by Eckart Frahm
Further Reading
A comprehensive overview of landscape archaeology in the Near East is Wilkinson (2003), which describes the signature landscape concept and discusses both of the case studies presented here.
Recent reviews of Early Bronze Age urban society and cultural landscapes include Stein (2004), Ur (2010a), and Matney (2012); Wilkinson (1994) provides a compelling model for the economic landscape. On trackways, see Wilkinson (1993) and Ur (2009). The climate‐driven collapse of Early Bronze Age society was first proposed by Weiss and colleagues (1993) and revised in Staubwasser and Weiss (2006); recent critiques of this hypothesis include Wossink (2009), Danti (2010), and the papers in Kuzucuoğlu and Marro (2007).
On the landscapes of the Assyrian empire generally, see the synthetic overview of Wilkinson et al. (2005). For northern Iraq, the classic study by Oates (1968) has still not been superceded, although see now Altaweel (2008) for a speculative remote sensing‐based approach. The rural settlement pattern is discussed in Morandi Bonacossi (2000) and Wilkinson and Barbanes (2000). A comprehensive review of Assyrian irrigation is Bagg (2000); a satellite‐based restudy of Sennacherib’s canals can be found in Ur (2005).
CHAPTER 2
“Assyria” in the Third Millennium BCE
Lauren Ristvet
Introduction
In the third millennium, the area from Ebla in the west to Nineveh in the east did not yet have a political or cultural identity as Assyria. The region did, however, roughly correspond to an ancient geographical term, “Upper Land,” in the inscriptions of the Old Akkadian kings (ca. 2350–2200 BC) (Postgate 1994: 5). In this chapter, the entire area bounded by Mari, Ebla, the Turkish Euphrates, and the Zagros mountains will be referred to as Northern Mesopotamia (Figure 2.1). It is contrasted with Southern Mesopotamia, which includes the areas in modern Iraq that require irrigation for successful agriculture. Although different burial practices, ceramic traditions, and settlement types define this large area, it represents a zone distinct from Southern Mesopotamia, with a common Eastern Semitic language and probably also with a shared socio‐political system (Milano and Rova 2000; Archi 2006: 96–7).
Figure 2.1 Map of Northern Mesopotamia, 3000–2000 BCE, with archaeological sites mentioned in the text.
Source: Milano and Rova 2000; Archi 2006: 96–7.
Following the collapse of local proto‐states and the abandonment of the Southern Mesopotamian Uruk colonies at the end of the fourth millennium, Northern Mesopotamia experienced a period of regionalization and ruralization, from whence emerged complex urban society. From ca. 2700 to 2300 BCE, cities and kingdoms appeared across the region. These palace‐centered states had an important religious component, but temples played a different role than in Southern Mesopotamia. After 2400 BCE, we can reconstruct the political history and investigate the economic, political, and social institutions of three of these kingdoms – Ebla in West Syria, Mari on the Middle Euphrates, and Nagar in the Khabur basin – based on archaeological data and archives of cuneiform tablets, written in an early form of Akkadian (Archi 2006). Many of these states lost their autonomy around 2300 BCE, when the Old Akkadian kings conquered and integrated parts of this area into their empire. Other Northern Mesopotamian cities remained independent, but had close diplomatic ties to the Akkadian state. Following the collapse of the Akkadian empire and the beginning of a three‐century long drought, many cities, towns, and villages were abandoned. Some of the remaining settlements were organized into a series of kingdoms including Mari, Urkeš, and Nineveh, which maintained limited diplomatic and commercial relations with the Third Dynasty of Ur, a state that ruled much of Southern Mesopotamia and may have extended as far north as Ashur. Trade connections between the north and the south at this time probably set the stage for the later development of Old Assyrian trading networks. Indeed, the innovations of the third millennium BCE in Northern Mesopotamia, particularly the development of kingship, administration, and literacy, provided the foundation for later developments in Assyria.
