Guillermo Algaze. THE URUK WORLD SYSTEM: THE DYNAMICS OF
EXPANSION OF EARLY MESOPOTAMIAN CIVILIZATION. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1993. xii + 162 pp. ISBN 0-226-01381-2, $39.95
(hardcover).
Reviewed by
Alexander H. Joffe, Department of Anthropology, The Pennsylvania
State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, USA
Reprinted from JOURNAL OF FIELD ARCHAEOLOGY 21: 512-516, 1994,
with the permission of the Trustees of Boston University.
Copyright 1994, JOURNAL OF FIELD ARCHAEOLOGY.
One of the many ironies of studying complex societies in
Western Asia is that so much new information has been acquired as
a result of modern processes which obliterate the past more
forcefully than anything the world has ever seen. Like the
hydraulic works which brought plenty then despair to Mesopotamia
over the ages, the dams on the Tigris and Euphrates and their
tributaries in Turkey, Syria, and Iraq bring short-term economic
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gain but threaten long-term ecological and archaeological
disaster. The quarter century archaeological bonanza of surveys
and salvage excavations is bittersweet indeed. A second irony is
that the Uruk period of Southern Mesopotamia is in some respects
better known in the peripheries than in the "heartland of cities.�
In the south, Warka remains the primary reference point, but
elsewhere dozens of Uruk sites have been surveyed and an
increasing number excavated, creating a rich database and an
intriguing series of questions. It is this outer world of the Uruk
that Guillermo Algaze addresses in his excellent book on The Uruk
World System.
Based on a 1986 dissertation at the University of Chicago,
the book expands and refines the arguments presented in a 1989
article in CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY (Algaze, �The Uruk Expansion:
Cross-cultural Exchange in Early Mesopotamian Civilization�).
Algaze articulates a concise scenario to explain the presence of
Uruk sites in Syria, Iran and Anatolia. He suggests that Uruk
interest in these areas was driven by the need to procure critical
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resources not present in the southern alluvium. To do this Uruk
societies created a series of settlements in the peripheries to
develop exchange relations with highland areas where resources and
preexisting trade networks, most notably for timber, stone, and
metals, were located. The asymmetrical nature of these relations,
between representatives of the highly organized Uruk polities and
the lower-order indigenous Chalcolithic societies, created a
situation of dependency. Only limited sectors of the highland
economies were developed and local elites became reliant on trade
relations on the Mesopotamian "market" for continual reinforcement
of their roles and statuses.
In turn, the Uruk lowland exported a narrow range of finished
goods, such as textiles, to the north, strengthening central
control of labor-intensive industries at home and undermining
economic diversification in the periphery. The overall result was
an "informal empire", where domination was essentially economic
rather than political or territorial. But the catalytic effect of
this intrusion on Late Chalcolithic societies also hastened their
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demise, as increasingly sophisticated northern elites began
exercising greater control over exchange, interrupting critical
flows of resources to the south and helping cause the collapse of
the Late Uruk period. This persuasive scenario explicitly employs
elements of several classic theories; dependency theory, world
systems approaches, and revisionist theories of imperialism. It is
also based on a view of southern Mesopotamia as resource-poor.
The bulk of the book is taken up with a systematic discussion
of the Uruk, Uruk-related, and indigenous Late Chalcolithic sites
in the peripheries and their functions. This makes for highly
informative reading, as Algaze collates all the available
evidence, primarily from surveys. The number of sites with Uruk
material is considerable, but distinguishing an "Uruk" site from a
"local" site on the basis of surface collections is problematic.
Sites with Uruk material are categorized as urban-sized
"enclaves,� such as Habuba Kabira, Tell Brak, and possibly
Nineveh, with their surrounding cluster sites, and smaller
"outposts" and "stations" further in the periphery, such as Godin
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Tepe, Tepe Sialk, and Hassek Huyuk. Again, determination of site
function on the basis of surface remains is a difficult issue.
Algaze persuasively notes, however, that the distribution of sites
is such that an economic rationale is visible. The enclaves are
clearly located on strategic trade routes along the Euphrates,
Upper Khabour, and Upper Tigris, while smaller stations appear to
secure connecting routes. Other stations are located in the
vicinity of highland production centers, such as the Anatolian
copper working site of Tepecik.
