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Understanding climate change in the Middle East (ME) is crucial because people’s living environment depends on rain-fed crop systems. It remains unclear if the ME climate would be affected by the Saharan vegetation collapse at the end of the mid-Holocene (MH). Proxy data suggest a transition from humid to more arid ME conditions during the period o...
¿A qué nos referimos con civilización? ¿En qué momento de la historia de la humanidad podemos ubicar el surgimiento de la civilización? Por civilización entendemos el momento en que se constituyen sociedades complejas estratificadas, a menudo con formas estatales de organización y gobiernos institucionalizados, que tienen su sede en la ciudad que f...
The multifaceted behavioral and ecological flexibility of pigs and wild boar (Sus scrofa) makes study of their domestication both complex and of broad anthropological significance. While recognizing contextual contingency, we propose several “pathways” to pig domestication. We also highlight the diversity of pig management practices. This diversity...
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... The appearance of the first rich assemblage of cretulae and the rise of the earliest administrative system, wholly unexpected for such an early period even until a few decades ago, occurred precisely in a society of this kind, in a large complex of storerooms in the Burnt Village at Sabi Abyad on the Balikh. This storage complex must have been associated with a suprafamily and characterized by the collective organization of goods storage and distribution, made necessary by an economic system such as the one I have hypothesized (Akkermans 1996;Frangipane 2000Frangipane , 2016a. The most plausible reason for this sharing of goods is that certain sectors or members of the community had to absent themselves from the village for a certain period of time to engage in other activities such as pastoralism or hunting, as Akkermans and Duistermaat (1996;also Frangipane 2000also Frangipane , 2016a have suggested, leaving the harvest in safekeeping and guaranteeing regulated access to it on their return. ...
... The appearance of the first rich assemblage of cretulae and the rise of the earliest administrative system, wholly unexpected for such an early period even until a few decades ago, occurred precisely in a society of this kind, in a large complex of storerooms in the Burnt Village at Sabi Abyad on the Balikh. This storage complex must have been associated with a suprafamily and characterized by the collective organization of goods storage and distribution, made necessary by an economic system such as the one I have hypothesized (Akkermans 1996;Frangipane 2000Frangipane , 2016a. The most plausible reason for this sharing of goods is that certain sectors or members of the community had to absent themselves from the village for a certain period of time to engage in other activities such as pastoralism or hunting, as Akkermans and Duistermaat (1996;also Frangipane 2000also Frangipane , 2016a have suggested, leaving the harvest in safekeeping and guaranteeing regulated access to it on their return. ...
... The existence of elites with administrative or religious power in Northern Mesopotamia as well as in Anatolia is well known from the Late Chalcolithic period (Frangipane et al. 2001;Stein 2012;Sagona and Zymanski 2015;Frangipane 2016;2018;Massa 2016). In this geographical context and chronological period, archaeological data on settlement patterns, architectural structures, metallurgy and burial customs suggest the presence of both horizontally and vertically stratified societies. ...
... The appearance of the first rich assemblage of cretulae and the rise of the earliest administrative system, wholly unexpected for such an early period even until a few decades ago, occurred precisely in a society of this kind, in a large complex of storerooms in the Burnt Village at Sabi Abyad on the Balikh. This storage complex must have been associated with a suprafamily and characterized by the collective organization of goods storage and distribution, made necessary by an economic system such as the one I have hypothesized (Akkermans 1996;Frangipane 2000Frangipane , 2016a. The most plausible reason for this sharing of goods is that certain sectors or members of the community had to absent themselves from the village for a certain period of time to engage in other activities such as pastoralism or hunting, as Akkermans and Duistermaat (1996;also Frangipane 2000also Frangipane , 2016a have suggested, leaving the harvest in safekeeping and guaranteeing regulated access to it on their return. ...
... Traditionally, economists take for granted that statehood entails such institutional capacity, whereas historians seek to explain the evolution of state and fiscal capacity (Besley -Persson 2009). Notably, Mesopotamian scholars correctly stressed the link between the rise of early states and institutions of governance (bureaucracies) on the one hand (Frangipane 2016;Garfinkle 2008;Gibson -Biggs, eds. 1987;Law et al. 2015;Wright 1978) and violence (Garfinkle 2014;Hamblin 2006; McMahon 2012) on the other, but failed to recognize the historical origin of revenue-raising mechanisms. ...
According to an ever-growing social scientific literature, the power of the state to raise revenues (levy taxes) is considered one of the pillars of state capacity, alongside the control of violence, rule of law, and public goods provision. Although sporting the earliest recorded examples of states in human history, the link between state building and taxation remains an understudied topic in Ancient Near Eastern history. In this contribution we aim at filling this gap by using the case study of Early Bronze Age Ebla, in Syria. Indeed, the wealth of information stemming from the thousands of cuneiform tablets forming the Ebla Royal Archives (ca. 2390-2300 BC), and the almost 50 years of uninterrupted systematic archaeological exploration of the site of Tell Mardikh, provide truly unique data-sources for studying the mechanics of state building in this region. This contribution aims at proposing a general framework for conceptualizing Ebla’s fiscal structure within the phenomenon of the Upper Mesopotamian state formation process, that can also provide some general insights into the origin of the fiscal order and state capacity in premodern state-level societies.
