Cities as performance arenas

JOHN BAINES, MIRIAM T. STARK,

THOMAS G. GARRISON AND STEPHEN HOUSTON

The rapid development of early cities at different dates in many regions of the world affected their hinterlands profoundly.

In this chapter we explore themes that arise from comparison of our three case studies, while drawing some examples from societies treated elsewhere in this book. Our principal bodies of evidence vary in character. Ancient Egypt, in many periods a territorial state unlike the typical city-state config­uration of the other regions in most periods, presents some of the largest monuments and the longest timespan for investigation, but its urbanism is imperfectly understood.

Types and characters of performance

In many cultures, the performance of power is closely associated with beliefs and practices that engage humans in supernatural frames of action and understanding. By no means all performances are religious in character or focus, but the secular is often inextricably bound up with the religious, making it meaningless to draw a distinction between them. For the Classic Maya, to cite one example, “production” could just as soon consist in an invocation of rain as the knapping of a flint blade, involving similar notions of acts and consequences. More broadly, the creation and maintenance of cities realize a vision of the cosmos and its constituent members that encompasses the entire society. Essential members of society are the spirit world of the gods and the dead, who dominate different societies in different patterns and may include divinized rulers among their number.

Among the societies we consider, the conceptual world of Egypt was very largely indigenous, and in most periods probably unquestioned. For the Maya, by contrast, many beliefs went back to precursors a millennium or so before their civilization coalesced, from areas at some distance in coastal and highland Mexico and groups speaking unrelated languages. The central element in traditional Southeast Asian societies was equally complex, with much elite culture derived ultimately from India, blending Brahmanism and Mahayana Buddhism with the indigenous local animism.

Cities were the largest and most elaborate institutions of these divine­human societies. They dominated their landscapes visually to a greater degree than any previous constructions. For the Classic Maya, distinctions between “natural” and “cultural” worlds - one of them built, the other not - are countered by nomenclature: pyramids were known as “hills,” and places were understood by reference to the rocky, cave-pocked stone underfoot.

The gods and the dead were present among the institutions of the living, and it was proper that, as the ultimate members of society, they should have the largest, longest-lasting, and most splendid dwellings, as well as being celebrated in the most elaborate ways.

The rulers partook in splendor in diverse ways. The monuments they inhabited in the city could be as grandiose as those of the gods, or more frequently they acted as the servants of the spirit world. In many societies the ruler resided outside the main inhabited area for reasons including amenity or security, in which case their journeys to the center constituted performances of power while also integrating the wider monumental and productive hinterland with the city.

Requirements for performance were realized by creating buildings, spaces, and urban configurations. Throughout the world, stages in the construction of important buildings are typically marked by ceremonies, from the identification, marking-out, and laying of foundations to comple­tion of the roof and inauguration of full functioning. Comparable cere­monies commemorate refurbishments. The ceremonies often have apotropaic significance and may place buildings under the patronage of spirits or deities, whether or not what is built is a shrine or temple. Many ancient urban designs formed cosmograms, as did individual buildings within these cities, so that they were symbolically nested, as cosmograms within cosmograms.

Most performances are repeated, in cycles ranging from daily through monthly and seasonal to annual and generational. Daily repetition sustains the order of things and is valued for continuity. Less frequent performances mark significant transitions and are attended by elites and rulers, for whose legitimacy they are essential. Performances enhance historical memory, which is guided by a sense of place that requires constant affirmation and is reinforced by the monumental environment. The most important loca­tions in early cities, where major performances were typically held, were constructed of different materials from ordinary habitations - frequently of dressed stone in contrast with the perishable substances and loose masonry used for houses and royal residences - and they transcended other buildings in style and elaboration, as well as often being located beside large open spaces and at the end of approach routes, which were at a premium in dense-packed traditional settings.

This privileging of display and performance in the urban environment leaves a vast imprint on the archaeological record. Whereas habitations are constantly rebuilt or decay and the configuration of whole city quarters may change, monumental settings can remain fixed for long periods, reinforcing their salience in memory. New spatial configurations may signal major historical changes. In the monumental context, some performances are public, especially in processions and movement across the landscape, while others, often the most cosmologically significant, take place in interiors and are restricted to few participants and tiny audiences.

Performances in the public sphere require sumptuous pageantry and spectacle to constitute effective theatrics of social action. They may last for many days, even months. They address the senses of sound, smell, and taste in addition to sight, and they involve bodily discipline, indulgence, or both, frequently demanding stamina from participants as well as fasting and subsequent feasting. Spectators are drawn in not least by the length, elabor­ation, and attendant atmosphere, be it solemn or celebratory. Their organ­ization, which is highly aesthetic, makes use of costly organic and ephemeral materials. These leave little or no archaeological trace, but they may be depicted or mentioned in texts. Comparable institutions in historical soci­eties generally involve similar display using extravagant materials. One measure of the power of such display is that many ruling groups appropriate it or seek to curb it through sumptuary laws or other restrictions.

Performances: experience and connections

among symbolic realms

Classic Maya performances were strongly sonic, with anticipation fortified by blasts of trumpet or conch, the pounding of large drums or tapping of smaller ones under the arm, whistles and maracas, singing, and the musical collisions of shells on the king's body. The burning of incense permeated the nostrils and eyes while the sounds of performance reverberated in the ears of those present. Archaeological evidence tends to emphasize the visual, but ancient performance yoked other sensations, which apprehended some events long before the eyes came into action. The spectacular murals at Bonampak, Mexico, depict the lively sensory environment in which such public performances took place.

Secular performances in Southeast Asia could involve hundreds or thou­sands of urban residents as participants and as spectators.

Ritualized secular performances in the same region - such as competi­tions in athletics, ball games, jousting, cock- and pig-fights, and chariot races - could also include markets, in which elite goods from Chinese porcelains to finely crafted bronze palanquin fittings were restricted to urban contexts, with their acquisition requiring formal protocol. All these organized and regulated features of public life reinforced the social order and demonstrated both the ruling group's control and its care for the whole community.

Ancient cities were the loci of spectacular display and conspicuous con­sumption but also of destruction or sequestration of valuable materials and manufactured objects. In Egyptian funeral processions, the garlanded shel­ters set up with wine and food beside the path taken by the cortege were torn down and the pots broken after the coffin had passed by. Sacrifices and dedications in temples had something of the same character of consump­tion, but they also disseminated some products among secondary elite groups. Most of the food and cloth that was used was later redistributed, the food to priests and their dependants, in a cycle that reaffirmed social hierarchies. Some fabrics that covered or clothed cult statues were reused to wrap the mummified bodies of the privileged dead, incorporating another essential sector of society into a web of connected performances. Such activities also linked domains of performance spatially: materials redistrib­uted from temples, many of which were in city centers, were laid to rest in monumental burial spaces that were often outside the inhabited area but within sight of the wider city and forming part of it. This presence of the dead in society can set up performances that traverse whole polities. Salient examples are where leaders die away from the city or where they are buried in distant places that are hallowed by tradition or that become politically expedient after their deaths, as with the transport of the corpse of Alexander the Great from Babylon to Memphis in Egypt following his death.

