaries are typically fuzzy, a point of strong agreement with Stein (1999).Incorporation is a complex process, with a range of possibilities, with some degree of reversibility, but often with a graininess or stickiness to it.Obviously, newly incorporated groups are strongly shaped by the process.Less obvious, and less frequently studied are how the incorporating group(s) are shaped by individual zones of incorporation, or by the entire periphery as a whole.

C.Complex Interactions

All this suggests some ways in which nomadic and sedentary societies can shape each other.First, the timing of cycles in each may alter the cycling in the other.Given that entraining, or coupling of cycles, is common in the physical world, it would not be unreasonable to expect similar processes in the social/cultural world.Indeed, this is what Thomas Barfield (1989) shows happened repeatedly between China and surround steppe confederacies.He documents how steppe confederacies rose and fell in tandem with China -- in contradiction to the common, but erroneous, expectation that steppe confederacies caused periodic collapse in China.The key point here is that nomads cannot "raid" weak or failing societies repeatedly, but only robust societies which can sustain repeated, if relatively minor, attacks.Minor, here, from the perspective of the entire state or empire, not from the perspective of individual settlements that might be destroyed.

While this has become widely known, it still seems contradictory to those caught in the old assumption that raiding barbarians caused the collapse of states, empires, and or civilizations (Barfield 1993).This is not to say that such things never happened.Indeed, Barfield (1990, 1991, 2000) argues that this was far more common in west than east Asia, precisely because west Asian states were smaller, and their ecological bases more fragile than those for China.Even granting ecological deterioration induced by the combination of continuous human occupation and climatic shifts, this suggests that nomad - sedentary relations in Mesopotamia or Southwest Asia, might be more significant than in some other locations.We argue that it is not an unreasonable hypothesis that such relations played an important role in regional dynamics at all levels.Sometimes the role is overwhelming.Occasionally pastoral confederacies do become states in their own right, and following the semiperipheral marcher state strategy, conquer core states and become the dominant state in a world-system (Chase-Dunn and Hall 1997, Ch. 5; Chase-Dunn 1988, 1990).This is what the Mongols did in East Asia, albeit briefly.

Thus, it is worthwhile examining what we do know about nomad - sedentary relations to see if we can generate some testable hypotheses about this area.

Varieties of Nomad - Sedentary Relations

A.The "tribal" zone

Following the work of Ferguson and Whitehead (1992a, b), we can expect that relations among nomad groups immediately surrounding states will be more violent, and more politically volatile than they are where there are no states.Owen Lattimore said, "the barbarian societies themselves, were in large measure created by the growth and geographical spread of the great ancient civilizations (1962, p. 504, orig. 1957) [Or"civilization is the mother of barbarians"! (Lattimore 1962 in Wallerstein 1974)].Such conflict has many sources.As sedentary agriculture develops, sedentary groups expand to fill ecologically usable territory, either displacing or incorporating and transforming nonagricultural peoples, or occasionally annhilating them.Not surprisingly, they resist.Sometimes by fighting, sometimes by fleeing.But, of course, there is seldom empty territory available for flight, so this generates further conflicts.

B.Trade - Raid continuum.

Because nomads and sedentary peoples have different cultural adaptations, and not infrequently occupy different ecological zones [certainly at the local or micro level] they often have different resources at their disposal.Algaze (2000), following Wright (1989) and Kouchoukos (1998), notes "the location of some of the Uruk outposts in Upper Mesopotamia at the watered edges of wide steppe lands as also ideal to ensure access to the considerable pastoral resources of the area – resources that would have been of strategic value to the textile industries of growing Uruk cities."Such different goods can be exchanged readily, either via trade, or raiding.I propose thinking about trading and raiding as poles of a continuum of intergroup exchanges [see Hall 1989b, 1998, 2000a, 2000b; Chase-Dunn and Hall 1997, especl. Chs. 4 & 8].At least two sets of differences drive these exchanges. Each group produces or collects different types of materials useful to the other.Typically, nomads supply meat [in much of Asia via herds; in southwestern U.S. via hunting] and sedentary people supply agricultural goods ranging from grains, to pots, to textiles.Some of these goods, such as pots, occasionally grains, and bones of the meat sources may be preserved in the archaeological record.Also nomads, especially mounted pastoral nomads, may block access to valuable prestige goods sources.They can capitalize on their geographic advantage to either raid trade caravans or charge the protection costs.