... Although on the northwestern edge of northern Mesopotamia, the 4-ha Anatolian site of Arslantepe adds further evidence for the complexities of economy and authority in small sites in the fourth millennium BC. In LC3-4, elite residences, a temple-palace complex, large-scale storage, administration of goods, and massproduced ceramics reflect specialization and hierarchies of wealth and power (Frangipane 1994(Frangipane , 2012(Frangipane , 2016(Frangipane , 2018Vignola et al. 2014). Small settlements, like cities, could house ritual and administration (Frangipane 2009;Rothman 2009). ...
... Clay sealings are a powerful proxy for the complexity of urban economies. Increased sophistication in imagery and expansion of sealing practices are associated with widening power and status in the fifth millennium BC and ultimately with the growth of administrative systems in the fourth millennium BC (Frangipane 2016;Pittman 2001). Container sealings suggest mobility of resources, while door sealings may be evidence of corporate or institutional ownership and management of resources or storage. ...
Cities generate challenges as well as confer advantages on their inhabitants. Recent excavations and surveys in northern Mesopotamia have revealed extensive settlements with diverse populations, institutions, extended hinterlands, and mass production by the early fourth millennium BC, comparable to well-known evidence for cities in their traditional homeland of southern Iraq. However, early northern Mesopotamian cities incorporated low-density zones and flexible uses of space not yet identified in southern Mesopotamia. Evidence for violent conflict in northern Mesopotamian cities also raises questions about urban sustainability; cities succeeded despite new sources of social stress.
... In this period, the settlement recorded a significant expansion of the occupation that was accompanied by a social and functional differentiation of the inhabited areas including large residential elite buildings and two monumental tripartite temples (Temple C and Temple D) (Frangipane, 2016b). The hundreds of mass-produced ration-bowls associated with the numerous clay sealings found in these temples (Guarino, 2008;D'Anna and Guarino, 2010;Frangipane, 2016a) also witness public, possibly religious, institutions and forms of administrative control. Moreover, a complex of four large rooms connected to Temple C was probably used for hosting craft activities as it is confirmed by the discovery of ochre, fragments of metalliferous minerals, a large number of unused obsidian arrowheads, and, under the floor of room A850, by a rich "cache" of several obsidian cores and hundreds of pieces of debitage. ...
... Whereas, on the other hand, the macroscopic facies of the Nemrut obsidian shows a porphyritic raw material with low knapping quality (see for example Frahm, 2012). Recent studies (Robin et al., 2015;2016a) demonstrate that, within the volcano, a single outcrop different from the other according to its high knapping quality and homogenous facies has been used. It is the so-called "Sıcaksu-Nemrut" obsidian. ...
Arslantepe is a höyük (= tell) located within the fertile Malatya Plain, near the right bank of the Euphrates River. The site is excavated since more than 55 years by the Italian Sapienza University archaeologists and reveals periods from at least the sixth millennium BCE until the final destruction of the Neo-Hittite town. This long sequence records the changing relations and connections with various civilizations and regions of the Near East.
Using the chemical characterization of a large group of artefacts (388 analysed), we propose, in this paper, a new sourcing of the obsidian used by the inhabitants of Arslantepe from the beginning of the Late Chalcolithic to the end of the Early Bronze Age. The method is based on the portable XRF analyse of the artefacts and their attribution to a geological source using our database collected within the ongoing “GeObs” project (resp. D. Mouralis) in the Eastern Anatolia as well as previous published data in Central Anatolia and Caucasus. Moreover, the chemical characterization is coupled with the techno-functional determination of the artefacts.
The present study conducted by an interdisciplinary research group allows to precise the procurement of obsidian in Arslantepe and to better understand the external relations of the site over time. This research also questions and discusses the preferential choice of the obsidian sources through time, in relation with various factors such as distance, quality and abundance of the raw material as well as socio-cultural influences.
L’apparition de la notion de propriété est un changement sémantique majeur affectant les transactions économiques au sein d’une société. Nous en cherchons les traces archéologiques avant l’apparition de l’écriture. Cela présuppose l’analyse des régimes de circulation des choses entre les hommes avant la propriété, pour caractériser le régime de celle-ci. Une équipe d’archéologues a proposé de reconnaître, dans des mottes de scellement trouvées à Tell Sabi Abyad (Syrie), des traces de propriété. Nous examinons lesdits objets, et leur mode de mise en œuvre, pour vérifier si cela satisfait la définition syntaxique que nous reconnaissons dans les pratiques antiques et actuelles. La réponse est partiellement positive : nous avons affaire à l’apparition des prémices non verbaux d’une expression de la propriété.
I intend to study the closing devices impressed into reverses of the archaic sealings excavated by the Leonard Woolley expedition (1922–1934) at the Sumerian city of Ur. I will focus on the question how these devices guaranteed safety of the contents of the sealed entities and objects. I will then compare my findings with data from similar functional contexts.
Urban growth in northern Mesopotamia in the early fourth millennium BC was accompanied by an increase in clay container sealings, reflecting the intensified movement and management of resources and manufactured items. The diverse imagery impressed into these sealings includes a human‐ibex grasping a pair of snakes, a bird‐human, and other composite figures. The human‐ibex in particular has been identified as a ‘shaman’, but this is not an appropriate term. The early fourth millennium BC was a period of enormous social and economic upheaval generated by the growth of cities and institutions. Composite figures may have expressed resistance to increasingly structured lived experiences, acknowledging the paradoxes of urban living and affirming the continued presence of the unexplainable.
