URBAN SOCIETY IN THE MIDDLE
EAST
Introduction
1.
Environmental Recap: The locus for Sumerian urban civilization was
largely in areas falling outside of the 200 mm minimum rainfall for natural
agriculture. This largely comprised the
lower flood plains of the Tigris Euphrates Rivers and the slightly higher land
of the lower Zagros foothills and the Susiana Plain to the southeast. It also included the marshes at the head of
the Gulf where numerous hills rose above the system of streams and rives that
ran through the area.
This region, generally south of Babylon, was one
of unpredictable hydrology and extremes of climate. While the Euphrates River
is relatively placid and thus conducive for large-scale irrigation, the Tigris
is much less predictable, given to violent floods, and runs through a
deeper-cut bed, making predictable agriculture impossible. This contrasts greatly with the Nile
situation and was a major factor in shaping Sumerian conceptions of the
universe and society.
2. By the
end of the Ubaid cultural period (4500-3500) the focus of cultural evolution in
the Middle East shifted from the Fertile Crescent and adjoining highlands to
the alluvial plains of the great river valleys with Sumer, then Egypt, and a
little later the Indus valley and the area of Central Asia north of the Iranian
Plateau, all of which evolved forms of “urban society”. The highland societies of the Fertile
Crescent retained a post-Neolithic development based on extensive farming,
although they did develop small towns with more complex organizations and
economies.
2. The
period extending from the Ubiad into the Uruk marks the second of V.Gordon
Childe's "Revolutions”. He recognized it as the abrupt breakthrough from
the Neolithic to a literate complex society based on managerial complexity,
irrigation technology, and hierarchical government. Above all he stressed writing.
While the emergence of urbanism actually took palace over several
centuries in the later 4th millennium BC it did occur more rapidly
than did the Neolithic.
Urban Society
1. General traits as presented by archaeologists
and historians:
- Irrigation technological advance allowing
intensification of food production in otherwise arid zones.
- Intensified settlement and population density.
- Larger settlements (towns and cities).
- Job specialization.
- Differentiation of social rank.
- Emergence of institutionalized political and
religious structure with bureaucrats, administrators and priests.
- Writing
- Ability to codify
measurements and social rules
- Replacement of tradition-based kinship rules by
codified laws that transcended kinship.
2. Factors possibly contributing to rise of
urbanism:
- Climate change and population pressures: While
fall in the level of the Persian Gulf may have played a role climate cannot
be regarded as definitive
- Uncontrollable population increase (also
suggested as a cause) likewise cannot be confirmed.
- Irrigation technology as a determinant: After the Samarran adoption of irrigation
the managerial needs for maintaining and extending such a system stimulated
creation of a hierarchical administrative system that became the core of
complex government (Wittfogel). However, this is not necessarily so. The earliest systems were very small and
clustered along natural waterways. Also
there is a lit of ethnological evidence that large centralized administrations
are not necessary for maintaining such systems.
- Interaction between farmers and nomads and the
need to reach far afield for needed raw resources led to trade and social
complexity: complementary subsistence production (agriculture v pastoralism),
warfare and defense, long-distance communication networks and the administrative
institutions necessary to maintain and control them.
- Predisposition to further evolution: The experiments of the Neolithic (social
hierarchy, formal religion, trade, warfare, technological development) had
familiarized people with all of the features that came together in urban
society and naturally developed through the Umm Dabhagiya/Samarra/Ubaid/Uruk
sequence
to urban society of
the Uruk Period.
Settlement
Patterns (Brief Summary)
1. In the
Ubaid the river plains were rather sparsely populated with settlements of
roughly equal size paralleling natural river courses and scattered through the
marshy, well-watered areas north of the Gulf.
Minor irrigation systems supplemented these natural water sources.
2. During the Early Uruk Period this changed with
greatly increased populations subsisting on expanding irrigation systems and
living in a hierarchical system of large cities and small satellite
settlements. Settlement expanded to fill the entire area of Southern
Mesopotamia. This pattern arose both in
Sumer and in the Susiana Plain to its southeast in the second half of the 4th
millennium BC.
3. The Sumerian settlement hierarchy by Late Uruk
consisted of a four-tiered system with cities like Uruk (240 acres) itself at
the head. At this time there is little evidence for conflict and much evidence
for the progressive expansion of farming across the plains at a time when the
city-state pattern was becoming established.
This later pattern shows continued growth of the
primary centers (At its height Uruk was a city of 900 acres or 400 hectares)
and overall population (the Sumerian “City-States”) while the actual number of
settlement declined somewhat. In this
period – the Early Dynastic – the general political situation was one of a number
of large cities with a few satellite villages, all of more or less equal power
and size, competing for irrigation land and (later) political power). This situation could explain the rise of
walled cities and the decline of secondary towns, more vulnerable to
attack.