Regionalization (3200–2700 BCE)
At the beginning of the Early Bronze Age, a process of regionalization and ruralization began, as the shared traditions of the Chalcolithic gave way to diverse new cultures (Akkermans and Schwartz 2003: 211; Ur 2010: 401). Several distinct assemblages appeared, including Ninevite 5, Late Reserved Slip Ware, and Early Transcaucasian (ETC) Ware, corresponding to new social regions (Figure 2.1). These ceramic provinces may have coincided with zones of intensive economic exchange or shared political and cultural traditions. The differentiation of pottery cultures may suggest that trading networks became more localized, that potters chose to demonstrate a local, rather than interregional, identity, or that cultural and social territories shifted. Similarly, seal‐users switched from the figural styles popular during the Chalcolithic to the more abstract and geometric designs characteristic of the “piedmont style” (Pittman 1994; Matthews 1997). Like the appearance of ETC ware on the northern fringes of the area under discussion (Palumbi 2003), the adoption of the piedmont style may show a reorientation away from Southern Mesopotamia and participation in a trade network centered on western Iran. Except for a few Jemdat Nasr vessels at Brak (ancient Nagar) (Oates, Oates et al. 2001), there is little evidence of trade between the north and the south from 3000–2700 BCE. Rather, the appearance of Jemdat Nasr pottery in both coastal and inland Arabia could indicate that merchants in Southern Mesopotamia looked south instead of north (Potts 1986).
This regionalization was preceded by the collapse of the Uruk colonies, followed by local settlement decline and a decrease in average site size, coincident with a severe, century‐scale drought around 3200 BCE (Weiss 2003: 601; Staubwasser and Weiss 2006). Along the Tigris and in the Assyrian plains, large towns were abandoned and replaced by a few small villages. West of the Tigris in Northern Iraq around the site of al‐Hawa, the number of sites decreased by 75 percent (Wilkinson and Tucker 1995: 49). In the Khabur Plains of Syria, there is no evidence for settlement around Leilan (ancient Šeḫna) immediately after the fourth millennium, and very small numbers of settlements in the early third millennium – a decrease from fifty‐three to five sites (Weiss 2003: 601). To the south, Brak, probably the largest fourth millennium city in Northern Mesopotamia, shrunk drastically in size as its lower town was abandoned, while the number of settlements around the site also decreased in number and average size (Eidem and Warburton 1996: 53–7). Evidence from plant remains at Brak indicates that following this collapse, farmers utilized new subsistence strategies, including irrigation, trade, and hunting, in response to arid conditions (Michael, Pessin et al. 2010: 197).
The settlements that remained in early third millennium Northern Mesopotamia were generally small communities, with little evidence for social stratification, rich burials, monumental architecture, elite culture, mass production, or administration (Akkermans and Schwartz 2003: 216). Several villages and towns have been excavated along the Middle Khabur, the Upper Tigris, and the Turkish and Syrian Euphrates. The vast majority of settlements were under 5 ha, with a few larger towns between 15–25 ha like Nineveh, Leilan, Brak, Jigan, and perhaps Hawa (Schwartz 2003: 585). Houses within these towns and villages generally had one or two rooms, with little variation in size or decoration. Where neighborhoods of such houses have been excavated, as at the small site of Raqa’i, it is clear that they are arrayed along irregular alleyways, with little evidence for settlement planning (Schwartz and Klucas 1998).
In addition to houses, a few examples of non‐domestic architecture have also been unearthed, especially temples and storage or production facilities. At Brak, Raqa’i, Kashkashok, and Chagar Bazar, small, one‐roomed temples have been excavated, some with stepped altars and others with enclosure walls (Matthews 2002). Gre Virike on the Upper Euphrates was a small cultic site, where worshippers presented offerings of grain and meat and probably attended rituals on a mudbrick platform, associated with a sacred spring (Ökse 2006). Otherwise, large‐sc
ale storage facilities, probably granaries, have been excavated at several village and town sites, particularly along the Middle Khabur (Akkermans and Schwartz 2003: 216–23). Some scholars have suggested that this stored grain was sent down river to the city of Mari, the first urban center in this area, founded around 2950 BCE (Schwartz 1994; Fortin 1998). Others hypothesize that local populations consumed this grain, either villagers or pastoralists living in the steppe (Hole 1999; Pfälzner 2002).
