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Mesopotamian buildings of the Ubaid and Uruk periods (fifth–fourth millennia BC). a: The reconstruction of a large tripartite house from Tell Oueili, Ubaid phase 0 (from Huot 1991); b: Eridu, plan of the level VII ‘temple’; c: Part of the Tell Abada village (from Jasim 1989, fig. 2). The larger tripartite houses are highlighted in gray; d: 3D perspective view of the Eanna monumental complex at Uruk-Warka (elaborated by C. Alvaro)
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Long-term excavations at Arslantepe, Malatya (Turkey), have revealed the development, in the fourth millennium BC, of a precocious palatial system with a monumental building complex, sophisticated bureaucracy, and a strong centralization of economic and political power in a nonurban site. This paper reconsiders, in comparative terms, the main featu...
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... Evidence for heritable wealth inequality, differentiated settlement patterns, economic specialization, and wool production is more obvious in contexts after about 4000 BC. Heritable status (e.g., prestige goods in child burials), large scale public architecture, and urban-sized settlements occurred across the region in the Late Chalcolithic 2 (LC 2) and LC 3 periods (Frangipane, 2018a;Lawrence and Wilkinson, 2015;McMahon, 2020;Stein, 2012;Ur, 2010). This relatively rapid formation of cities and states paralleled similar developments in southern Mesopotamia and Iran (Frangipane, 2018a). ...
... Heritable status (e.g., prestige goods in child burials), large scale public architecture, and urban-sized settlements occurred across the region in the Late Chalcolithic 2 (LC 2) and LC 3 periods (Frangipane, 2018a;Lawrence and Wilkinson, 2015;McMahon, 2020;Stein, 2012;Ur, 2010). This relatively rapid formation of cities and states paralleled similar developments in southern Mesopotamia and Iran (Frangipane, 2018a). In the north, small spindle whorls, ideal for spinning wool, predominate over larger ones at archaeological sites (McMahon, 2020, p. 302). ...
... Neolithic herders may have kept their sheep and goats to older ages because herd sizes were small, grass plentiful, and there existed a cultural sentiment against killing valuable stock early in life. In any case, old-skewed kill-off was by no means unique to the periods in which there is clear political economic development (Frangipane, 2018a;Stein, 2012) and those typically mentioned in the same breath as the "secondary products revolution" or "fiber revolution" (McCorriston, 1997;Sherratt, 1983). ...
... Archaeologists who have explored the site for over a century, have provided unparalleled insights into the early development of cities and states. Uruk certainly was the center of this development (Adams and Nissen 1972;Algaze 2013;Frangipane 2017;Liverani, Bahrani, and Van de Mieroop 2006;Rothman 2004;Selz 2020). The importance of Uruk's ongoing scientific research, preservation, and development for visitors was emphasized when UNESCO recognized it as a World Heritage site in 2016 (World Heritage Committee 2016). ...
This article demonstrates recent technological advancements enabling the creation of digital twins for expansive real-world terrains. Focusing on the archaeological site Uruk-Warka in southern Iraq the German Archaeological Institute deployed the Delta Quad Pro, a winged UAV equipped with vertical take-off and landing capabilities. This UAV captured 32,000 aerial images of the ancient city and its immediate environment. Each image was precisely geotagged using an integrated DGNSS receiver. Utilizing advanced 3D photogrammetry software, we synthesized these images into a single georeferenced model. The outcome was a detailed triangulated mesh, comprising of one billion triangles and 1024 8k-resolution texture files, representing a 40 square kilometers terrain. When rendered in a game-engine and applying the new technologies Nanite and Streaming Virtual Texture, this massive dataset can be visualized in real-time. The result is ‘Uruk-VR,’ a digital twin of the Uruk-Warka archaeological site, most of which has never been investigated. Basic tools have been implemented to annotate features and measure distances within the Uruk-VR. The methodologies showcased here are scalable for creating digital twins of diverse terrains. Uruk-VR's potential extends to research, education and conservation, exemplifying how game engines can seamlessly integrate vast and diverse geospatial data in 3D space.
... This is best witnessed at Arslantepe, with the emergence of a local kingdom developing a palatial system instead of the temple-based systems of Syro-Mesopotamia (Frangipane 1993(Frangipane , 1997. The storage of hundreds of seal impressions and metal objects of complex technology clearly draw a picture of local rulers being in control over raw materials, their production, consumption and trade (Frangipane 2018;Palumbi et al. 2017). An almost identical situation is present at Tülintepe, at Altınova plain in Elazığ (Özdoğan 2020). ...