All these practices had material and spatial correlates as well as implica­tions for the maintenance and consumption of the artifacts used in perform­ances. In the Maya world, the objects were stored in palaces, as at Aguateca, Guatemala. In tropical conditions they must have required frequent refur­bishment or replacement: jaguar kilts and quetzal-bird feathers would be perishable, as would carved wooden headdresses or elements supported on royal backs. More secure storage was needed for regalia of office, including royal crowns, diadems, and scepters. Storage itself had performative and social dimensions. Some objects appear to have been tended by nobles, whose role was to dress the king, in an ensemble of objects brought together from different places in a Maya city. Evidence for the importance of these objects comes from texts and depictions as well as rare cases of exceptional preservation, as in some royal tombs at Copan, Honduras. The world of props for performance was much larger than can be attested directly, although Egyptian material in particular supplies valuable pointers.

Space, material culture, and practice

The typical alternation of dense settlement with just a few large open spaces and monuments in ancient cities was essential to the impact of perform­ances. Exceptions are the dispersed urban centers like Angkor (Cambodia) and Anuradhapura (Sri Lanka), along with ruralized cities among the Maya, such as Caracol, Belize. The population of most cities was small compared to more recent times - Southeast Asia being the exception here - and the appropriation of space that would only be filled for occasional performances was a central expression of power and wealth. The more-than-human scale of such spaces and monuments, as well as their frequent emptiness, assert that normal human measures do not apply. In hot climates such spaces impose strains on performers, with attendants or temporary structures typically shading the principal actors from the sun.

The specialized material culture used in performances often comes from afar, displaying the connections of rulers, elites, and their cities with other regions within or beyond their own world. The artifacts may be created by craftspeople whose chief occupation is to service performances, such as those who make particular types of garments or musical instruments. Not only are these people supported economically by rulers and elites, but they may themselves be leading members of society, as in the Maya polity of Aguateca, where abandoned dwellings near the ceremonial center contained traces of manufacturing, including parts of a royal headdress, a prime display item in performances. The range of products and expertise employed is a measure of a polity's power that generally requires the specialization and complexity of a city and the royal court it houses. Acquisition of relevant materials is itself a subject for performance, as in third millennium Egypt, where the arrival of expeditions from abroad was depicted as being cele­brated both in a public context and among the ruling group.

Such artifacts can be traced to some extent by archaeology, whereas the vital expertise in the conduct of performances is materially invisible, as well as being the subject of restricted knowledge in many societies. Cities are repositories of such expertise, and they sustain long periods of practice and rehearsal, which tend to be particularly elaborate in civilizations. The monumental scale of settings drives and is driven by cities, as is also true of the staging of performances.

In some cities, performance outweighed other functions. These cities might have small permanent populations. Royalty and elites traveled long distances to them for rituals and festivals, bringing the polity to the city through their movement. Monuments dwarfed ordinary habitations still more than in other places. Cities with this character are not economically self-sustaining unless they possess other significant functions, for example as pilgrimage centers. Their creation and maintenance - many of them were ancient sites that retained primarily symbolic significance - embodied the power of the deities to whom they were dedicated and the rulers who sustained them. Such cities are found in larger polities, with Thebes in Egypt offering a prime instance, or they have a supra-regional role in a city-state configuration, as with Nippur in ancient Mesopotamia. For the Classic Maya, cities focused strongly on such functions. At El Zotz, almost a third of the center was dedicated to public plaza spaces and causeways for ritual performances, with a further 7 percent made up of pyramids where rites could be observed from public gathering spaces.

Several of these aspects come together in the performance roles of rulers and their entourages. The actions of many rulers render the cosmos present in their persons and renew the world order ritually, and some of them play the parts of deities. In communicating this role to an audience, the ruler's body should visibly display associations of his role and should be as perfect as possible. His person assembles the materials that signify his qualities. In ancient Cambodia, the thirteenth-century king's diadem resembled that worn by Buddha images. In Egypt, where much in ideology favored rural values, the tunic of Tutankhamun was decorated with patterns derived from hunting motifs. By wearing such a garment, the king, many of whose public appearances were in an urban context, displayed his mastery of the natural world and of the enemies of established order symbolized by wild animals.

In a more physical mode, Classic Maya kings danced in core rituals that were incorporated into the structure of their cities. Almost all plazas were configured for dances, immortalized in the stelae that show rulers in such choreography. The rulers were caparisoned in costumes that seemed to infuse the lord with other identities, often of gods, or alternatively of ancestors. More than masking or mummery, these dances made the gods immanent and employed the ruler's body as their temporary host. Places for these performances required locations for dressing and storage of accouter­ments, where the king might be transformed into a god, an ancestor, or himself in a particular guise. When not in use, the plazas carried the memory of performances and their meaning, imprinting them on the landscape and constantly communicating such messages to inhabitants. To walk through a Maya city was to immerse oneself in a cross-flow of different times and to witness the presence of beings beyond the ordinary.

Until the mid-twelfth century ce, Angkorian rulers employed open spaces surrounding monumental architecture for their public events. By contrast, late twelfth-century temples included more interior space, perhaps for Tantric group ritual, and a 35o-meter-long, 3.5-meter-high Elephant Terrace for use as a reviewing stand where the ruler and his court observed public ceremonies and greeted returning armies. These two developments exem­plify the tension between the display of performance and the requirement of seclusion for some types of sacred action. In altering the configuration of the temple and hence of the city, the space created for such performances influenced people's perceptions of authority, conveying a message both of exclusion and of the rituals' significance.

Exclusion was conveyed still more powerfully by the great temples that dominated Egyptian cities from the late second millennium bce onward. Only those who were initiated and obeyed rules of purity could enter even intermediate areas of temple complexes. These vast areas, which dominated cities visually and divided them spatially, were sparsely peopled by priests and subordinate temple personnel. Others experienced the presence of deities only in festival processions outside temples, during which most cult images were kept within shrouded portable shrines. The cities were config­ured for such festivals with processional ways, some of which were enclosed by walls that separate these semi-sacred arenas from their surroundings, constraining everyday movement. Rulers attended the processions and entered temples, but temple institutions rather than royal ones came to dominate the physical form of cities.

It was necessary to provide for the presence of large numbers of people at major festivals and special events such as royal accessions and state funerals. These occasions connected cities - which could not be self­sufficient in subsistence - more strongly with their hinterlands, and in riverine Egypt also with more distant places. For exotic artifacts used in performances cities were connected with remote places that might have a mythical character. While interdependence between city and polity was a precondition for staging performances, their perceived necessity legitimized appropriations from the hinterland. Leaders of peripheral communities had to accept that the dues they contributed brought benefits to them and not just to the city, or at least to accept that the whole polity needed the performances. Splendor and the involvement of many people were essential to persuasive power.