Such trade can range from mutually advantageous [symbiotic] to very exploitative, depending on the relative abundance of goods and their desirability.When one side, most often the sedentary side, is unwilling to exchange, nomads can raid to steal what they want.It is important to note that in raiding, nomads have several advantages:

· They are mobile, attacking stationary targets;

· Logistics are less of a problem for them since their resources are either mobile [herds] or widely available [foragers];

· They know their territory far better than their sedentary neighbors/victims;

· Sedentary-based militaries typically require long logistic support [even for so-called flying companies (see Hall 1989b or Luttwak 1976)].

· When population sizes differ significantly, nomad attacks are more of a nuisance than a danger, and may not be worth the cost required to suppress them. 

· Sometimes hostile nomads form an effective buffer, or even barrier, between states.While historically important, this would not be the case for state formation in Mesopotamia--unless states were actually a crystallization of social formations out of larger interaction networks.

· They can make use of emptied buffer zones created between competing or conflicting sedentary groups [chiefdoms or states].

Algaze (2000, pp. 24) rejects his earlier view of Uruk as asingle political entity.He notes that "surveys of the Mesopotamian Alluvium (Adams 1981) and of the Susiana Plain show that processes of urban growth in both areas through the Uruk period resulted in the creation of buffer zones between the emerging urban polities of the time."David Anderson (1994), notes similar emptied buffer zones in protohistoric southeastern United States as does Melissa Meyer for the Anishinaabe - Lakota frontier (1994).Martin and Szuter (1999) observed that such a zone in the far west, noted by Lewis and Clark, served to preserve bison population in one region.While sedentary peoples clearly cannot occupy such zones, nomadic foragers, or even pastoralists, can use them -- precisely because of their greater mobility.They can also use such zones for temporary locations for trading and/or raiding.In the case of trade they can become middlemen who are able to transfer goods and ideas across the buffer zone. 

Sometimes the goods supplied by nomads or vital to sedentary groups.Beckwith (1991) argues that steppe pastoralists were a vital source of horses necessary to run the Chinese empire.Similarly, nomads may supply rare or trace goods of high value.Typically, however, it is the sedentary groups which have the most valuable resources.As noted above, nomads may be a barrier to access to valuable prestige goods.Sometimes, too, nomads play a vital role in trade networks.This role, in fact, seems crucial to explaining the rise to dominance of the Comanche bands on the southern Great Plains in the U.S. in seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Hämäläinen 1998).Throughout this era Comanches supplemented trading activities with raiding activities.

Another factor driving the trade - raid relationship is the relative volatility of the two productive systems.Cribb (1991, p. 24) shows how for west Asia, in recent times, the volatility cycles of herders [in this case transhumant] differs radically from that of sedentary farmers.Wilcox (1991), Baugh (1991), and Spielmann (1991a, 191b) all examine analogous conditions in protohistorical southwestern U.S./northern New Spain. Trade and symbiosis can occur most often when the times of surplus in one partner coincide with the times of shortage in the other.Trade can thus buffer the volatilities in each productive system.On the other hand, this can readily turn into raiding when one group must have some of the other group's resources in order to survive.The southwest example shows how this can become very common when one, or both, adaptations are pushing close to the ecological limits of their respective technologies.In times of climatic shifts, formerly robust adaptations can become marginal, intensifying the relative volatilitities, and heightening the trading - raiding oscillation.

C.Trade in Captives

One kind of "trade" that may be more difficult to discover is trade in captives.Often sedentary systems replace members lost to disease, or fill their lower ranks through conquest.If anything, this was probably more important in the ancient world, where lack of public health practices made virtually all cites into population sinks which need constant replenishment.In this case the "good" supplied by nomads is human beings.Where this occurs, it is a significant part of the violence in the "tribal zone" as nomads with little to trade must fight each other to gain captives to trade for sedentary goods.This occurred all along the northern fringes of New Spain as various nomadic groups sought to gain horses and guns from Spanish settlers (see Hall 1989b and the sources therein). 

