22: Uruk environment & state formation, 3800-3100 BCE (Hoe vs Plow)

Guests: Liyan, Bella, Kirra

First, another debate poem! Hoe, child of the poor, bereft even of a loincloth, starts a quarrel with the Plow. A surprising amount of Sumerian literature boils down to the logistical complexity of various tasks facing early state institutions, not least among them the upkeep of various agricultural tools.

Then: we've made it to the Uruk period! We'll start with a look at the climate of the alluvium during the 4th millennium BCE, focusing on the dense web of rivers and canals crisscrossing the Tigris-Euphrates alluvial plain. Rivers offered the settlements on their banks effortless travel (on reed boats), endless reeds (for building, burning, and making boats), and the best imaginable conditions for large-scale field irrigation (at least in the short term). What happens when they start to dry up?

Then, a tour of the fields in the shadow of the new temples dominating Uruk life. What was the relationship between these new state organs and the millennia-old agricultural villages on their peripheries? How did their irrigation networks adapt to allow new, more efficient, less pleasant methods of year-round cultivation?

Then, we look at the process of state formation during the Middle & Late Uruk period (ca 3800-3100 BCE), starting with a few definitions of the state. We review the process through which particular households (and other household-like social institutions) consolidated social, economic, political, and religious authority among their neighbors and trade partners.

Then, we talk about how regular exchange between households might have developed over time into a permanent tribute obligation to these particular households, and the relationship between more intensive trade and social complexity.

Finally, Enlil (god of kingship, king of the gods) intervenes in the debate between Hoe and Plow. Praise be to Nisaba!

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Works cited