Travel and the Making of North Mesopotamian Polities.pdf

Travel and the Making of

North Mesopotamian Polities

Lauren Ristvet

Department of Anthropology

University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

University of Pennsylvania

3260 South Street

Philadelphia, PA 19104

lristvet@sas.upenn.edu

The emergence of political complexity in northern Mesopotamia ca. 2600 b.c. con-

stituted an important cultural revolution which transformed how people within nascent

states understood their communities. This study explores the relationship between in-

clusive and exclusive political strategies and free and limited access to a range of po-

litical and ritual spaces in cities and the countryside. First, it considers how the spatial

organization of new cities constructed a particular type of political authority. Second, it

reanalyzes several cultic monuments in light of the Ebla texts and Syrian ritual scenes

and suggests that they formed pilgrimage networks that were interconnected with the

economic and political systems of emerging states. Movement through newly created po-

litical landscapes was thus critical to the development of a cognitive schema that made

sense of these polities.

Mesopotamia from 2600 to 2300 b.c. encom-

passed changing relationships between power

and place on many diferent scales, from the creation

of monumental palace and temple complexes, to new

urban forms and a new political landscape beyond

the city (ig. 1). The making of polities from discrete

villages and towns with their own complicated his-

tories changed both real and perceptual landscapes.

In northern Mesopotamia, controlling movement was

one method used to demonstrate authority and unite

the countryside. The journey served as an important

political metaphor as well as an actual quotidian expe-

rience. All social processes have an important spatial

component; people create particular spaces by acting

and moving in them, thinking about them, and con-

necting them to other symbols (Lefebvre 1991: 191).

Moving through a landscape—walking, running, or

riding—is the main way that people experience it.

For geographers and social theorists, movement or

control thereof is critical to the creation of spatial re-

gimes. Yi-Fu Tuan suggests that human understand-

ings of space develop out of movement (Tuan 1977:

35); similarly, Michel de Certeau describes walking

as one of the everyday practices that creates the lived

space of the city (Certeau 1984: 98). Cross-culturally,

travel and the acquisition of exotic knowledge are of-

ten politically valuable (Helms 1988) and have been

linked to state formation (Mann 1986). The embodied

nature of ritual and practical travel makes this method

of establishing authority particularly efective (Con-

nerton 1989). Channeling or limiting movement is a

clear way to demonstrate—and indeed create—politi-

cal authority (Dovey 2008; 2010). The construction

of walls, gates, streets, and monumental buildings

expresses a regime’s political power, and the archi-

tecture becomes part of the urban fabric, afecting

each citizen “in an unconscious, habitual, corporeal

way” (Hastorf 2009: 53) and making a particular form

of political authority seem natural. The space of the

state and its architectonic expression has an obvious

materiality that can be investigated archaeologically.

introduction

T he rise of political complexity in northern

LAUREN RISTVET

BASOR 361

Urkiš/Mozan

Chuera/

Abarsal

Šehna/

Tell Leilan

Gre Virike

Beydar/

Nabada

Karkamiš

! !

Hamoukar

Nineveh

Armanum

Hazna

Sweyhat

Brak/Nagar

! !

Jebelet

al-Beda

Halab

! !

Mabtuh

Emar

Tuttul

Ebla

Mari

Kish

Nippur

Umma

Susa

Šuruppak

Lagaš

Uruk

Rivers

Lakes

City

Capital

Poss. Loc.

Def. Loc.

Modern Border

0 50 100 200 300km

Abarsal

Urkiš

Fig. 1. Mesopotamia, 2600–2300 b . c .

Indeed, archaeology, with its emphasis on both small-

scale excavation and extensive survey, may be the

discipline best suited to engage with such questions

(Smith 2003: 21–22).

In Mesopotamia, as elsewhere, the relationship be-

tween space and power on a regional scale has been

most often addressed through the lens of landscape

archaeology. Since Robert McCormick Adams’s pio-

neering surveys beginning in the early 1960s (Adams

1966; 1981; Adams and Nissen 1972), scholars have

explored the rise of political complexity by analyzing

regional dynamics, especially connections between

settlements in probable state systems (Wilkinson et al.

2007; Ur 2010). These studies have grown more nu-

merous as new information, such as data from satellite

imagery, allows the reconstruction of ancient land-

scapes even in areas of-limits to most archaeologists,

such as Iraq (Hritz and Wilkinson 2006; Pournelle

2007). Approaches have focused on ancient agricul-

ture, the establishment of administrative hierarchies,

and the layout of urban centers, but unlike landscape

archaeology elsewhere in the world (particularly Me-

soamerica, North America, and Europe), there has

been little attention paid to ritual landscapes, ances-

tral geographies, and sites of memory (cf. Kouchoukos

and Wilkinson 2007: 13–16). One of the major themes

of the 2010 International Congress on the Archaeol-

ogy of the Ancient Near East (ICAANE) was entitled,

“Landscape, Transport and Communication,” yet of

the 37 papers presented, only 2 considered the sym-

bolic dimensions of landscape, and both of them ana-

lyzed irst-millennium art.

