The evolution of the earliest complex state-level societies and cities from small sedentary communities took place in southern Mesopotamia between 8000 and 5000 cal yrs BP during the ‘Ubaid and Uruk periods. Attempts to explain this transition often discount the role of environmental change and tend to evaluate available archaeological evidence for urban-based state development either within a static environmental context or assuming conditions similar to those of the present. This practice is no longer tenable given newly available paleoenvironmental records for the region. Post-glacial sea-level rise resulted in the inundation and creation of the Arabo-Persian Gulf, and, as the marine transgression slowed in the Middle Holocene, rich coastal and aquatic habitats formed in southern Mesopotamia. These habitats favored the establishment and growth of ‘Ubaid Period communities and the efficient transport of goods, ideas, and people throughout the region. High water tables also promoted early experi...

Early State Formation in Southern Mesopotamia: Sea Levels, Shorelines, and Climate Change

The emergence of early Mesopotamian (Sumerian) civilization must be understood within the framework of the unique ecology and geography of the alluvial lowlands of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers during the late 5th and 4th millennia b.c. The former gave Mesopotamian societies important advantages in agricultural productivity and subsistence resource resilience not possessed by contemporary polities on their periphery, while the latter gave them enduring transportational advantages. This material imbalance created opportunities and incentives that made it both possible and probable that early Mesopotamian elites would use trade as one of their earliest and most important tools to legitimize and expand their unequal access to resources and power. Given this, a still hypothetical (but testable) model is presented that accounts for the precocious socioeconomic differentiation and urban growth of southern Mesopotamia in the 4th millennium as social multiplier effects inadvertently set in motion by evolving tr...

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/320005

Initial Social Complexity in Southwestern Asia

The emergence of early Mesopotamian (Sumerian) civilization must be understood within the framework of the unique ecology and geography of the alluvial lowlands of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers during the late 5th and 4th millennia B.C. The former gave Mesopotamian societies important advantages in agricultural productivity and subsistence resource resilience not possessed by contemporary polities on their periphery, while the latter gave them enduring transportational advantages. This material imbalance created opportunities and incentives that made it both possible and probable that early Mesopotamian elites would use trade as one of their earliest and most important tools to legitimize and expand their unequal access to resources and power. Given this, a still hypothetical but testable) model is presented that accounts for the precocious socioeconomic differentiation and urban growth of southern Mesopotamia in the 4th millennium as social multiplier effects inadvertently set in motion by evolving trade patterns. This trade was first largely internal, between individual southern polities exploiting rich but localized ecological niches within the Mesopotamian alluvium during the Late Ubaid and Early Uruk periods. By the Middle and Late Uruk periods, however, inherently asymmetrical external trade between growing southern cities and societies at their periphery in control of coveted resources gained more prominence. In due course, import-substitution processes further amplified the one-sided socio-evolutionary impact on southern societies of these shifting trade patterns. Unequal developmental rates resulting from the operation of these processes over time explain why the earliest complex societies of southwestern Asia appeared in southern Mesopotamia and not elsewhere.

Initial social complexity in southwestern Asia: The Mesopotamian advantage. Commentaries. Author's reply

Tiwanaku trade patterns in southern Peru

Inca specialist D'Altroy (2001, Uruk Mesopatamia and Its Neighbours: Cross-Cultural Interactions in the Era of State Formation, School of American Research, Santa Fe, NM, p. 445) has written, “Uruk Mesopotamia has stood as the model for the study of the rise of the state for several decades.” Work on this problem of the origin of complexity has remained one of the foci of scholarly research even these several decades after the completion of many of the classic and key studies of Uruk culture and its neighbors in adjoining areas. At the same time, the questions asked, the size and richness of the empirical record, and the interpretations of various scholars have undergone significant change. These changes parallel scholarly trends in studies of similar phenomena in other areas of the world. This article reviews key questions that are currently being asked about societal complexity with a primary focus on the cultures and societies of late fifth and fourth millennia BC Mesopotamia. In doing so, new perspectives and interpretations on perhaps the earliest complex societies are synthesized and assessed.

Studying the Development of Complex Society: Mesopotamia in the Late Fifth and Fourth Millennia BC

This is a splendid book, one that belongs on the shelves of everyone with a serious interest in its subject. A wideranging comparative and conceptual exposition of issues, not just another set of non-intersecting, largely descriptive summaries of regional data, it brings together an outstanding group of scholars. With a lengthy delay that at least must have led to valuable consultation and reflection after their meeting in Santa Fe in 1992, they and the editors have managed to meet the challenge of producing the synergies inherent in the School of American Research's Advanced Seminar approach. China is a regrettable exception, but all of rest of the world's primary or \"nuclear\" civilizations are represented and influence the outcome.

Scale and Complexity in Archaic States. Archaic States. Gary M. Feinman and Joyce Marcus, editors. School of American Research Press, Santa Fe, NM, 1998. xiii + 430 pp., figures, tables, bibliography, index. $60.00 (cloth); $24.95 (paper).

Robert McCormick Adams

Papers

Scale and Complexity in Archaic States. Archaic States. Gary M. Feinman and Joyce Marcus, editors. School of American Research Press, Santa Fe, NM, 1998. xiii + 430 pp., figures, tables, bibliography, index. $60.00 (cloth); $24.95 (paper).