Movement within a cosmic and temporal space

Movement is key to performance. Buildings and transit spaces were not only designed for performance and commemoration but also channeled people's movements and imparted specific meanings to them. Performance or awareness of it were imprinted on inhabitants. Another type of movement was of those who went to or came from beyond the body politic: royal visitors, ambassadors or tributaries, princesses brought to reinvigorate a bloodline or affirm an alliance, princelings sent to foreign courts for cultural polish and as hostages to their parents' good behavior. At Piedras Negras and elsewhere among the Classic Maya, texts relating to such visits stressed origins and endpoints and, for certain ritual items or founders of dynasties, places where a trip had come to a safe conclusion.

Movement was not only about shifting from one point to another: the process itself carried equal weight, as did the identities of those involved. For the Maya, palanquins carried kings and gods, presumably on days determined by festival calendars or by special needs; patron gods issued forth, carried on human backs, to celebrate war or combat drought. Ancient Southeast Asians traversed urban centers constructed according to axial plans that linked temples together. Cities condensed local understandings of existence and the requirements of ritual practice. The design of spaces to channel move­ment and host particular rituals integrated the rituals' substance and the beings they were intended to succor into the cities' very fabric.

Movement within cities was non-random. Everyday tasks, going back and forth from fields or the hunt, acquiring food and other goods from markets, visiting kin or serving royal courts, had their own rhythms, set by habit and necessity but also structured by the monumental setting and constrained by the power that it rendered palpable. Visits to specific places within a Maya city, across specific plazas or causeways, had both targets and zones of transit. A target could be a focal point, a temple, a carved rock showing captives or depicting celestial dancers, a palace or exit route from the city. An area of transit would channel movement without much pause. The most formal routes, the sakbih “white paths,” crystallized movements toward various targets around a city. Of varying size and scale, some had parapets that might discourage viewing by onlookers; others were little more than straight, stone-lined paths that differed slightly from the informal paths that criss-crossed cities.

The Maya understood time as not just experienced but also materialized. In target areas, usually open plazas at the core of settlements, where movements would pause and rituals take place, the king would erect stelae that embodied units of time and claim them as parts of royal identity. People moved through space while seeing time before them, not as memorials or abstractions but as solid petrifications. Movements between such targets bonded space and community additionally by according with directional symbolism. Processions to the four cardinal directions, along with attention to cosmic centers, recalled the structure of the cosmos within which cities were embedded. By replicating primordial acts, they also sustained settle­ments through the royal effort of performing these acts. By moving and enacting such practices systematically, rulers ensured a smooth ordering of the communities for which they were responsible.

How ancient Southeast Asians moved through urban space depended on the time and place. Whereas Brahmanism emphasized ritual practice by and for the elite, Buddhism connected practitioner and followers through per­formance: monks taught the laity their religion through stories; actors animated the epic Ramayana and Mahabharata religious tales. Pilgrims to sacred, frequently urban places embodied their religion through circumam- bulation, which was associated with both Hindu pradaksina (delimitation of sacred space) and Buddhist practice. In central Java the early ninth-century ce ruling Sailendra family sponsored the construction of Borobudur. This world's largest Buddhist monument, whose urban setting remains largely unexplored, exemplifies performance through movement. Its visitors began at the monument's base, followed corridors and stairways up six stories of three Buddhist cosmological levels en route to nirvana, glimpsing 1,400 wall reliefs of Buddha's previous 700 lives (the Jataka tales) as they proceeded. Jataka tales also graced the walls of most ninth- to fourteenth-century Burmese cities: residents in the great city of Pagan circumambulated temple terraces to express their faith.

City and countryside

In many regions the emergence of cities generated a reorganization of their countryside; in others, these processes occurred at the same time. Hinter­lands were physically linked to cities by roads, canals, and river systems; hinterlands contained sites of memory and worship. Rulers established temples beyond the formal city (sometimes along axes) and these served as the polity's “guardians”; they founded religious sanctuaries and ashrams; many places attracted urban and rural residents, commoners as well as elites.

Ancient Southeast Asian capitals were both models of heaven and axes mundi. Royal power radiated out throughout their domains in the form of donations to support religious institutions and costs of their ceremonies, as well as establishing religious retreats. Many rulers peregrinated through their realms each year. Power and resources flowed toward the center through market goods, taxes, and tribute. This movement was enacted by people (and, in the Khmer case, their stone gods), who journeyed to the capital for annual festivals to pay fealty to their universal monarch, to celebrate his court, acknowledging the capital's centrality for the society. Religious demands structured much of this movement, while codified ritual formalized its practice.

Maya cities similarly functioned as axes mundi within their polities. The city represented the taming of the wilderness by royal authorities. In the city the ruler performed rituals to convene with deities that would benefit those who toiled in hinterland fields. Sacrifices to sun and rain deities set the conditions necessary for a beneficial harvest. Through time cities also became places of physical sustenance for hinterland populations. Many Classic Maya capitals constructed large reservoirs that may have been the only sources of surface drinking water in particularly dry years. Elites living in the center relied on the hinterland for their food, but they controlled the water necessary for survival, both physically and spiritually.

Egyptian cities could draw upon extended hinterlands because river travel and transport were relatively easy. Cities were identified with their local areas, in a pattern that has parallels with the structure of city-states but rather different implications: the city represented its area, and some provincial centers were named simply “settlement/city” (the language did not have a developed vocabulary for settlement types). The largest extension of this idea is the identification of the principal city or royal residence with the country as a whole. The modern word “Egypt” derives ultimately from the Egyptian hwt- k ’-pth “estate of the vital force of (the god) Ptah,” a name for the sacred quarter of Memphis, while the modern Arabic Misr - both “Cairo” and “Egypt” - derives from an ancient Semitic word for Egypt that was given to the Muslim conquerors' new city: to this day city and country have the same name (Cairo, the official name, was the word for the Fatimid period royal quarter).

Thus, in relation to the greatest Egyptian cities the entire country was the hinterland. Royal journeys through the country had the king's residence, normally in the Memphite area, as their point of reference. Foreign visitors accepted the Egyptian identification of city and country and were drawn into ceremonial enactments of power, in forms that were depicted in images of the city as well as being made visible in the decoration of palaces, where envoys would be received amid figures of their compatriots in poses of subjection. The whole country thus became a stage for enacting power, on which movement from provinces to the center marked their subordination, while the king's journeys through the land, which varied in frequency in different periods, asserted both his dominance and his concern for all parts of the realm.

