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 (H�m�l�inen 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