Both Stein (1999) and Algaze (1993, 2000) among many others note the flow of captives into Uruk and related city-states.These captives had to come from somewhere.Obviously, defeated hostile sedentary populations could be a major source of captives.But so could the surrounding nomad population.This, as noted, would raise the level of conflict in the "tribal zones" and cause it to spread deeper into the hinterlands.Where slaves or captives are used for agriculture, male captives are often especially valuable.Thus, there might be gender differentials in killing, and their related remains.

From Peripherality to Semiperipherality

In the hinterlands, "beyond the pale" dwelt those labeled "barbarians," which might be glossed "the not like us" peoples.What were their relations to sedentary peoples and how did they change?Much of this will be forever shrouded by the paucity of hard evidence.Hence we are forced to use much later sedentary - nomad relations to gain insights into the first relations.Such ethnographic "upstreaming" is always hazards, the moreso when when origins of are the subject of investigation. Still, we can posit trading and raiding two ways in which nomadic peoples can interact with sedentary peoples.Even when the nomadism is bipedal, nomads have immense advantages over sedentary peoples:they are fewer, they are mobile, more importantly, their resources are also mobile, they now their territory intimately, and their sedentary foes are, literally, sitting ducks.In fact, the only way raiding nomads can be subdued is to sedentarize them -- something seldom if ever possible until last few centuries.

On the other hand, we learn from Barfield's account that the popular image of nomads as destroyers is a gross exaggeration.Here one must distinguish between a city or village that is destroyed in a raid, versus and entire empire which readily outlasts all such raids. Nomads cannot profit from either raiding or trading with a failing state -- there will be little or nothing to raid or trade for!This is fundamentally what is behind the Barfield's seemingly surprising finding that steppe confederacies were strong only when China was strong, and weak when it was weak.He does note, however, that things were often different in West Asia where states were smaller and weaker than China.While Bronze Age states were assuredly weaker, so were the various surrounding nomads.

On the other hand, Owen Lattimore (1968) often cites a Chinese proverb to the effect that while one can conquer from the back of a horse, one cannot rule from there.Whether we are discussing mounted pastoralists, or prehorse nomads, the principle generalizes:To maintain a conquest over sedentary peoples, nomads must cease being nomads.One of the major problems with ancient accounts of nomads conquering, is that we do not know whether this was a relatively gradual process of in-migration with new language coming into dominance, or a military conquest that transformed nomad conquerors into a new dynasty.

The conventional approach, that nomads conquer weak states, may hold when nomads essentially overplay their hand of raiding to gain better terms of trade and then end up running the place, and ceasing to be nomads.This, of course, would be highly remarked in written records.Whereas, centuries of intermittent raids, which alternate with trade, would go unremarked.

But other than accidentally overplaying their raiding, why would nomads move, and or conquers sedentary peoples or regions.Several reasons come to mind.First, there may variants of what McNeill (1987) has called the Steppe gradient.That is a net tendency for pastoralists in Central Asia to move westward because the grasses are better toward the east, so strength emerges in the east, near China, and when one group is displaced, all others are displaced westward.There are no doubt more localized versions of this is southwest Asia.

This is one of the ways in which climate change, even relatively small climate change, can have strong effects.Slight shifts in rainfall patterns can change considerably the limits of useful range land for pastoralists.If any one group moves, all their neighbors, sedentary and nomad, are affected.Here it is important to keep in mind the volatility of pastoral strategies.An abundance of grass in just a few seasons can lead to an explosion of herd sizes, unleashing quest for more pastures.The quest will intensify if the climate turns dryer and grasses become scarce.This, too, can unleash migrations and conquests, in which nomads seek to take over farm land for pasture land, or on a smaller scale change their adaptation from pastoralist and farmer.And, of course, the process can go the other way. 

