Mesopotamia Before History by Charvát Petr; Charvat Petr;

Author:Charvát, Petr; Charvat, Petr;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2005-03-11T16:00:00+00:00

Nevertheless, there is still something missing in this sketch of Uruk culture society. The statement that in most cases we can hardly descend deeper into the structure of component communities of the Uruk corporate entity holds true insofar as it pertains to the Uruk culture sphere proper. A notable exception that will instantly spring to the mind of anyone well acquainted with the subject concerns, of course, Tepe Gawra. This site does not fall within the sphere of Uruk material culture (Algaze 1986, esp. pp. 125–126, 131) and, by displaying a socio-cultural pattern completely different from the Uruk one, reminds us that we will do well to remember that as with a number of similar early systems, the Uruk culture settlement pattern was discontinuous and its density varied, leaving here and there pockets to accommodate human groups organized along completely different lines. Needless to say, in this aspect also, archaeological studies are likely to add some precision to the relations between Gawra and the Uruk culture sphere, as the Gawra assemblage had, in fact, preceded the Late Uruk expansion (Gut 1992, 32 and 1995). The reader has without doubt noticed that with Uruk culture society, a version of a primeval ‘welfare state’, the keyword was not display—that was reserved for the gods—but corporate undertaking and corporate consumption. Everyone worked according to his or her appointment and everyone received his or her remuneration accordingly. The gods commanded time, space and fertility, the cardinal categories of the Uruk world, and received the earth’s most desirable goods—precious metals, stones and the like. People bowed to them and, at the very best, only discharged the mysterious life-giving force belonging to the realms of the guardians of heaven through the persons of EN and NIN. They nonetheless made the calculations and schedules, arranged things, administered, wrote out lists, vouchers and receipts, kept a vigilant eye on the enemy, sweated over the plough handles or cast fishermen’s nets, grew almost deaf from incessant hammering on metal, and dared the devils of faraway mountains and gorges to bring home the desired goods. They all received what the gods measured out for them. Theirs was a world of community, a world to be shared out like the same kind of cake baked in the same manner by the same procedure thousands of kilometres apart. Tepe Gawra was different and, to our eyes, much more normal. After the last egalitarian period of XIA, the layers XI–IX were characterized by the emergence of ascribed social status, expressed by means of ostentatious display of wealth brought in (also) as the result of surplus collection in the form of reciprocity (sealing of mobile commodity containers). Intra-group solidarity was maintained by means of commensality and, in less successful periods (XI, possibly an initial period of the emergence of a new social order, and IX) by institutionalized redistribution (sealing of storage spaces) which, however, instantly vanished in times of plenty when each of the local social foci drew its wealth from its own source,

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