The Uruk period in southern Mesopotamia

Pollock, Susan

essay

The Uruk period in southern Mesopotamia

uruk mesopotamia & its neighbors : cross-cultural interactions in the era of state formation • Sante Fe, Nm • Published In 2001 • Pages: 181-231

By: Pollock, Susan.

Abstract
Pollock suggests in this essay that many general scenarios that seek to explain developments in the fourth millennium in Greater Mesopotamia are based on assumptions about the political economy of the southern alluvial lowlands that require reconsideration. She argues that there were substantial differences in economic organization within southern Mesopotamia between the so-called Nippur-Adab and Warka areas, the latter where the city of Uruk-Warka is located. The author suggests that the Nippur-Adab subregion was characterized by a collection of relatively autonomous polities and was in fact more stable than the Uruk-Warka area, but with a less integrated and less 'complexly' organized economic system. She contends that societies in the Uruk area seem to have relied more heavily on the extraction of tribute using repressive means and may have been dominated by a single powerful center, the city of Uruk-Warka itself. In this article Pollock reevaluates data relevant to an assessment of demographic trends and argues that the results contradict the widely accepted scenario in which the Nippur-Adab area lost a substantial portion of its population to the Warka area in the Late Uruk period (p. 182).

Settlement patterns

Cultural participation

Production and supply

Organization and analysis of results of research

Ceramic technology

Lithic industries

Internal migration

Late Chalcolithic Mesopotamia

HRAF PubDate

2000

Region

Middle East