Here it is vital to see this as part of an overall system.Farmers and herders utilize different resources and different ecologies.Typically, but not always, land that is very suitable for pastoralism is not suitable for farming, hence increasing differentiation between farming and herding. Yet neither adaptation, especially when farming becomes so intensive that land and grains cannot be spared for animals, is wholly self-sufficient.This, of course, creates ideal conditions for trade.But this type of differentiation readily turns into hierarchy, since sedentary populations far outnumber pastoral populations.By trading assorted "surplus" goods, sedentary peoples are turning empty wasteland, into productive territory that produces meat and animal by products, and the labor involved is performed by outsiders.This is evenmore the case when the "goods" received are human captives, whether from the immediate pastoral neighbor, or their more distant neighbors.

Most important in terms of our argument about systemness and the linking of changes across and between regions, nomads in general, and pastoralists specifically are the mechanism which links changes in one region with those in another.This, of course, was the argument of Frederick Teggart (1939) in Rome and China.Here the argument is analogous to Tainter's (1988) argument about collapse.The specific precipitating event [no pun in tended since we often discuss rainfall] that alters the fortunes of one state is not crucial.Rather, whether a state rises of falls, that change will be transmitted via interactions with intervening nomad populations.But how it will be transmitted will be shaped, if not determined, by the specific channels through which it is transmitted.

For instance, one can imagine a state becoming weakened by a dynastic succession struggle.This could undercut the amount of surplus available for trade, especially with pesky barbarians.Those barbarians then could either step up raids to acquire what could not be obtained by trade, further weakening the state and undermining the legitimacy of the ruling elite.If this led to a collapse nomads might take over and run the state themselves -- the nomad invasion so much in popular imagination.But unless they had sufficient numbers, knowledge, and organization this would be rare.Rather, they would need to seek elsewhere for necessary goods, and to sell off their surplus.This could start a gradient of clashes that would ramify far across intervening territories.If no alternatives were available, the nomad society might experience a secondary collapse in reaction to the state collapse.This could actually open new territory to nomads from elsewhere looking for new pastures.

The "what if" game can be played out in an endless variety of ways.Depending on the specific conditions will shape whether nomads will transmit collapse or transform it into a change of center with a new semiperipheral state coming to core status -- whether that semiperipheral player were an erstwhile semiperipheral sedentary state, or a newly arisen and expanded pastoral confederation capable of conquering and administering a collapsing core state.Obviously, too, nomads and their trade and pastoral movements can be conduits for disease and ideas between widely separated areas.A major problem, is that those specifics are often hidden from the historical record, precisely because they occurred among nonliterate peoples, whose movements obviate massive archaeological deposits.

Thus, we can expect some correlation of events between distant sedentary states, empires, or world-systems but the correlations will not necessarily be strong.We should also note that just as the sale of land empires has increased, steadily of cyclically through time (Taagepera 1978, 1979), so have the scales of these interactions.Thus, just because the Mongol invasions of west Asia in the thirteenth century were devastating, does not mean, that Bronze age attack were necessarily so.It is much more likely that they were more like those of Steppe nomads on China, and that nomads prospered when states prospered, and declined when they declined -- but not always.

Egyptian and Mesopotamian Synchronization?

As the Mesopotamian and Egyptian cores and their trade networks expanded they came to have more and more direct and consequential connections with one another. Writing developed in Mesopotamia and Egypt at about the same time and there may have been a diffusion of the idea of symbolic representation in one direction or both. This would indicate that the information networks and the prestige goods networks were already connected. This raises the possibility that the cycles of rise and fall and the growth of cities may have been synchronized in the two core regions. Research has demonstrated this phenomenon for the later cases of East and West Asia between 600 BCE and 1500 CE (Chase-Dunn and Willard 1993; Chase-Dunn, Manning and Hall 2000; Chase-Dunn and Manning 1999).These were two distant core regions linked by a prestige goods network but they had no direct political/military interaction.This synchronization of East and West Asian city growth/decline phases and the rise and fall of large states has been tested and retested and now begins to assume the status of a fact.Research that examines the causes of these synchronicities has not yet been performed and this is another job for our comparative macrosocial project.

Regarding possible Mesopotamian/Egyptian synchronicity, Chase-Dunn and Hall (2000: 105) examined estimates of the population sizes of cities in Mesopotamia and Egypt based on data from Chandler (1987). They found little support for the synchronization hypothesis.Figure 2 below replicates that earlier effort by supplementing the Chandler (1987) data with estimates from Modelski (1997).