The appearance of simple egalitarian settlements in the early third millennium after a period of experimentation with political complexity runs counter to assumptions that societies increase in complexity over time. As Glenn Schwartz asks, “why, despite centuries of contact with the urban civilization of southern Mesopotamia, was there no immediate flowering of urbanism and societal complexity?” (Akkermans and Schwartz 2003: 211). The answers to this question are no doubt multifaceted, but part of the explanation may lie in the nature of previous complex societies and their collapse. Recent finds at Brak and Hamoukar highlight the violent nature of fourth millennium society (McMahon, Oates et al. 2007; Soltysiak 2008; Ur 2010: 397–8), and evidence from this time for central control of large amounts of surplus goods and extensive feasting points to a production process that relied on slaves or impoverished peasants. Anthropologists describe such systems as “structural violence” and emphasize that they require cultural or symbolic justification – religion, ideology, and art – to endure (Galtung 1990). In the fourth millennium, such justification was probably religious, as we can see from excavations at the Eye Temple at Brak and the presence of eye idols across the region (Mallowan 1947). When century‐scale drought struck the area at the turn of the millennium, it undermined the previous system in two ways: it showed the failure of the elites to satisfy the gods, and made the accumulation of surplus grain from dry‐farming nearly impossible.1 The settlements that survived this catastrophe, often small villages, responded by rejecting the previous unsustainable system. They switched to a risk‐averse, village‐based agricultural system, characterized by high crop diversity and a mixed‐economy. The egalitarianism of Ninevite 5 villages could indicate a society that attempted to retard the accumulation of individual wealth. For most of this period, the only evidence of administration or collection of goods comes from simple temples and store‐houses, which may have been controlled by the community as a whole. Such community institutions are consistent with a system that emphasizes sustainability (Pfälzner 2002).
The switch in orientation away from Southern Mesopotamia, visible in the glyptic and some pottery styles, was also part of this transformation. ETC pottery and decorated andirons like those from the Caucasus, present in the northern fringes of the area, have long been interpreted as representing the actual movement of people (Sagona 1984; Rothman 2003; Paz 2009), but this domestic assemblage could also represent openness to the values and practices of the highlands, egalitarianism and communitarianism (Philip 1999; Ristvet, Bakhshaliev et al. 2011). Graham Philip has suggested that in the Levant, adoption of ETC pottery may have illustrated a choice to “[opt] out of the specialized economy” of emerging state societies (Philip 1999: 164). In contrast to the ever‐more unequal societies of Southern Mesopotamia, highland societies with their focus on the domestic and equitable distribution of wealth offered an alternate template for Northern Mesopotamian societies.
The Second Urban Revolution (2700–2400 BCE)
Yet, this egalitarian, early third millennium society contained the seeds of its own destruction. By 2600 BCE, kings or groups of “elders” had gained power over populations across this area, perhaps using “feasting economies” associated with funerals and religious institutions to harness labor and wealth in nascent city‐states. Brian Hayden has studied funeral feasts documented ethnographically and has argued that they often lead to economic intensification in places where the resource base allows it. As occasions when emotions run high, funerals are ideal grounds for creating, strengthening, and displaying political and social alliances, particularly in societies in which warfare is a constant (Hayden 2009). The transformation of feasting economies into stratified societies occurred during a period of optimal climate (Bar‐Matthews, Ayalon et al. 1998), when large tracts of land were fertile and yields were high, leading to more institutionalized forms of staple collection and redistribution. At present, archaeological evidence may indicate that this transformation began first along the Euphrates and in the Western Jezirah, east of the Baliḫ, where three cities were founded ex novo by 2800 BCE – Mari, Chuera (ancient Abarsal?), and Kharab Sayyar (Margueron 2004; Ur 2010: 397–8; Meyer 2011), but C‐14 dates indicating the primacy of this area remain to be presented.
At Leilan, evidence from an administrative district illustrates how feasting practices changed at the same time that this town grew into a 90 hectare city. Around 2700–2600 BCE, evidence from a burial of a high‐status man and an associated pit of ornate serving vessels indicates funeral feasting (Schwartz 1986; Bolt and Green 2003; Weiss 1990). The vessels – twenty of which were decorated with paint or incising – were probably used for a banquet celebrating the life of the deceased or offerings for the dead (Forest 2003). Similar wealthy graves at Rijm, Mozan (ancient Urkeš), and Mohammed Arab indicate that this was a widespread practice (Bolt and Green 2003). Just above the strata containing these burials is evidence that feasting probably continued at Leilan, but its nature changed. About fifty years after the burial, this area was converted to a religious/administrative district with the construction of a 150m2 cultic platform associated with storage rooms. Remains of deer and gazelle bones in the open space south of the cultic platform may have derived from religious feasting; the consumption of unusual food, like game, is one archaeological signal of feasting (Weiss 1997). Other feasts may have taken place in the open space at the center of several other Northern Mesopotamian cities – particularly Mozan and Chuera – hinting that feasting was more widespread. Seal impressions found in the Leilan storage room attest to the fact that goods in this area – probably food products – were carefully controlled, suggesting that authorities were involved with dispensing food. Moreover, the most common scene depicted on those seals were of banquets, further evidence of the importance of feasts (Parayre 2003). Iconography at other centers also celebrates banqueting; for instance, at Ebla, in G5, perhaps the city’s first palace, a fragmentary stone plaque depicting a drinking party was found (Dolce 2008).