In Anatolian archaeology, as it is the case in the neighbouring regions of the Near East and Aegean, the Bronze Age is considered in three consecutive stages, however, defined not in accordance with metallurgical achievements, but on changing modalities in social and economic structures. Before the beginning of the Early Bronze Age there were fully established farming communities across almost all of Anatolia, though subsisting mainly on family-level farming with no indication of complex social structuring. Likewise, during the final stages of the Late Chalcolithic there was a notable decrease in population, particularly in Central and Western Anatolia. In this respect, the south-eastern parts of Anatolia differ considerably from the rest of the peninsula, developing a complex socio-economic model in connection with the bordering regions of Syro-Mesopotamia. This pattern changed by incoming migration from the north, with subsequent dense population patterns in the eastern and western parts of the peninsula. Following the reorganization and consolidation of this system, the Early Bronze Age is characterized by urbanisation, institutionalized long-distance trade, intensification and revolutionized agricultural and weaving practices. The urban model that developed in Anatolia differs considerably from those of the Near East both in size and in organization. The Middle Bronze Age is marked by state formations, which by the Late Bronze Age developed into empires with their own foreign policies. Concerning the role of metals, copper and lead were used since the Neolithic and arsenic bronze by the Late Chalcolithic. The Bronze Age may be viewed as a time of mass production and development of complex technologies in casting, alloying and forming.
... Crowding and rising inequality may have triggered conflicts following appropriation of other groups' resources resulting in higher interpersonal violence 35 . The Chalcolithic period saw also the rise of the first protostates 36 . Following the proposal that these were low-capacity states 37,38 , their ability to settle conflicts within their populations was seemingly still quite limited. ...
How did interpersonal violence develop in early human societies? Given that homicide records are only available for the more recent period, much of human history remains outside our purview. In this paper, we study violence trends in the very long run by exploiting a new dataset on cranial trauma and weapon-related wounds from skeletons excavated across the Middle East, spanning the pre-Classical period (around 12,000–400 bce). The dataset includes more than 3,500 individuals. We find evidence that interpersonal violence peaked during the Chalcolithic period (around 4,500–3,300 bce). It then steadily declined during the Early and Middle Bronze Ages (around 3,300–1,500 bce) and increased again between the Late Bronze and the Iron Age (1,500–400 bce). By documenting variations in violence patterns across a vast temporal and geographical scale in an incredibly rich historical setting, we broaden perspectives on the early history of human conflict.
... Royal tombs laid at the core of a landscape of power that stressed closeness to the king and his kin, including human sacrifices during the reigns of the first pharaohs. Quite significantly, there is no trace of massive divine institutions like the contemporary southern Mesopotamian temples or the palace/temple complexes discovered at Arslantepe (Turkey) (Frangipane 2018). Therefore, royal burials symbolised a particular form of power that depended on personal links and blood ties (real or fictional) revolving around a strong leader/king, at least in Upper Egypt and Nubia. ...
Situated at the crossroads between Northeast Africa, the Mediterranean, the Near East and the Indian Ocean, ancient Egypt was a strategic pathway that facilitated contacts and the circulation of peoples, products and ideas across these vast regions. Sometimes the monarchy took the initiative in these contacts, whereas in other cases, mobile populations, local leaders, itinerant merchants and independent individuals fulfilled such a role. Egyptian regions participated in these exchanges in distinctive ways. Hence, control over wealth flows, access to coveted goods, contacts with privileged trading partners and attracting royal support represented significant moves in their strategies. A constant tension between different political models (centralized, confederacies of cities and territories, regional kingdoms) reemerged through the millennia. This often led to the collapse of the central authority (as it happened around 2160 bc ) and was inspired, at least in part, by the political impact of trading activities.
... BC. Heritable status (e.g., prestige goods in child burials), large scale public architecture, and urban-sized settlements occurred across the region in the Late Chalcolithic (LC) 2 especially LC 3 periods (Frangipane, 2018;Lawrence and Wilkinson, 2015;McMahon, 2020;Stein, 2012;Ur, 2010). This relatively rapid formation of cities and states paralleled similar developments in southern Mesopotamia and Iran in the 4 th millennium BC (Frangipane, 2018). ...
... Heritable status (e.g., prestige goods in child burials), large scale public architecture, and urban-sized settlements occurred across the region in the Late Chalcolithic (LC) 2 especially LC 3 periods (Frangipane, 2018;Lawrence and Wilkinson, 2015;McMahon, 2020;Stein, 2012;Ur, 2010). This relatively rapid formation of cities and states paralleled similar developments in southern Mesopotamia and Iran in the 4 th millennium BC (Frangipane, 2018). By the middle of the 4 th millennium BC (LC 4), southern Mesopotamian influence extended into the north, with enclaves of southern Mesopotamian people established at Habuba Kabira, Area A of Hacinebi, and other places (Algaze, 1993;Stein, 1999). ...