Figure 3: Population of largest Mesopotamian and Egyptian cities [Source Chandler (1987); Modelski (1997)] Note: The physical location of Agade is yet unknown. Its population has been estimated based on other known characteristics (e.g. number of soldiers, etc.) in the method following Tertius Chandler.

The comparative data on city growth and decline demonstrates what appears to be a very rough synchronicity. We have data on both Egyptian and Mesopotamian city sizes at only seven time points, and these produce a Pearson’s r correlation coefficient of .35.This is weak evidence in favor of city growth/decline synchronicity. 

Figure 4: Territorial size of largest Mesopotamian and Egyptian states (Source: Taagepera 1978a, 1978b)

The territorial size figures in Figure 3 show no synchronicity between the Southwest Asian and the Egyptian core regions from 3000 to 1000 BCE. The Pearson’s r correlation coefficient is -.15 based on 22 time points.It may be that territorial size responds to the forces of climate change and peripheral incursion in a different way from changes in city sizes.Karl Butzer (1995) displays inferred flood trends for the Nile and the Tigris-Euphrates river systems from 4000 BCE to the present (see Figure 5) 

Figure 5: Nile and Tigris-Euphrates Flood Trends

Butzer’s figures show only a rough correspondence of this indicator of climate change in the two regions for the time period of interest to us in this paper.

The problems of synchronicity and the causes of rise and fall require further empirical examination.Both the city and territorial size data sets need to be improved by correcting mistakes and adding data not previously available. And these need to be compared with data on climate change and peripheral incursions.

Our original formulation of the nature of the Akkadian conquest has required revision, as discussed above.Further revisions of the hypothetical narrative painted in this paper await the assembly of more detailed data based on primary archaeological and documentary evidence. The semiperipheral development hypothesis needs further research before firm conclusions are possible.Potential cases posited in this paper were: 

· the transition from Mesolithic to Neolithic,

· primary chiefdom, state and empire formation, 

· the emergence of capitalist city states, 

· and the expansion of the territorial sizes of the largest empires.

It may be that this phenomenon becomes, over time, more consequential for social evolution – the development of semiperipheral development. 

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Notes

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[1] An apparently somewhat similar world-system of sedentary foragers existed in Northern California until the gold rush of CE 1849 (Chase-Dunn and Mann 1998).

[1]A state is here understood as a specialized administrative apparatus of regional control that is at least partially independent of kinship organization.

[1] Flannery (1998:18) makes a big point that Lagash, one of the Mesopotamian states has three cities as well as 20 towns and 40 villages, and so he contests the characterization of Mesopotamian states as city-states.

[1] Our study of the Indic interstate system (Chase-Dunn, Manning and Hall 2000) found no correlation between power configurations and empire sizes.

[1]Though Egypt formed a core-wide empire early on, it continued to experience cycles of political centralization and decentralization just as other state systems do. Data on Egyptian city sizes and the territorial sizes of the largest states in Egypt show a positive correlation over time from 2300 to 650 BCE. The Pearson’s r correlation coefficient is .53 based on only 7 time points when we have both city and state sizes.

[1] Dilmun, a maritime trading center somewhere in the Persian Gulf (probably Bahrein or Oman) that engaged in the carrying trade between Mesopotamia and the Indus valley civilization, may have been an earlier example.

[1] Gil Stein applies the concept of “trade diaspora” in a somewhat different way to apply to trading enclaves set up by the Uruk core sta te to supply itself with certain goods from a distant region. Curtin’s original idea applied to culturally specialized trading ethnicities rather than to trade outposts of urbanized core societies.

[1] Another instance of this kind of niche switching is the case of Hannibal. The Phoenicians had for centuries pursued the maritime capitalist city state strategy in which they combined merchant capitalism with production capitalism by manufacturing profitable products for the carrying trade.Hannibal abandoned this for the marcher state approach and he nearly succeeded in conquering Rome. The reticence of the Carthaginians, not fully convinced of the wisdom of territorial conquest, to support his venture in a crucial period was a main cause of its failure.