In the tropical environments of Mesoamerica and Southeast Asia, move­ment outside cities involved risk of varying levels. To enter neighboring forested areas was to risk ambush and capture, injury from the supernatural denizens of wild and undomesticated places, or harm from dangerous animals. Yet for some people, non-urban space might allow freedom from elite control and supervision. In all our examples, the constraints of the city contrasted with different sorts of danger outside. The Egyptian rural and urban environment, by contrast, was profoundly altered by human action, but it too offered spaces that were used as refuges from urban concerns.

Participation: scale, actors, and distinctions among them

Public movement was generally toward a restricted space: ceremonies within a royal court could only ever have small numbers of participants and be observed by relatively few. Even large-scale celebrations might address only residents of the city or visitors, affecting the rural majority by hearsay.

While exclusion or restricted access is central to the efficacy of much ritual, cities make major events possible because a great range of special­ists can be assembled there, because of the scale of their setting, or because the numbers who attend require a large infrastructure. The power of the city and of its rulers is displayed in the very existence of these performances.

Our three examples exhibit markedly different scales of performance. An Egyptian text perhaps originating in the mid-third millennium presents instructions for a funeral procession of someone of the highest status in which hundreds or thousands of people would be involved, on a scale fitting the vast size of the period's monuments. The biography of a widow from around 200 bce states that “all Memphis” attended her funeral. Yet core ritual actions were hardly accessible. The contrast in number between those who saw some parts of ceremonies and the relatively tiny group of direct participants was itself a display of power, as is demonstrated by the most elaborate representation of a ritual, the festival of Opet in Thebes. This was depicted in the interior of Luxor Temple, where only royalty and insti­tutional personnel could enter.

Southeast Asians performed individual rituals, temple-based rituals, and public rituals. The last of these could have potentially vast audi­ences, whom the spaces and buildings of some ninth- to fourteenth­century ce cities were in part designed to accommodate. The much smaller polities and cities of the Classic Maya were not suited to such large-scale events. The number of performers in and viewers of Maya ceremonies is difficult to quantify, but no more than several hundred, or in the largest communities one or two thousand, could have been involved, at rough estimate 1-2 percent of the population. The social configuration of Maya ceremonies was complex. The appointment or self-appointment of a principal performer assigned a role and necessarily denied it to others. Of the many involved in performances only a few stood on the proscenium or received any notice in images, which are notoriously inattentive to non-elites. By accepting an invitation to per­form, people acquiesced in a precise social station. An array of captives brought to the ruler by his warriors, or a set of courtiers and ladies dressing a ruler, confirmed a pecking order. Those who sat displayed rank, and those closest to the ruler were highest of all, unless they were captives cowering at royal feet. Entitled to certain roles or objects, the participants in any tableau slotted into a relative scale that radiated outward from the king.

Similarities and differences

The centrality of performance in the creation and configuration of cities is common to our three cases and can be noted in other chapters of this book. Organizational functions and material developments are often seen as crucial to the emergence of cities and states. Some level of these elements must be preconditions for their existence, but they do not supply the initial motivation for their construction: ceremonial spaces and monuments are fundamental to the extra level of complexity and symbolic communication that cities exhibit. These features generally focus around deities and the dead - elements present in most societies, not just those with cities - as much as or more than on the presence and actions of rulers. Rulers exercise and display their power in ceremonies associated with the supernatural world or through their patronage of monuments dedicated to that world. Their palaces are very often less imposing than temples or tombs, for reasons of hierarchy, because monuments are not liveable, or because cities can be dangerous to rulers, who may fear disturbance or sedition there.

A striking instance of similarity and difference is in the realm of violence. Complex societies have need of adversaries as targets of their aggression, whether in single actions such as battles or military campaigns, in ideology and ritual, or in a mixture of these. Such aggression is a constant feature of the display of power, not confined to warfare. In frequently gruesome performances the cosmic order is maintained and the world of the gods and the dead is satisfied. Such performances are among the most eloquent expressions of power. Relevant practices, including human sacrifice, are found in our three principal cases, differing markedly in detail and less studied for Southeast Asia. They relate more to the cosmic realm of order than specifically to cities, but events were typically held in cities, especially in their temples, monumental tomb complexes, and in the construction or reconsecration of city walls.

In Egypt, the sacrifice of household members and retainers at burials of royalty and a few other people is known from the ιst dynasty (c. 3000-2800) but not later. For subsequent periods sacrifices are known mainly from frontier areas, where they were part of magical performances intended to ward off enemies. Rulers displayed the corpses of enemies killed in battles, from which the right hands of victims were also brought as trophies to the capital and ceremonially buried. Comparable practices are attested among the Classic Maya, with probable sacrifice of youths in certain royal burials, and the display and mutilation of captives as highlighted in the Bonampak murals of c. 8oo ce. Some of the power of such performances can be seen in the burials of kings of the thirteenth-eleventh centuries bce at Anyang in China, probably the largest known Bronze Age city site. There, rows of skulls of captured foreigners were displayed on ledges in royal tombs, while their bodies were buried in mass graves in the surrounding area.

Conclusion

The core expression of power in cities is through monuments, spaces that surround them, city designs focused around monuments, and performances that enliven them. These performances are both perpetual, in the regular form of religious cults and the ritual performance of rulers' lives, and infrequent or exceptional, marking major events. The former category is generally carried out in restricted spaces by small groups of personnel. It expresses power more by exclusion than by visible presence, and it claims to uphold the cosmic order through its regular enactment. The latter category is more inclusive and can involve large numbers of participants from several sectors of society, but seldom everyone.

In all these characteristics the cities in our three examples are similar, and in this respect they fit the pattern identified by Bruce Trigger, for whom the civilizations shared more in the character and role of their belief systems than in their economies and modes of subsistence.¹ As the salient innovation of early civilizations, cities were created in the interests of those belief systems, which they made physically manifest, as well as having other functions explored elsewhere in this book. Driving forces were more ideo­logical and religious than simply material. In focusing around monuments, the physical remains of early cities provide vital evidence for this primacy of ideas that were expressed through performances and for the communication they fostered among participant groups, from deities and the dead, through rulers, elites, and foreign delegations, to wider populations.

If performance was so central to early civilizations with their core cities, should we see it as the dominant element in the societies, rather as Clifford Geertz wrote of an extreme case where polities under the stress of colonial dominance possessed relatively little substance outside the realm of pageantry?^{[78] [79]} The core factor here is power. Performance was essential to the assertion of power, but power was underpinned in other ways too. Nonetheless, in the actors' experience performance mattered enormously. Today people say that they live for performances of various types. Rulers of early states lived for, through, and by performances, which constrained their lives, circumscribed their relations with elites, and projected them to their societies. The most important location for the performance and exercise of power was the city.

part ii

*

EARLY CITIES AND

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES

Urbanization and the techniques of communication: the Mesopotamian city of Uruk during the fourth millennium bce

HANS J. NISSEN

Urbanization in the Ancient Near East is inseparably tied to the name of the city of Uruk in southern Mesopotamia (Map 6.ι). Like nowhere else, remains have been found there on a large scale and in great variety in the period that V. G. Childe once called the “Urban Revolution.” In archaeological parlance this time around the middle of the fourth millen­nium bce sails under the name of the “Late Uruk period.” Since the earliest writing system appeared at the very end of this time, Uruk is best suited for a study of both the rise of this urban center and the invention of writing.

