The Uruk Expansion: Culture Contact, Ideology and Middlemen

Abstract

The Mesopotamian landscape was shaped by urbanization, population growth and trade during the 4th millennium BC. The Uruk expansion, an expansion of south Mesopotamian material culture to nearby and far-off regions started about 3700 BC. North Mesopotamian and Anatolian settlements formed a network with south Mesopotamia, which collapsed about 500 years later. This period has puzzled archaeologists for a century with different explanations being given for what this expansion was, how it happened and for what reasons. In this article I will focus on the interconnection between the two regions and how this may have created the expansion. I will use the archaeological material to study possible ideological changes. To explain how this happened I will show how the north Mesopotamian settlements functioned as middlemen in a trading network where they connected the resource-rich areas in Anatolia with the alluvial plains. The north Mesopotamian settlements exploited their position between the two regions where they could control the trading routes. This led to a lot of changes in the northern regions that do not necessarily mean that this was an occupied region or a region where decisions were dictated by leaders in south Mesopotamia.

The Rise of Pastoralism in the Ancient Near East

“…Spatial and social distance between distinct agricultural and herding communities has further been seen as encouraging pastoralists to fill a crucial role in trade. According to Sundsdal (2011), pastoral nomads along the margins of the settled Mesopotamian world acted as "middlemen" transporting goods and ideas between lowland and highland cultures and between southern and northern Mesopotamia. This notion of pastoral nomads as vectors of exchange between highland and lowland regions is a reoccurring, though not well supported, theme in Near Eastern prehistory (Alizadeh 2010;Bernbeck 1992;Glatz and Casana 2016).…”

I. Ara Dönem’den Orta Krallığa (M.Ö. 2200-1950): Mısır Devleti’nde “yayılmacı” ideolojinin oluşumu ve aşağı Nübye’ye uygulanışı

“…Hem taş/maden ocaklarını işletmek hem de (bunlar yerliler tarafından işletiliyorsa bile) üretilen malları/hammaddeleri Aşağı Dicle-Fırat ile Aşağı Nil"e getirtmek için, komşu bölgelere bu işleri üstlenecek ehil aracılar göndermek gerekiyordu. Mısırlıların Doğu Akdeniz kıyılarından mal akışını garanti etmek için Filistin"de (Çıvgın, 2014a), Sümerlerin Anadolu-Suriye ve İran mallarına ulaşmak için Kuzey Mezopotamya"da ticari üsler-istasyonlarkoloniler ve ileri karakollar kurmalarının (Sundsdal, 2011) altında yatan neden buydu. Ortada, erken uygarlıkların merkez, henüz uygarlıkla tanışmamış olup ticari/kültürel alış-verişler sonucunda karmaşık toplum özellikleri göstermeye başlayan komşu bölgelerin periferi/çevre konumunda bulunduğu bir ticari işleyiş vardı.…”