The materialist orientation of the argument is clear, with
little mention of the political and the religious. The economic
focus is in keeping with the thrust of world systems and
dependency approaches which must rely on straight-forward
coercions and benefits to explain how people were motivated to
participate in this trading system. This is very much against the
trend of other recent studies of intersocietal interaction, most
notably the work of Mary Helms (ULYSSES� SAIL, 1988; �Long-
distance Contacts, Elite Aspirations, and the Age of Discovery in
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Cosmological Context,� in Shortman and Urban, eds., RESOURCES,
POWER, AND INTERREGIONAL INTERACTION, 1992), which stress
ideological factors as motivation for elite demands and for public
acquiescence and participation. In the Old World ideological
approaches have been employed in analyses of exchange in Early
Cycladic and early Egypto-Levantine contexts (Cyprian Broodbank,
�Ulysses without Sails: Trade, Distance, Knowledge and Power in
the Early Cyclades,� WORLD ARCHAEOLOGY, 1993; Alexander H. Joffe,
SETTLEMENT AND SOCIETY IN THE EARLY BRONZE I AND II OF THE
SOUTHERN LEVANT, 1993), while in the New World they have been the
source of much controversy (Geoffrey W. Conrad and Arthur A.
Demarest, RELIGION AND EMPIRE, 1988). There is of course no
"right" way to look at intersocietal interaction, but an
ideological perspective on the Uruk expansion may help resolve
certain questions of intent, function, scale and timing.
The book is on weakest grounds when discussing the goods
being exchanged. The argument is largely from silence with regard
to the raw or finished bulk goods presumably traded in either
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direction, such as timber, textiles, dried fish, prisoners, or any
of the other commodities attested in later documentary evidence.
What is actually found in the Mesopotamian core are a variety of
metals and exotic stones, while in the peripheries outside the
colonies there are Uruk ceramics and seals. The nature of the
actual finds cuts directly to the heart of the world systems
approach. Algaze dismisses Wallerstein's dichotomy between
"preciosities" and bulk staples, but in his insistence to invoke
dependency theory he must posit large-scale production activities
which strengthen elites in the peripheries and lead to
underdevelopment. Similarly, to make the Uruk expansion the
forerunner of later, more direct forms of domination, the
"informal empire" must exert a level of economic control
attainable only through large-scale and asymmetrical exchange.
Finally, lowland-highland relations had to be sufficiently
profound that their interruption by independent-minded elites in
the peripheries would have helped precipitate the collapse of the
Late Uruk society in the alluvium and propelled the highlands
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towards greater complexity. At the root of much of this lies the
notion of a "resource-starved" Mesopotamian alluvium, whose
socioeconomic hunger for interregional exchange is a central
tenant of North American theories on the �origins of the state.�
Three factors have tended to constrain our view of
intersocietal interaction and early complexity in Western Asia and
elsewhere (see also the discussion in Edward M. Schortman and
Paticia A. Urban, �The Place of Interaction Studies in
Archaeological Thought,� in Shortman and Urban, eds., RESOURCES,
POWER, AND INTERREGIONAL INTERACTION, 1992). First is the explicit
emphasis on specialized production in North American managerially-
oriented, neo-evolutionary analyses of state formation. Second are
the slightly tyrannical analogies of Akkadian imperialism, where
we have tended to rather simplistically accept Sargonic accounts
(Piotr Michalowski, �Memory and Deed: The Historiography of the
Political Expansion of the Akkad State,� in Liverani, ed., AKKAD -
THE FIRST WORLD EMPIRE, 1993), and Old Assyrian trade, where
documentary evidence alone reveals an archaeologically invisible
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relationship of otherwise unimagined proportions. These are
combined with the textbook mantra of Mesopotamia lacking natural
resources, a view that is perhaps more a colonialist lament rather
than an objective assessment. The result has been an
anthropological paradigm on the origins of the state lying in the
ability of institutions to process information and administer
production, rationally taking advantage of its ability to produce
tremendous agricultural surpluses but at the same time desperately
needing interaction with its highland neighbors. While it has been
applied cross-culturally, most recently by Algaze (�Expansionary
Dynamics of Some Early Pristine States,� AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST,
1993), the theory no longer seems especially robust (see
especially Philip L. Kohl, �State Formation,� in Patterson and
Gailey, eds., POWER RELATIONS AND STATE FORMATION, 1987; and
Norman Yoffee, �Too Many Chiefs? Or Safe Texts for the 90s,� in
Sherratt and Yoffee, eds., ARCHAEOLOGICAL THEORY - WHO SETS THE
AGENDA?, 1993). Only a few aspects may be considered here.