Although obviously no written information is available either on the trends toward writing or on the formation of cities before the existence of writing, enough material exists to reconstruct these developments by drawing on archaeological data and by deducing from the earliest textual information.

The latter first appear around 3300 bce when we have a rich archaeo­logical record, which is unmatched in other periods of the Ancient Near East. Indeed, the appearance of writing can only be understood in the context of the entire archaeological record. Also fortuitously, large areas of the central ceremonial district of Eanna, where the first tablets were found in Uruk, were only sparsely built over after the Late Uruk period, thus enabling excavations to reach layers of the end of the fourth millennium bce easily. Remains of the so-called “Archaic Level IVa” in Eanna were uncovered extensively, and this layer has proven to be of particular import­ance for its large buildings and the oldest writing in Mesopotamia (or anywhere else). Unfortunately, however, there is very little information on the immediately preceding periods where only deep soundings revealed

Map 6.ι Map of lower Mesopotamia with location of Uruk. Triangles represent site names and circles are modern cities.

earlier occupations at the site. Although giving exact dates is hazardous, a rough scale of the early development is provided in Table 6.ι.^[LXXX]

After summarizing our knowledge of the time around 3300, I will discuss the earlier developments, focusing on the communication technologies, which can count as forerunners of writing. Finally, I present a picture of the interdependence between urbanization and the development of com­munication technologies.

Uruk around 3300 bce

During the time of Level IVa, around 3300 bce, Uruk covered an area of at least 2.5 square kilometers and had a population of perhaps 50,000 inhabit­ants. On Map 6.2 the hatched area delineates the probable extent of the inhabited area. Presumably, Uruk was surrounded with a city wall built over during subsequent phases of city growth. Two distinct areas of the site seem

Map 6.2 Plan of the city of Uruk, the hatched area indicating the probable extent of the inhabited area around 3300 bce.

Figure 6.i Uruk Level IVa (c. 3300 bce) structures in the Eanna precinct (in J. N. Postgate [ed.], Artefacts of Complexity: Tracking the Uruk in the Near East [London: British School of Archaeology in Iraq, 2002], p. 3).

to be relics of once separate settlements that had faced each other on opposite sides of the Euphrates. Some time before 3300, the river shifted its course around the city rather than separating the two parts. No infor­mation is available on the time of this change.

The two parts of Uruk differ in various aspects: the west-central area, or “Anu” precinct, consists of an 11-meter-high terrace with a temple on top, while the eastern part, or Eanna, displays a number of large buildings on even ground without any sign of an architectural center (Figure 6.i). West and east again differ in their height above the plain by up to 6 meters. All the archaic tablets were found in Eanna; not a single one was recovered in the western part. Obviously, these differences - in particular the impressive difference in height - must have influenced both the behavior and the way of thinking of the inhabitants, and may be indicative of further dissimilarities in the social landscape of Uruk.

Since excavations have only rarely been carried out beyond the ceremo­nial areas, we are totally ignorant about the structure of the domestic quarters. On the basis of analogies, two situations seem possible: a dense coverage may be suggested by the contemporary site of Habuba Kabira,^[81] or from later examples like Early Dynastic III Abu Salabikh.^[82] A less dense settlement may be inferred from a later literary text, the Epic of Gilgamesh, according to which Uruk consisted of one-third houses, one-third gardens, one-third open land, and the area of the Temple of Ishtar.^[83] Only further excavations may provide us with an answer.

Around 3300 bce the first written documents appear. The large majority of them consist of administrative records of a large economic unit. Since they all were found within the precinct of Eanna, which later is known as both the cultic and the economic center of Uruk, this may also be true of the early periods.

As will be argued later, these records are directly linked to the develop­ment of the enormous size of this unit. Although we do not have written information from smaller institutional units or from private activities, it is most probable that such units and activities also existed.

All of the oldest documents were found in rubbish layers. Hence, the exact date of the first writing and the context of the first writing remain unclear: there is no way to calculate the time elapsed between the writing of the tablets and their discard. A rough hint at the time of their final disposal, however, is given when the rubbish layer was built over by structures of Level IIIc, providing a terminus ante quem for the date of the deposition of the rubbish. In all probability then, the first appearance of writing falls into the time of the next lower (earlier) layer, Level IVa. It is certain that writing appeared only at the very end of the Late Uruk period.

No good information is available about the ethnicity of the population. All indications - particularly the continuity of the development of the script into later times - point to Sumerian being the main linguistic component.^[84] However, as in later texts, there are presumbly admixtures of different languages in the earliest texts. Since the names of many Mesopotamian cities cannot be etymologized as Sumerian, this has led some to posit a pre­Sumerian population with Sumerians as later immigrants. This anticipates an argument elaborated on below in which a Sumerian immigration may have been responsible for the enormous population increase in the first half of the fourth millennium bce.

Nor can much be said about the social structure of the society in which the earliest texts occur. Some help comes from one of the so-called “lexical

Figure 6.2 Uruk tablet Level IV with the oldest version of the List of Professions (in Hans J. Nissen, Peter Damerow, and Robert K. Englund, Archaic Bookkeeping: Early Writing and Techniques of Economic Administration in the Ancient Near East [Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993], p. no).

lists,” which enumerate words and concepts of a given semantic theme, like names of trees or of cities. One list (Figure 6.2) contains titles and designations of members of a hierarchically organized administration. It starts with a “master of the club” (NAM:ESHDA), which in a dictionary of the twelfth century bce is glossed as sharru (in Akkadian, which means “king”). It is followed by officers responsible for various areas like “law,” “city(-administration),” “barley(-supplies),” and “plowmen,” and other titles including the “head of the assembly.” Later in the list certain professions are split up in two or three sub-levels, probably reminiscent of a master/ journeyman/apprentice relation. Some of the titles turn up in economic documents where they receive large quantities of barley, which probably are meant to be distributed among the employees of their office, rather than for their personal use.

It is unclear what kind of administration is indicated: that of the central economic unit at Eanna or of the entire city. Worth mentioning is that not a single title seems to denote a religious office. Though most details remain unclear the list obviously is organized along a hierarchic principle, which most likely is the structuring principle of the society as a whole. This is underlined by archaeological observations. For instance, the manufacture of pottery in the Late Uruk period shows the extensive use of the potter's wheel and the output of mass-production, which points to an increased division of labor with differentiated tasks and responsibilities. The same applies for a presumed metal-working installation.