Feasting imagery draws on Southern Mesopotamian themes, although seal impressions and plaques are rendered in a local, Northern Mesopotamian style (Weiss 1990; Schwartz 1994). This is a significant shift from previous practices, and must be seen as a conscious choice on the part of Northern Mesopotamian elites to “adopt the symbols of status and power” of the same, complex society that they had ignored previously (Schwartz 1994). The two most popular Southern Mesopotamian themes that appear in Northern glyptic were banquet and contest scenes, which were combined with a variety of local features. These scenes were probably chosen because of their resonance with power and kingship in Southern Mesopotamia and because they echoed cultural practices already present in Northern Mesopotamia. I have emphasized the initial, local roots of feasting beginning ca. 2700 BCE, but much of the later elaboration of this practice (ca. 2600–2400 BCE) occurred at a time of increased contact with and imitation of Southern Mesopotamia, where feasting is celebrated in artwork, but also in the graves of the Royal Cemetery of Ur, where many were buried clutching cups, sometimes raised to their mouths. In Southern Mesopotamia, feasting was used both to build alliances and emphasize class differences (Schmandt‐Besserat 2001; Pollock 2003; Cohen 2005). Susan Pollock has argued that the funeral feasts in the royal cemetery “helped to inculcate correct etiquette, procedures and unquestioning obedience to the roles of the feast,” creating ideal state subjects (Pollock 2007: 102). Contest scenes, on the other hand, which depict heroes battling animals, have been linked to the development of the ideology of kingship
and heroism (Costello 2010). Military valor and exclusive leadership was another critical element for the new states.
It seems likely that the growing wealth of the region may have encouraged greater competition and external aggression. Textual records indicate that in the early second millennium BCE, cities across the Near East, from Mari, Eshnunna, Ekallatum, Susa, Babylon, and Aleppo, fought to control this wealthy area during a similar period of climatic amelioration and settlement growth (Lafont 2001: 320). Three inscriptions of Eannatum (ca. 2450–2425) mention the armies of Lagash battling those of Mari and Subartu, an area located somewhere in Northern or Northeastern Mesopotamia (Frayne 2008: RIME 1: E1.9.3.1: rev. vi 5; E1.9.3.5: vi 17; E.1.9.3.7a: ii 2).2 We know that Mari campaigned across Northern Mesopotamia in the 24th century; it seems likely that this city was also militarily active earlier. Additionally, glyptic designs, sculpture, and city‐planning provide indirect evidence of increased conflict. Combat scenes and other warlike imagery are popular in the early seals from Brak, Chuera, Mari, and Leilan, perhaps because of the increasing importance of warfare to these new polities (Matthews 1997; Ristvet 2007). The larger‐than‐life‐size statue and stelae from Jebelet al‐Beda, in the steppe near the Jebel ‘Abd‐el‐Aziz, depict a man wielding a mace; the site may be a victory monument (although other interpretations have also been suggested) (Moortgat‐Correns 1972). At Ebla, the “Victory Standard” probably dates to around 2500 BCE and illustrates triumphant soldiers humiliating defeated or dead enemies and bringing spoils of war to the king (Matthiae 2010). And fortifications were part of the original layout of urban centers at Nineveh, Leilan, Chuera, Mari, and Ebla, among others. Increasing warfare could have contributed to urbanization by encouraging farmers to move into walled cities and by making their labor more desirable to emerging elites, who would have needed increasing surpluses of grain to feed their soldiers, as well as men to serve in this capacity. At Leilan, the ratio of dry to moist weeds in crop samples increased around 2600 BCE, evidence for the expansion of fields away from river or wadi banks to the drier plains to feed a growing urban population (Wetterstrom 2003: 391–2).