Was the alluvium so starved for resources? In his comment on
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Algaze's earlier presentation, Harvey Weiss (�Comment on Guillermo
Algaze, �The Uruk Expansion�,� CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY, 1989)
believes not, suggesting for example, that imported wood was not
necessary for monumental architecture, that gypsum was extracted
locally, and so on. Ironically, such a minimalist view on the need
for lowland-highland interaction undermines Weiss's own theories
regarding Akkadian imperialism in Northern Mesopotamia (H. Weiss,
M.-A. Courty, W. Wetterstrom, F. Guichard, L. Senior, R. Meadow,
and A. Curnow, �The Genesis and Collapse of Third Millenium North
Mesopotamian Civilization,� SCIENCE, 1993). Recent
ethnoarchaeology, for example, would suggest that local trees and
reeds may have sufficed for all but the most monumental
architecture in Southern Mesopotamia (Edward Ochsenschlager,
�Ethnographic Evidence for Wood, Boats, Bitumen and Reeds in
Southern Iraq,� BULLETIN ON SUMERIAN AGRICULTURE, 1992; Jean-
Claude Margueron, �Le Bois dans L�Architecture: Premier Essai
pour Une Estimation des Besoins dans Le Bassin Mesopotamien,�
BULLETIN ON SUMERIAN AGRICULTURE, 1992). The debate over resources
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will not be resolved easily, but it useful to focus on what we
actually have in the archaeological record, prestige goods, and to
suggest factors which complement the materialist approach.
Here the work of Helms and others on ideological factors
helps provide a more realistic set of assumptions on the basic
rationale for interregional interaction, the securing of critical
resources for elite symbolic use and the exercise of ideological
power. The significance of prestige goods in interregional
interaction was pointed out long ago by Robert M. Adams
(�Anthropological Perspectives on Ancient Trade,� CURRENT
ANTHROPOLOGY, 1974) and Jane Schneider (�Was there a Pre-
Capitalist World-System?�, PEASANT STUDIES, 1977). Furthermore, no
one has been able to propose an entirely convincing explanation
for how Uruk settlers got to the peripheries and how they were
organized. Certainly the wholesale Uruk colonization of the
Susiana plain is a very different phenomenon than the trading
posts in Syro-Anatolia, for which Algaze proposes a "trade
diaspora" model, following Philip Curtin. But issues of initial
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design and intent remain unclear. Were it the case that elites at
least initially sought high-value, low-volume materials for
purposes of symbolic display, then appeals to the religious sphere
may have sufficed to motivate colonists. Exercising the
ideological and administrative ability to dispatch groups of
people to distant frontiers may itself have been a part of the
rationale for the colonies. Once in the periphery the colonies may
have been self-sustaining, dutifully replicating southern
Mesopotamian practice amidst the natives, eventually growing into
large settlement systems. The shallow duality of coercions and
benefits may thus be escaped. Large numbers of people would not
have been required to set up such a system, nor would continual
migration been required to sustain it. At its zenith the colonial
system may have contained maximally a scant few tens of thousands
of "Urukians,� but how many of them had ever seen the alluvium?
Is the Uruk expansion then a series of events or part of a
long-term trend? Algaze notes that Ubaid 3 and 4 contacts with
Syro-Mesopotamia foreshadowed Uruk movement into these regions, a
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point forcefully made by Joan Oates (�Trade and Power in the Fifth
and Fourth Millenium BC: New Evidence from Northern Mesopotamia,�
WORLD ARCHAEOLOGY, 1993). These antecedents, and particularly the
evidence for Middle Uruk materials at sites such as Sheikh Hassan
which predate the bulk of Late Uruk settlement appear to negate
Johnson's suggestion that the Uruk expansion simply represents the
movement of refugees fleeing the collapse of Late Uruk city-states
in Sumer (Gregory A. Johnson, �Late Uruk in Greater Mesopotamia:
Expansion or Collapse?�, ORIGINI, 1988-1989). While most of the
peripheral Uruk sites themselves seems to be fairly short-lived,
Oates also points to recently discovered Jemdet Nasr materials at
Tell Brak as evidence that the southern foray was neither as brief
nor its collapse as thorough as seemed only a few years ago.
To be sure, there must have been significant changes within
the Uruk period in relationships between city-states, colonies,
and peripheries. Any discussion of Uruk chronology is sadly
hampered by the crippling dearth of radiocarbon assays. The high
point of the colonial system appears to have coincided with the
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Eanna Archaic IV horizon at Warka, at which point the demands of
the proliferating institutions in the core would have been many
and varied, and the sheer subsistence requirements of the colonies
considerable. The scale of elite demands at this point may have
been such that more wide-ranging exploitation appeared necessary.