The “master of the club” may be the figure we encounter on pictorial representations, whom we identify as the ruler. On seals, but also on other pieces of art, we meet a figure who differs from other people in his attire and

Figure 6.3 Cylinder seal with prisoners being beaten in front of the ruler (in Postgate [ed.], Artefacts of Complexity, p. 10).

size: on a number of seals we see a tall figure with skirt and cap leaning on a spear (Figure 6.3). In front of him smaller naked figures use sticks to beat naked crouching and bound figures. Since no effort is made to identify the beaten figures as foreign by hairdo or other markers, it seems possible that the suppression of internal problems is meant. Again we meet the figure on the so-called cult vase from Uruk, where he leads a procession of gift bearers. Though broken except for some traces the ruler is depicted as larger in size and more splendidly attired than all other figures of the composition, including the high priestess standing in front of the symbolized temple of the goddess Inanna (patron deity of Uruk and the Eanna precinct). The ruler is shown as exercising physical power, as worshipping his city goddess, as hunting lions, or feeding animals, all of which in later times are the prerogatives of kings.

Pictorial representations never differentiate people other than the ruler on the one hand, and the rest of the people, on the other, but the actual situation must have been more complex, not only because of the evidence of many other official titles in the lexical list, but also because of other hints. Though of later date, a tale of Gilgamesh mentions two councils, one of the elders and the other of “battle-experienced young men,” and these councils apparently formed a political counterweight to the ruler. (Such assemblies and councils are found throughout Mesopotamian history.) Still, in the poem, the ruler has the last say, and he rejects the decision of the council of the elders in preference to the advice of the council of “battle-experienced young men.” Does the “leader of the assembly” of the lexical list of titles refer to such councils? And was it in the large halls in the Eanna precinct where they assembled? In any case, there was a large and differentiated urban elite and many other lower levels of people who lived in Uruk and in the countryside connected with the city.

With the exception of the lexical lists, the earliest documents contain records of economic transactions. Although these written texts are much more explicit than the earlier systems of information storage - which will be dealt with shortly - initially writing works along the same lines as those systems. That is, writing is used in the beginning to denote only those items that are deemed necessary to reconstruct a particular transaction, because a certain level of background knowledge was assumed. Since modern readers lack this knowledge, however, we often cannot even decide whether the goods recorded in a transaction were delivered to or were distributed from the central stores. Also, the writing did not reflect a spoken language with all its complex syntax; rather, the tablets were aides-memoires.

Large quantities of goods of all kinds recorded in the texts imply the existence of a complex economic institution. Tablets in which the items registered on one side are added up on the other side show us the main function of the records - that is, to record and control goods entering or leaving the central stores. The origin of the goods, however, is never mentioned. We are unable to reconstruct the chain between producer and consumer.

The complexity of economic life is further illustrated by the continued use of older systems of record-keeping, such as counting pieces (tokens), and various kinds of seals alongside the script. The complicated system of the script was apparently used only when unavoidable, whereas simpler methods continued to be used in less complex cases.

As in earlier times when stamp seals were employed, cylinder seals provide information by denoting the owner of the seal and person respon­sible for a transaction. Thus, seal decorations were differentiated to the extent that everyone who needed a seal could be furnished with an unmis­takable design. The introduction of cylinder seals in the Late Uruk period offered a means for depicting figures and complex scenes and so made legible the growing number of people taking part in economic life. But these cylinder seals did not entirely displace the older stamp seals, which continued to be used. These stamp seals were less complex, and they were even joined by a new type of cylinder seal that used only a limited number of simple geometric patterns. Apparently these various types of seals were used for different purposes, in certain distinct areas of the economy. This explains why there are many impressions of the figurative seals, which were used repeatedly by bureaucrats, but almost no original seals were found. The contrary is true for the geometric and less differentiated seals. Although it is impossible to define the different areas of employment, they nevertheless show that various areas or departments existed in which different kinds of controlling devices were employed.

Although writing is restricted to the economic sphere, with the exception of lexical lists, it is probable that the other areas of administration mentioned in the titles' list were equally complex but did not require record-keeping with the precision needed to regulate economic affairs. This also applies to the area of conflict management, which must have been of major import­ance considering the large number of inhabitants confined within the city wall. This is reflected by the appearance of the title of someone responsible for legal affairs in the first lines of the title list.

Another largely unknown area is how the bulk of the population was provisioned. The accumulation of large quantities of food in the central stores of the main economic unit undoubtedly was meant to pay in kind large numbers of personnel. However, considering the number of inhabit­ants in Uruk, it is inconceivable that everybody was on the central payroll. As suggested earlier, we should reckon on the existence of smaller socio­economic units of administration as well as of private and corporate groups with their own means of subsistence.

Undoubtedly, the sources of food originated in the hinterland of the city. The arable land directly outside the city wall would have been used by inhabitants of the city itself, as far as it was not already occupied by settlements very near Uruk. Since this land was certainly not sufficient to produce the needed surplus, we assume that the farther-flung hinterland was tied into a comprehensive network aimed at securing the necessary supplies for the central city. This hinterland was covered by settlements of all sizes that were organized as a “central place system” focused on the metropolis of Uruk.^[85] In theory, settlements in the hinterland furnished supplies to the center in exchange for services provided by the city. However, as the written sources are silent on origins of food, we have no indication regarding how this provision was organized and exactly what services were provided. We may assume, however, that in order to meet the demands of the city, the hinterland had to be no less organized than the center.

The exact provenance of metals and precious stones also remains obscure. They all had to be imported since the alluvium provided little else other than reeds and mud. Mineral analyses of artifacts from Uruk show that most of the precious stones originated in the high Zagros Mountains of Iran, but nothing points to the areas of origin of the metals. All we know from the texts is that metals were in demand in considerable quantities.

Likewise both means and routes of transport of these imports are unknown. This has to be seen in the context of the so-called ''Uruk Expan­sion.”^[86] Within the closer and wider vicinity of southern Mesopotamia, we find numerous settlements in Syria, southeast Anatolia, northern Mesopota­mia, and Iran resembling the evidence from southern Mesopotamian sites in architecture and artifacts. The settlements were embedded in a sea of non­Mesopotamian cultures. Most probably, these ''Urukian'' settlements repre­sent outposts that funneled supplies of raw materials to southern Mesopo­tamia. However interesting (and controversial), this topic does not fall within our discussion of the time of Level IVa, because - as will be seen later - with few exceptions, these settlements were abandoned before the time in which the first writing appeared.

The foundation of outposts (or in Guillermo Algaze's term, “colonies”) far outside Mesopotamia points to southern Mesopotamia as the political and economic superpower in the Near East. This becomes even more obvious when we find items of undoubted Mesopotamian cultural affiliation in remote areas like central Anatolia or Egypt. The case of Egypt is especially significant, because the adoption of cylinder seals and particularly the application of Uruk-style niches to the outer facades of a large building indicate that Egyptians knew the Mesopotamian contexts of these features or, less likely, decontextualized them. This brings us to a long-debated question: Did Mesopotamian cuneiform writing and the Egyptian hiero­glyphs, which appeared at roughly the same time, develop independently, or did one influence the other?

