Archaeologists interested in primary and secondary state formation have often focused their research on inter-regional exchange and cross-cultural interaction. The organization of exchange in the Uruk expansion - the world's first colonial trading system - was examined in a collaborative project of archaeologists and geochemists to determine sources of ancient bitumen (natural petroleum tar) artifacts from an early Mesopotamian trading colony in southeastern Turkey. Sixty-eight bitumen samples from the site of Hacinebi were compared with samples from other contemporaneous sites and source areas in Greater Mesopotamia. Stable carbon isotope and molecular organic geochemical analyses of these bitumen artifacts and bitumen source material were used to : 1) geographically source the artifacts, 2) identify the different regions involved in trade, and 3) identify diachronic changes in the organization of the trading network. Preliminary results suggest bitumen came from multiple, culturally and politically distinct areas of Mesopotamia to the region of Hacinebi Tepe, where Local Anatolian exchange networks were already in place. Segregation of bitumen sources at Hacinebi according to cultural context supports the model of a high degree of Mesopotamian economic autonomy at this trading colony. The integration of geochemical and archaeological methods provided us with a perspective on trade and inter- regional interactions that would have been impossible to gain with classic archaeological techniques alone.
Throughout the prehistory and history of the Near East, natural petroleum tar or bitumen was commonly used for waterproofing, mastic, sealing, mortar, medicine, magic and even warfare. The people of ancient Mesopotamia manipulated this adhesive to lower its melting temperature in order to conserve fuel in an area where timber was a scarce resource. Not only was heat employed to change the chemistry of the bitumen to make it more workable, but the bitumen's chemistry was manipulated so less heat was required to re-melt it. Since the widely-accepted theory that bitumen was a recycled utilitarian good is based upon modern ethnographic examples, the purpose of this paper is to present data and a methodology which will enable a reconstruction of patterns of reuse and bitumen in the archaeological record.
This research examines broad regional patterns of interregional trade for the world's first colonial trading system, the economic expansion of southern Mesopotamia into southwest Iran and southeast Anatolia. Stable carbon and deuterium isotope analyses of bitumen artifacts from several Uruk enclaves and colonies show diachronic changes in trade routes as well as changes in the nature of the Uruk expansion from the Middle to Late Uruk periods. Hacinebi Tepe, a Chalcolithic Anatolian site located on the upper Euphrates River had material primarily from northern Mesopotamia in the period before the Uruk expansion. These findings
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