4. During
this period the area to the north of Babylon where dry farming was possible
continued to develop in a more traditional manner. Thus a large number of small farming villages, mostly without
artificial irrigation, extended throughout the area previously occupied by the
Hassuna and Halaf cultures.
5. In the Early Dynastic Period the settlement pattern changed. As the Persian Gulf continued to recede the river courses cut more deeply into their beds and the smaller ones were “robbed” by the major, leading to a smaller number of natural water courses. This led to construction of larger and longer canals to compensate for the reduction of natural water sources. It also led to the clustering of the cities along the fewer waterways, leading to increasing competition for water and land.
6. Following the Akkadian period there was a major expansion of canals in an attempt to recover land. However, while successful in the short-term by the early 3rd millennium it appears that this intensive use of smaller irrigable areas led to salinization and loss of production and widespread land abandonment.
1. The
Ubaid period saw the beginnings of the urban architectural pattern that was
characterize Sumerian civilization. This consisted of a dense agglutination of residential houses
clustered around a central temple.
2. The
temple precinct was the focal place of the city. It marked a sacred place that in many cases held a succession of
temples that extended from the Ubaid for over 2000 years. The temple and place were dedicated to the
City God – the divinity that “owned” the town and for whom its entire
population worked as servants.
3.
Through time the temple form evolved from a small rectangular structure
with a T-shaped internal form to a massive complex that included living areas
for priests and servants and storage rooms for temple-owned produce, standing
on an multi-staged platform or ziggurat.
4. In the Early Dynastic Period, the “Palace”
came to share this central precinct with the temple. Together these components manifested the complementary aspects of
City State administration and organizational structure.
5. The
surrounding residential areas were arranged along narrow streets and alleys and
the entire city usually surrounded by a wall for protection. Beyond the city walls lay the fields of the
City God and the rural population of the City State who worked in them.
6. In the
early periods there was little attached craft production (artisans employed by
the state and located in special work areas).
Most craftwork was carried out in the residential context as a “cottage
industry.” Later by the Early Dynastic
Period more specialized patterns and their architectural settings emerged (for
instance textile “factories” utilizing female workers, public sector
metallurgy), although private production always remained as part of the
economy.
7. Two
forms of residential houses existed. In
general, lower status housing consisted of irregularly arranged, multiple,
rectangular rooms opening onto an outside or interior court. There is little evidence that multiple
kinship group living spaces were included.
By contrast, higher status houses possessed two or more living areas of
similar form opening from a single central patio. In this larger form it is
believed that several sons and their families lived in component “apartments”
within the house, which was owned by a powerful landowner.
1. Three
main loci of agriculture:
- garden plots within the confines of
settlements.
- irrigated land watered by canals from the
rivers.
- peripheral grazing and hunting lands.
2. In the gardens the date palm was the most
abundant crop. It flourishes in salty
soil and needs little irrigation in southern Mesopotamia where its deep roots
tap the groundwater. Also a variety of
vegetables and fruits were grown in these garden plots.
3. The
irrigated fields bordering the canals and rivers produced the bulk of staple
food and surpluses. Planting occurred in November after the meager winter rains
and cereals ripened by April (much of the high flood waters of the rivers that
occurred in the early Spring had to be kept from destroying the crops by being
diverted into swampy areas or redistributed through complex canal systems).
This rather unpredictable and complex Mesopotamian pattern was very unlike the
Nile regime that provided water when it was most needed for the planting and
growth cycle and irrigated by natural flooding.
Construction and maintenance of the canals was a
major task for the temples and places.
The texts talk of large forces of laborers, captives and maybe slaves
used in this endeavor. Ironically
success in watering the land resulted in progressive salinization and lack of
productivity.
4. Staple
crops included wheat and barley, legumes, vetch and flax (for fiber), and
sesame.
5. Land was both public and privately owned. The temples, and later palaces, owned large
quantities of land and employed large forces of agricultural laborers to work
the fields. These were fed and
sometimes housed by the institutions for which they worked. Private landownership always existed
although its dimensions are not clear.
It appears that some important families owned lands for many generations
and rivaled the public ownership in the economic and political power that this
afforded. Other private owners may have
been high officials.
6.
Peripheral lands formed a buffer between competing cities and between
the cities and surrounding nomads. It
provided grazing land for the sheep and goat that were kept in large flocks by
the city authorities. The rural
inhabitants who were the city’s stock herders were like, their land, somewhat
peripheral to urbanism. They lived
close to the nomads of the surrounding areas and at times of hardship moved
from the rural to pastoralist activity – they formed the interface between the
two dominant ways of Middle East life.