As I discuss below, the appearance of writing in southern Mesopotamia is preceded by a long development of various means of information storage and processing, related to the evolution of a stratified social system and highly differentiated economy. In Egypt, however, there seem not to have been forerunners to hieroglyphic writing. This lends credence to the direc­tion of influence of the writing system of Mesopotamia on Egypt. If the idea of writing was a stimulus from Mesopotamia, migrating to Egypt along with the other cultural items, hieroglyphs - that is, the form of Egyptian writing - owed nothing to Mesopotamian cuneiform writing. In Mesopotamia, it should be noted, there is not a single item of Egyptian origin or affiliation in the Late Uruk period. Clearly, the direction of influence is from southern Mesopotamia to Egypt.

Of the other Mesopotamian cities like Ur, Lagash, Nippur, or Kish little is known other than that they were occupied during the time of the final part of the Late Uruk period. In the next time periods (Jamdat Nasr and Early Dynastic - the end of the fourth millennium and start of the third - these and other cities are large, populous, highly stratified, and politically inde­pendent, and it seems reasonable to assume this for the older time as well. For the oldest phase of the script the only item outside of Uruk is a stone tablet from Kish. However, for the next writing stage there is ample evidence for the style of writing being almost identical throughout central and southern Mesopotamia. This indicates the existence of very close ties of a common cultural system, short of a unitary political structure.

Summarizing the preceding snapshot, it is evident that Uruk, at the end of the period named after it, together with other southern Mesopotamian cities, was a center of political and economic activity, exerting power into areas beyond its immediate hinterlands. In the next section I discuss how and why this happened.

Uruk before the advent of writing

Information on the time before 3300, including both the older part of the Late Uruk period, and the Early Uruk and Late Ubaid periods, is scarce. The best evidence comes from a deep sounding in Uruk itself, which reaches back into the fifth millennium bce. However, the potsherds found in ever decreasing surface areas do not show more than that the site of Uruk was continuously inhabited for at least a millennium before the first writing appeared.

In addition to excavated material, we can draw on evidence provided by archaeological surface surveys. They show that the alluvium was only very sparsely settled during the Ubaid period (c. 5000-4000 bce). Small settle­ments lay at such distance from each other that they were not part of a regulated or central system. However, they were part of an “Ubaid cultural network” that extended over large parts of the Near East. Common features of this network are temples on terraces; the so-called “house with a central hall” that is indicative of a certain common organization of daily life; and a new way of organizing the manufacture and decoration of pottery. The latter was due to the introduction of the “tournette” (or slow wheel)

Uruk during the fourth millennium bce accompanied by the mass-production of certain types of ceramics and a new division of labor.

Central buildings with or without religious connotation suggest the existence of an elite, and of a social hierarchy. The use and storage of counting markers and of stamp seals as the means of information storage indicate a certain complexity in economic life. The introduction of the cubit, a standard unit in building construction, was part of the establishment of standards as a means of creating comparability and interregional exchange.

The transition to the next archaeological period, the Early Uruk (early fourth millennium), and the phase itself are not well attested, because hardly anything is known of them except for the sequence of pottery production. There was an almost total abandonment of painting along with a new composition of the paste, and the use of the potter's wheel. More we do not know.

Assuming that items present both in the Ubaid and the Late Uruk existed in the transition period as well, we infer the existence of the “house with a central hall” as well as the temple on a terrace. The impression of a stamp seal in Uruk Level XII (an Ubaid-to-Uruk transition period stratum) points to continuity also in this area. The size of settlements on the southern Meso­potamian plain does not differ significantly from the preceding Ubaid period, however, and settlements are still widely distributed.

This picture changes completely with the next archaeological phase: the earlier part of the Late Uruk period. To be sure, we still see continuity in the production of pottery, the “house with a central hall,” and the temple on a terrace as well as in the use of counting markers and seals, but in addition we meet certain qualitative and quantitative changes that signal a total reorientation of the society.

Most visible are innovations in the sphere of economics. Already earlier, a decrease in the shapes of pottery vessels and changes in the process of manufacture pointed to an organization of workshops aiming at producing larger numbers of ceramics. This becomes supplemented by the output of the mold-made “beveled-rim bowls,” an early form of mass-production, and indeed these were produced in the millions. Whether they were initially used for the distribution of food rations, as is claimed for their later use, or not, there must have been a mass-demand for these wares and the organiza­tional ability to find an efficient solution for it. The almost equal capacity of the majority of the bowls implies a standard unit of measure.

Another response to the growing demands of the organization of a large and stratified population was the introduction of the cylinder seal.

Apparently, there was an increasing need to supply distinctive seals to denote differentiated responsibilities and lines of control that were harder to meet with the limited space of stamp seals.

An even greater change in social and political organization is reflected in settlement patterns. Already during the Early Uruk period the number of settlements had increased in the northern part of central Mesopotamia, but this only prefigured the dramatic changes in the Late Uruk period in the south. Instead of eleven Early Uruk sites we encounter more than ιoo in the surveyed part of the hinterland of Uruk, many of which are larger than settlements of the previous phase. Apparently within a short period of time, the country is covered with settlements of all sizes, forming settlement systems around central places. At the top of this three-tiered system we find the city of Uruk.

At the same time as the increase in the number of settlements, the organization of the hinterland of the city must have undergone significant changes. Earlier, it was enough to produce sufficient supplies for themselves; now though rural settlements were drawn into a network that provisioned the city, and people in the countryside were forced to produce a consider­able amount of surplus. However, we have no idea about the time and scope of this change.

The enormous growth in the number of settlements, and thus in popula­tion size, is more than can be accounted for by a natural population growth. Indeed, we see this development connected to a change to a slightly drier climate early in the fourth millennium bce that rendered the alluvium habitable on a new and larger scale. This newly available land apparently attracted immigrants from neighboring areas. Possibly, some of these immi­grants were Sumerian speakers. There is no indication of their area of origin, either archaeologically or linguistically (since Sumerian is a linguistic isol­ate). Here we are not so much interested in their putative ethnolinguistic affiliation as in the consequences of this extraordinary increase of settle­ments and population in southern Mesopotamia.

Although our dating of these changes is still dependent on pottery seriation from the deep sounding at Uruk, we are safe in assuming that the unprecedented density of settlements and concomitantly increased number of people required rapid transformations in political organization and information technology. The development of cylinder seals and beveled-rim bowls appeared quickly after the large-scale immigration to southern Mesopotamia. Furthermore, the increased volume of goods that were produced and distributed required more complex recording devices than the counters and stamp seals that each were able to store only one item of information. In the middle of the Late Uruk period (Uruk Level VI), we find artifacts that were able to increase the amount of information on the same medium.