... Most political economic models argue that throughout the 4 th millennium BC, urbanism in northern Mesopotamia was supported by expansion of agricultural production via extensification, wool production, and trade (Frangipane, 2018;McMahon, 2020;Styring et al., 2017). In fact, several influential hypotheses posit that wool and other secondary products were This preprint research paper has not been peer reviewed. ...
... After the societal collapse in the Late Chalcolithic (e.g. Di Nocera, 2013;Frangipane, 2018) Arslantepe experienced an innovative metallurgical development in the course of which new techniques of metal processing were practiced. Exclusively copper Andreas Hauptmann, Nikolas Heil, Gian Maria di Nocera and Thomas Stöllner Keywords Arslantepe VI B2, South-East Anatolia, Early Bronze Age, copper production, crucibles, slag petrology, partial smelting, "free silica slag", lead isotope analyses was smelted, as evidenced by ores, slags, and crucibles excavated from inside the site. ...
This paper presents results of archaeometallurgical finds from Arslantepe VI B2 and observations and geoscientific analyses of ores and ore deposits in East Anatolia which are connected with this site. Function and technology of Early Bronze Age crucible smelting in a small scale domestic mode of production are discussed. Ore and rock inclusions in slag and lead isotope analyses are consistent with the origins of various copper sources on the Black Sea coast in the north (Artvin/Murgul, Trabzon) and in the south (Ergani Maden, Upper Mesopotamia) and broadens the Early Bronze Age trade of the Kura Araxes cultural network. The petrology of slags also from Çayönü Tepesi and Nevali Çori shows their formation by partial (eutectic) smelting processes and the non-liquation of refractory materials. The model of deliberate fluxing in smelting copper is proven to be disputable. Smelting of copper was performed in portable crucibles of surprisingly large size with air supply from below.
... It was precisely the ecological differences in a restricted area, combined with potentially expansive cereal production, though subject to the need for irrigation and water management, that were probably the main reasons for the early introduction of economic centralisation and related redistribution practices dating back to the very (Adams 1966;Pollock 1999). The 'redistribution' system based on the centralisation of staples in various forms (offerings, tributes) by high-ranking persons and their redistribution in public and élite environments probably made it possible to more efficiently coordinate and manage a potentially rich production system varying in different zones and exposed to risks, making it possible for products to circulate among different sections of the population and attenuating the effects of crises that might arise in some micro-zones (Adams 1966;Frangipane 2018a). This type of coordination and economic control was linked to a society based on potentially stratified and unequal kinship-based structure, composed of large and competitive households (Pollock 1999;Frangipane 2007). ...
... There are very few recent archaeological data on this region, but thanks to the information obtained from a few 5th millennium BCE sites (Ubaid period) and, most of all, from 4th millennium large urban centres such as Uruk-Warka (Uruk period), we may offer hypotheses about the gradual development of a highly centralised organisation (Adams 1966;Frangipane 1996;Pollock 1999). The interference by the political and religious authorities in the basic economic life of the population has been further demonstrated by the hundreds of seal impressions found in many public areas of the Uruk period and the thousands of pictographic tablets found in the main city of Uruk-Warka (Nissen et al. 1993;Nissen 2015;Frangipane 2018a). ...
... The role of private components in the production activities must have played an increasingly important role as the urban dimension of society expanded (Algaze 2008Emberling 2015). Urbanisation played a key role in Mesopotamia and was one of its distinctive features (Adams 1981(Adams , 2004Frangipane 2018a), stimulating specialisation and structural interconnection between different cohabiting sectors of the population. ...
... It was precisely the ecological differences in a restricted area, combined with potentially expansive cereal production, though subject to the need for irrigation and water management, that were probably the main reasons for the early introduction of economic centralisation and related redistribution practices dating back to the very (Adams 1966;Pollock 1999). The 'redistribution' system based on the centralisation of staples in various forms (offerings, tributes) by high-ranking persons and their redistribution in public and élite environments probably made it possible to more efficiently coordinate and manage a potentially rich production system varying in different zones and exposed to risks, making it possible for products to circulate among different sections of the population and attenuating the effects of crises that might arise in some micro-zones (Adams 1966;Frangipane 2018a). This type of coordination and economic control was linked to a society based on potentially stratified and unequal kinship-based structure, composed of large and competitive households (Pollock 1999;Frangipane 2007). ...