The Late Uruk may therefore represent the intensification or
culmination of a trend that had its origins in the ideological but
which at its peak unavoidably overflowed into the socio-economic.
The Uruk expansion was certainly part of a cyclical "momentum
towards empire" but "societal responses to the chronic lack of
resources in the Mesopotamian alluvium" is not an adequate
behavioral explanation. While recognizing that there was likely no
master plan, and that competing Mesopotamian states probably
dispatched their own colonies to the peripheries, there is little
discussion of how these sites would have related with one another.
Did colonies from different city-states compete or cooperate? The
overall tone of the book gives the impression that all the
enclaves, outposts, and stations worked smoothly together. Perhaps
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that was indeed the case, but it would contradict the dominant
conflict models for the Uruk period, which, it should be pointed
out, derive largely from inferences on settlement patterns and
fragments of iconography. Models of Phoenician or Greek
colonization, and interaction between the two systems, could also
be usefully explored to a greater extent. As Algaze notes in the
book, and in his recent article (�Expansionary Dynamics...,�
1993), there is a decided cross-cultural pattern of early complex
societies maintaining settlements in the peripheries at the apex
of their late prehistoric sequences. But this commonality may
disguise important contrasts. The Egyptian system in the Southern
Levant was originated by entrepreneurs and then taken over by
emergent "royal" authority in Dynasty One (as J. P. Dessel and I
have argued in a still unpublished manuscript). The way the Uruk
system was run makes it seem unlikely to have been the monopoly of
any one city-state, however. These sorts of contrasts raise the
inescapable, if tautological, question of the relationship between
"trade" and the "state" (e.g., Malcolm Webb, �The Flag Follows
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Trade: An Essay on the Necessary Interaction of Military and
Commercial Factors in State Formation,� in Sabloff and Lamberg-
Karlovsky, eds., ANCIENT CIVILIZATION AND TRADE, 1975).
Finally, there is the impact of the Uruk expansion on local
Late Chalcolithic societies. Stein has suggested that Uruk-
Anatolian relations may in fact have been highly symmetric, with
distance acting as a leveling mechanism (Gil Stein, �Power and
Distance in the Uruk Mesopotamian Colonial System,� paper
presented at the meeting of the American Anthropological
Association, 1993). The fact remains, however, that another half-
millennium passed before city-states appear in Syro-Mesopotamia.
Another issue is whether Ninevite 5 is to be characterized as a
"chiefdom", essentially the last and biggest Chalcolithic entity,
in a sense picking up where the Halaf left off, or whether it is,
in fact, the first "urban" phase in northern Mesopotamia. The
former view demands that the critical stimulus for urbanism come
not from the Uruk expansion but from the even more brief and
archaeologically ephemeral Akkadian intrusion in the mid-3rd
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millennium. The latter view, albeit slightly absurdist, highlights
the limited cross-cultural utility of terms such as "state" and
"urban". Until researchers addressing small-scale societies
develop their own concepts for understanding "urbanism" and the
"state" in different areas, what might be called "urban
relativism" (a phrase I owe to Norman Yoffee), and an appreciation
of the dynamic range of variation in local responses to
intersocietal interaction, the peripheries will continue to be
dominated by the cores.
In the final analysis, however, it should be stressed that
all comments on the origins, structure and function of the Uruk
expansion are speculations based solely on spatial patterns,
stylistic parallels, and ethnohistorical analogies. These and
other reconstructions could easily be tested by a systematic and
wide-ranging program of neutron activation or other source
analyses of the type that Joan Oates and her colleagues have begun
(Oates, �Trade and Power...,� 1993, p. 417). Until then Algaze's
book provides the best guide we could have to the Uruk expansion
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and the most systematic explanation of the phenomenon.
This book is unusual in Near Eastern archaeology for
developing an explicit theoretical position that is close to the
leading edge of anthropological thought. Fortunately, most
branches of Near Eastern archaeology have begun to overcome their
timidity and positivist prejudices, and despite its materialist
perspective Algaze's book is an excellent example of where we
should be going. The judicious use of a world systems perspective,
and the ingenious, if problematic, fusion with theories of
dependency and imperialism, are exactly the sorts of studies that
archaeologists and historical sociologists should be doing,
without devolving to the global caricature of the �5000 year world
system� (e.g., Andre Gunder Frank, �The Bronze Age World System
and Its Cycles,� CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY, 1993). The criticisms
raised here do not detract from Algaze's achievement in presenting
a well-documented, coherent, and testable scenario. On a broader
level Algaze's book is an important contribution towards
understanding the dynamics of early complex societies.