In one case, the number of counters (or tokens), which represented the number of goods, was wrapped into a ball of clay (or bulla), the surface of which would be covered with seal impressions. At the same time or slightly later, we encounter flattened cakes of clay - resembling the later shape of written tablets - with indentations made using a reed stylus, representing numbers. The entire surface of the tablet would then be sealed. In both cases, numbers and information about an individual were stored together.

Since the Neolithic (c. 8ooo bce), counters/tokens worked on the principle that certain geometric shapes represented numbers of things. This system was now extended in two directions. On the one hand, some counters were given the shape of actual objects. The purpose of this eludes us since these complex counters have never been found in combination with simple counters that represented a number of counted items. On the other hand, both simple and complex counters could be incised and hatched, thus increasing the information to be conveyed. Although we are unable to “decipher” any of these early systems of counting and accountability, they are clearly part of the trajectory of new organizational techniques in an increasingly complex society.

For the new kind of administration other skills were also necessary and they were of no less complexity, such as the surveying of fields or solving of mathematical problems. No doubt, young people had to be trained in these techniques within an institutionalized frame. The curriculum in such “schools” may have included other fields as well, as can be inferred from the existence of the “lexical lists” found among the earliest written docu­ments. Transferred from oral versions, they represent methods of teaching the cuneiform script as well as an early attempt to intellectually control the universe.

It was these “schools” where the inadequacy of controlling devices was recognized and where improvements were on the agenda. And it was most probably in these circles where the idea of a script was born, drawing on a number of codes like that of the counters, of pot marks, or elements of decoration used in pot, wall, or body painting. In this sense the appearance of writing, which in the first stage did not represent spoken language, was barely more than an extension of the techniques of accounting. Never­theless, the invention of writing was an intellectual achievement of the highest order.^[87]

The lists themselves offer a clue for understanding principles of social organization before the advent of writing. In particular, the existence of the list of titles implies that there was a structure of ranks that must have existed before it was put into writing. In later times, such lists were used as school texts, and this may have been their function already in the Late Uruk period. Their oral counterparts may even have been significant in the process of inventing the cuneiform writing system, as subsequently they acquired a quasi-sacrosanct position and were copied nearly exactly for more than ι,ooo years, with only changes in the style of the written characters. The idea of the script and the entire system of its production and reproduction probably took little time, as in these “schools” its importance was immediately recognized and transmitted.^[88]

Summary

After a long formative period ending with Early Uruk (c. 4100β]-3800), in which a new division of labor, increased social stratification, and early forms of economic accountability were occurring, we may speak of a “proto­urban” phase of Mesopotamian civilization. However, in this period, settle­ment sizes seldom exceeded 20 hectares and simple counters and stamp seals were considered sufficient for the limited size of economic and political organization at this time.

Subsequently, at the beginning of what we call the Late Uruk period (3800-3300), as part of an exceptional increase of population and number of settlements, Uruk grew to a size of at least 250 hectares. We assume that the place started as an Ubaid settlement on the west bank of the Euphrates and during Late Ubaid was complemented by a settlement across the river. Both during Ubaid and Early Uruk the size of the site probably did not exceed the average size of Ubaid settlements. Consequently, the enormous increase from 20 to 250 hectares must have occurred during the approximately 500 years that we allot to the Late Uruk - probably during the earlier part.

This enormous scale of growth required new organizational means that we see mainly in areas of economic administration, such as the existence of economic texts, the mass-production of beveled-rim bowls, and the use of cylinder seals. The list of titles implies a new organization of the rules of social life.

Agriculture must have been intensified in order to feed the increasing population, and this was afforded by the great fertility of the alluvium and easy access to water. At the same time, the demand for raw materials of all kinds rose, for utilitarian uses and weapons as well as for cylinder seals and prestige items, especially for new objects of art (that I cannot discuss here). Presumably at a certain point, the traditional ways of procuring such materials proved to be insufficient, and this led to founding outposts like Shaikh Hassan on the Syrian Euphrates or at Tell Brak in the upper Habur. Administrative devices found at these distant places, such as beveled-rim bowls and cylinder seals, indicate that life there was organized according to similar rules as in the mother country. The continued demand for foreign goods necessitated the formation of a closer network of outposts, resulting in the additional foundation of such places as Habuba Kabira, Jebel Aruda, Nineveh, Tell i-Ghazir, and, even further, over the mountains, as shown by Hassek Htiyiik in Anatolia and Godin Tepe in Iran. Both internal necessities and the increase in goods flowing to southern Mesopotamia led to the need for new information storage systems. In the texts from Uruk there are many references to exotic stones and metals. Although most of the outposts were abandoned shortly before the time when writing was invented in southern Mesopotamia, the flow of goods to southern Mesopotamia did not decrease.

After a period of turbulent internal and external expansion, in the later part of the Late Uruk period, Uruk along with other early Mesopotamian cities became a center of immense economic and political power with far- reaching influence into the neighboring regions. This was not the end of rapid changes and adaptations, however, as is evidenced by the reorganiza­tion of the ceremonial precincts of Uruk at the end of the Late Uruk period, the twofold increase in size of Uruk over the following 300 years, and the gradual establishment of canal systems to meet the problem of the ongoing decrease of water supplies. But this is another story.

In comparison to the other cases of city-writing relations discussed in this section, Mesopotamia offers a clear example. Urbanization creates the economic, social, and intellectual hotbed for the emergence of writing.

But writing is not the first answer when demands grew for more efficient administrative devices, since for quite some time people tried to get along with minor enhancements to traditional technologies. The final solution in form of the script came only at the very end of the first round of urbanization.

The process of urbanization in Uruk was inextricably bound with changes in accounting and communication technologies and finally in the creation of the first writing system. Although the increase in population and the tightening of settlement networks have been named as the primary forces in these developments, none of the various strands dominated the others: the development of rules of economic and political life stimulated the development of communication technologies. At the same time the new “tool” of writing became a factor that led to new forms of politics and economics.

further readings

Algaze, Guillermo, Ancient Mesopotamia at the Dawn of Civilization: The Evolution of an Urban Landscape, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2008.

Englund, Robert K., “Texts from the Late Uruk Period,” in Pascal Attinger and Markus Wafler (eds.), Mesopotamien: Spaturuk-Zeit und Friihdynastische Zeit, Freiburg: Uni- versitatsverlag, 1998, pp. 15-233.

Nissen, HansJ., Alt-Vorderasien, Munich: Oldenbourg, 2012.

The Early History of the Ancient Near East 9000-2000 BC, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1988.

Nissen, Hans J., Peter Damerow, and Robert K. Englund, Archaic Bookkeeping: Early Writing and Techniques of Economic Administration in the Ancient Near East, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993.

Nissen, Hans J., and Peter Heine, From Mesopotamia to Iraq: A Concise History, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009.

Roaf, Michael, Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East, Oxford: Equinox 1990.