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 [Page 2] 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.Ó 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, ÒThe Uruk Expansion: Cross-cultural Exchange in Early Mesopotamian CivilizationÓ). 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 [Page 3] 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 [Page 4] 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,Ó 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 [Page 5] 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 (ULYSSESÕ SAIL, 1988; ÒLong- distance Contacts, Elite Aspirations, and the Age of Discovery in [Page 6] Cosmological Context,Ó 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, ÒUlysses without Sails: Trade, Distance, Knowledge and Power in the Early Cyclades,Ó 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 [Page 7] 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 [Page 8] 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 Òorigins of the state.Ó 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, ÒThe Place of Interaction Studies in Archaeological Thought,Ó 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, ÒMemory and Deed: The Historiography of the Political Expansion of the Akkad State,Ó in Liverani, ed., AKKAD - THE FIRST WORLD EMPIRE, 1993), and Old Assyrian trade, where documentary evidence alone reveals an archaeologically invisible [Page 9] 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 (ÒExpansionary Dynamics of Some Early Pristine States,Ó AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, 1993), the theory no longer seems especially robust (see especially Philip L. Kohl, ÒState Formation,Ó in Patterson and Gailey, eds., POWER RELATIONS AND STATE FORMATION, 1987; and Norman Yoffee, ÒToo Many Chiefs? Or Safe Texts for the 90s,Ó 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 [Page 10] Algaze's earlier presentation, Harvey Weiss (ÒComment on Guillermo Algaze, ÔThe Uruk ExpansionÕ,Ó 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, ÒThe Genesis and Collapse of Third Millenium North Mesopotamian Civilization,Ó 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, ÒEthnographic Evidence for Wood, Boats, Bitumen and Reeds in Southern Iraq,Ó BULLETIN ON SUMERIAN AGRICULTURE, 1992; Jean- Claude Margueron, ÒLe Bois dans LÕArchitecture: Premier Essai pour Une Estimation des Besoins dans Le Bassin Mesopotamien,Ó BULLETIN ON SUMERIAN AGRICULTURE, 1992). The debate over resources [Page 11] 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 (ÒAnthropological Perspectives on Ancient Trade,Ó CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY, 1974) and Jane Schneider (ÒWas there a Pre- Capitalist World-System?Ó, 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 [Page 12] 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,Ó 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 [Page 13] point forcefully made by Joan Oates (ÒTrade and Power in the Fifth and Fourth Millenium BC: New Evidence from Northern Mesopotamia,Ó 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, ÒLate Uruk in Greater Mesopotamia: Expansion or Collapse?Ó, 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 [Page 14] 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 [Page 15] 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 (ÒExpansionary Dynamics...,Ó 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, ÒThe Flag Follows [Page 16] Trade: An Essay on the Necessary Interaction of Military and Commercial Factors in State Formation,Ó 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, ÒPower and Distance in the Uruk Mesopotamian Colonial System,Ó 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 [Page 17] 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, ÒTrade and Power...,Ó 1993, p. 417). Until then Algaze's book provides the best guide we could have to the Uruk expansion [Page 18] 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 Ò5000 year world systemÓ (e.g., Andre Gunder Frank, ÒThe Bronze Age World System and Its Cycles,Ó 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.