... There are very few recent archaeological data on this region, but thanks to the information obtained from a few 5th millennium BCE sites (Ubaid period) and, most of all, from 4th millennium large urban centres such as Uruk-Warka (Uruk period), we may offer hypotheses about the gradual development of a highly centralised organisation (Adams 1966;Frangipane 1996;Pollock 1999). The interference by the political and religious authorities in the basic economic life of the population has been further demonstrated by the hundreds of seal impressions found in many public areas of the Uruk period and the thousands of pictographic tablets found in the main city of Uruk-Warka (Nissen et al. 1993;Nissen 2015;Frangipane 2018a). ...
... The role of private components in the production activities must have played an increasingly important role as the urban dimension of society expanded (Algaze 2008Emberling 2015). Urbanisation played a key role in Mesopotamia and was one of its distinctive features (Adams 1981(Adams , 2004Frangipane 2018a), stimulating specialisation and structural interconnection between different cohabiting sectors of the population. ...
The scholarship on Bronze Age Mesopotamian economies has been split between the construction of broad theoretical narratives aimed at explaining macro-economic features and long-durée phenomena, and the development of models for making sense of micro-economic and utilitarian aspects of early urban life. The former traditionally relied on the top-down application of super-models borrowed from other social disciplines and on textual sources, whereas the latter mostly relied on excavated material culture for building bottom-up reconstructions. The paper aims at proposing a framework for integrating multiform empirical datasets and theoretical models for achieving a more complex vision of early Mesopotamian economies, following an interdisciplinary social science perspective. Considering the abundant evidence on the decision-making of institutional bodies for the study period, particular focus will be given to the concept of “political economy” and how it can be applied to the societies of Early Bronze Age Mesopotamia.
... It was precisely the ecological differences in a restricted area, combined with potentially expansive cereal production, though subject to the need for irrigation and water management, that were probably the main reasons for the early introduction of economic centralisation and related redistribution practices dating back to the very (Adams 1966;Pollock 1999). The 'redistribution' system based on the centralisation of staples in various forms (offerings, tributes) by high-ranking persons and their redistribution in public and élite environments probably made it possible to more efficiently coordinate and manage a potentially rich production system varying in different zones and exposed to risks, making it possible for products to circulate among different sections of the population and attenuating the effects of crises that might arise in some micro-zones (Adams 1966;Frangipane 2018a). This type of coordination and economic control was linked to a society based on potentially stratified and unequal kinship-based structure, composed of large and competitive households (Pollock 1999;Frangipane 2007). ...
... There are very few recent archaeological data on this region, but thanks to the information obtained from a few 5th millennium BCE sites (Ubaid period) and, most of all, from 4th millennium large urban centres such as Uruk-Warka (Uruk period), we may offer hypotheses about the gradual development of a highly centralised organisation (Adams 1966;Frangipane 1996;Pollock 1999). The interference by the political and religious authorities in the basic economic life of the population has been further demonstrated by the hundreds of seal impressions found in many public areas of the Uruk period and the thousands of pictographic tablets found in the main city of Uruk-Warka (Nissen et al. 1993;Nissen 2015;Frangipane 2018a). ...
... The role of private components in the production activities must have played an increasingly important role as the urban dimension of society expanded (Algaze 2008Emberling 2015). Urbanisation played a key role in Mesopotamia and was one of its distinctive features (Adams 1981(Adams , 2004Frangipane 2018a), stimulating specialisation and structural interconnection between different cohabiting sectors of the population. ...
We plan to synthesize an understanding of the broad regional economies of Bronze Age and Iron Age Europe. This synthesis will consider variation in the economies along three dimensions: variation in the subsistence economies reflecting local conditions of resource availability, technologies, and population densities; variation in exchange reflecting regional comparative advantage in commodity production and trade; and variation in political economies reflecting specific bottlenecks in production and distribution allowing for mobilization and circulation of surpluses in wealth and staples. The goal will be to consider how an emerging world economy, especially involving metals, textiles, weapons, slaves, and other highly valued objects created emerging commodity exchange, market forces, power differentials, and population movements. This will consider structures of craft production, means of transport, and political and symbolic uses of objects. We expect to see the evolution of an integrated economy as more products move distances and become integrated into market-like exchanges. Our focus will be on areas that we know best: Scandinavia, Germany, Hungary, and Italy, but we hope to position these regions within a broader understanding of macro-economic transformations.KeywordsMarxian economic historyMode of productionAncient economic historyBronze AgeIron Age
