Chapter 1. Before Things Worked: A “Low-Power” Model of Early Mesopotamia

Richardson, Seth; Ando, Clifford

doi:10.9783/9780812294170-002

Cited by 34 publications

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“…This dogmatic way of imagining ancient social actors does not easily lead to the exploration of political subjectivities and to the investigation of the terms of the social contract or to the symbolic dimensions of political domination. These long-lasting paradigms of orientalism in Assyriology were progressively disproved in the second half of the 20 th century and in more recent studies on the nature of political power in ancient Western Asian polities (Darling 2013: 15-32;Svärd 2016;Richardson 2012Richardson , 2017. Important developments in the study of the economy in general -and labour in particular, specifically in Mesopotamian societies -have attested a wide variety of work contracts (Postgate 1974;Jursa 2015;Radner 2007), and that private property was widespread (Démare-Lafont 2016;Radner 1997Radner , 2007.…”

Section: Thinking and Rethinking Ancient Power: A Historical Settingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Also, rather than an all-powerful despotic state, we see a more complex and multi-layered political reality, which faces mistakes, hesitations, power conflicts and straightforward failures. Richardson has made a strong case for the 'weakness' of Mesopotamian states in the 2nd millennium BC (Richardson 2012(Richardson , 2017. Although the Neo-Assyrian Empire is usually portrayed as the zenith of Mesopotamian imperial power and the highest achievement of administrative centralization, it still struggles to make things work.…”

Section: Thinking and Rethinking Ancient Power: A Historical Settingmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Building Walls, Social Groups and Empires: A Study of Political Power and Compliance in the Neo-Assyrian Period

Lorenzon

Wallis

2023

AsiAnA

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This contribution aims to use social history and social theory to investigate political power and compliance with authority in ancient Western Asia, through the case study of Neo-Assyrian imperial building projects. Our first aim is to discuss the realities of construction work in the Neo-Assyrian Empire, focusing on the building process both through literary sources and archaeological data. Our second goal is to understand the role played by these building sites in the strengthening of local and supra-local political orders, in the consolidation of social group boundaries, and in the construction of political subjectivities of the ancient social actors involved. Our reflection sheds light on the new interpretative possibilities – and challenges – that integrating social theories, archaeological work, and language technology may create.

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Section: Thinking and Rethinking Ancient Power: A Historical Settingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Thinking and Rethinking Ancient Power: A Historical Settingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Building Walls, Social Groups and Empires: A Study of Political Power and Compliance in the Neo-Assyrian Period

Lorenzon

Wallis

2023

AsiAnA

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“…These polities are now seen as fraught with internal strife, ever struggling to implement their limited power over surrounding communities (e.g. Richardson 2017). Second, processual models are now considered as too narrow (Yoffee 1993;McIntosh 2005;Kenoyer 2008); councils, competing clans and other social structures that were more flexible and less hierarchical could also organise large populations into statelike entities (e.g.…”

Section: Complicating the Processual Early Statementioning

confidence: 99%

Complicating an early state: a social network analysis of agents in Wari art (c.AD 700–850)

Gibbon

Knobloch²,

Jennings³

2022

Antiquity

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Processual models of the early state envisioned hierarchical societies with stable social and political structures. More recent research, however, has questioned this vision. Here, the authors explore Middle Horizon (AD 700–1000) Wari state iconography to provide an example of early state social and political organisation from the Central Andes. Social network analysis (SNA) of human figures (‘agents’) depicted in Wari art identifies links between individual agents, as visualised on objects and between the objects’ findspots. The results suggest that the Wari state was more heterarchical than previously imagined. Similar applications of SNA could be used to explore the iconographic evidence of other early, pre-literate states around the world.

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“…In the Akkadian case, the empire moniker has led to assumptions of equivalence with much later political units, such as the Neo-Assyrian or Roman Empires. However, early Mesopotamian polities had far less power over the inhabitants of the territory they sought to control and faced more significant internal resistance (Richardson, 2012(Richardson, , 2017. As such, rather than a surprising collapse, the rapid decline of the Akkadian empire might be seen as a return to more normal circumstances of city-state competition and endemic warfare (Yoffee & Seri, 2019).…”

Section: Collapse Events? 52 Ka and 42 Kamentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate change and early urbanism in Southwest Asia: A review

Lawrence

Gibbons

Gruchy

2021

WIREs Climate Change

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During the Late Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age (c. 6500-4000 BP), the Fertile Crescent in Southwest Asia saw the earliest development of cities anywhere in the world. Climate and environmental factors are generally considered to be significant in these changes because in pre-industrial societies they directly relate to food production and security. The emergence of cities also coincides with a decoupling of settlement and climate trends, suggesting urbanism may have enhanced the adaptive capacity of societies to withstand changing climatic conditions. Urban forms followed a variety of different trajectories, with a much more sporadic and episodic history in the dry farming plains of the North and West of the study region compared to the stable build-up in the irrigated South. Although models dealing with urban growth have emphasized the differential access to agrarian resources as a key driver in promoting hierarchical social systems, climate has rarely been explicitly discussed. In contrast, so-called "collapse" events brought about by extreme, but short-lived, climate changes such as droughts have been blamed for declines in urban and rural populations, social complexity, political systems, and entire empires. However, the extent to which these "collapses" are visible in the archeological record, let alone how far they can be attributed to climate changes, is a matter of intense debate. The archeological and historical record, the variegated environmental conditions, and the deep time perspective on complexity available, make the Fertile Crescent an ideal laboratory for assessing causal links between urban formations and climate fluctuations.

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Chapter 1. Before Things Worked: A “Low-Power” Model of Early Mesopotamia

Cited by 34 publications

References 0 publications

Building Walls, Social Groups and Empires: A Study of Political Power and Compliance in the Neo-Assyrian Period

Building Walls, Social Groups and Empires: A Study of Political Power and Compliance in the Neo-Assyrian Period

Complicating an early state: a social network analysis of agents in Wari art (c.AD 700–850)

Climate change and early urbanism in Southwest Asia: A review

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