Here, I hope to develop an approach that will

supplement mainstream ecological and economic

approaches to ancient landscape by considering the

perception of landscape and its connections to politi-

cal change. Symbolic studies of ancient landscapes

have often relied upon a phenomenological approach,

which focuses on how human bodies experience a

particular space and how that process generates a cer-

tain set of meanings. Such approaches have considered

the relationship between diferent sites, and between

2011

TRAVEL AND THE MAKING OF NORTH MESOPOTAMIAN POLITIES

these sites and the natural landscape, by looking at in-

tervisibility, location, and access (Tilley 1994; Tilley

and Bennett 2008; Thomas 1999). Phenomenological

investigations usually begin with the experience of

moving through the landscape and consider how peo-

ple would see, approach, and otherwise interact with a

speciic place. Recent criticisms of phenomenological

landscape approaches have emphasized their problem-

atic elision between modern and ancient experiences

and understandings (Barrett and Ko 2009: 279) and

their lack of attention to power relations and social

domains besides the symbolic (A. Fleming 2006: 278).

The main problem of phenomenological approaches

in such cases remains the diiculties of “decoding”

emic perceptions of landscape and understanding

how they relate to power, particularly in the absence

of texts, iconography, and indeed (for the most part)

settlements.

The rich textual, iconographic, and archaeologi-

cal record of northern Mesopotamia in the mid-third

millennium, however, provides a speciic context in

which to study the symbolic aspect of a range of land-

scapes and analyze how they intersected with power

dynamics. Archives from Ebla and Beydar during the

24th century b.c. contain somewhere between 2,000

and 7,000 documents. 1 The majority of the texts are

administrative records, particularly accounts of tex-

tiles and metals, although there are some literary, ped-

agogic, diplomatic, and ritual texts (Pettinato 1979;

Ismail et al. 1996). Contemporary with these docu-

ments are several iconographic works, particularly

a complex glyptic tradition attested across northern

Mesopotamia, from Nineveh to the Mediterranean

(Marchetti 1998; Matthews 1997). Finally, 30 years

of intense archaeological investigation in and around

a number of third-millennium sites in Syria have pro-

duced extensive information on these settlements and

the changes they experienced coincident with urban-

ism. Studying these three lines of data allows us to

investigate how controlling movement helped deine

early states in northern Mesopotamia. The irst sec-

tion of this paper focuses on how building programs

in northern Mesopotamia created speciic political

spaces that both expressed and established domination

and, alternatively, allowed for the exercise of authority

by a wide range of actors, beyond the traditional elites.

The second section moves away from quotidian move-

ment in the city and the countryside to consider in-

stead ritual travel—pilgrimage—and its importance to

negotiating political authority in early states. The inal

section reconsiders the rise of complexity in northern

Mesopotamia in light of this discussion.

borders, walls, and open spaces

In northern Mesopotamia, controlling movement

was an important political strategy for cities and states.

On the level of the state, treaties from Ebla indicate

that authorities were eager to limit passage through

their territory and sought to regulate the activities of

merchants, messengers, and other visitors. Similarly,

archaeological evidence for ancient roads emphasizes

that there was no free movement through the country-

side. Instead, passage was constrained by the presence

of a dense social network. On the level of the city,

multiple fortiication walls channeled people through

gates and checkpoints, limiting access to political

spaces like palaces and underscoring their authority.

At the same time, certain urban plans emphasized free

access to open spaces, such as unwalled courtyards or

town squares that may have been meeting places for

assemblies. These diferent spatial strategies of control

probably both relected and allowed for political nego-

tiation between city councils, kings, and other political

actors in these newly emergent polities.

Limiting Access

1 Recent estimates place the number of documents in the Ebla

archive between 2,000 and 7,000 (Archi 1986a; Milano 1995: 1223).

At Beydar, ca. 250 tablets have been excavated (Ismail et al. 1996;

Milano et al. 2004). In addition to these archives, there are a small

number of contemporary (i.e., Early Dynastic [ED]) texts from Mari

(Charpin 1987), including some from excavations in the 1990s and

2000s, which have not yet been published (Cavigneaux and Colonna

d’Istria 2009: 51). There is also an ED text from Brak (Michalowski

2003), although most Brak texts come from the following Akkadian

period (Eidem, Finkel, and Bonechi 2001). There are no other tab-

lets before the Akkadian period from dry-farming, northern Meso-

potamia. For recent historical studies of this period in the north,

see Sallaberger 2007; and for the south, see Bauer, Englund, and

Krebernik 1998.

A nearly complete treaty found at Ebla, ARET

XIII 5, contracted between that state and Abarsal,

emphasizes the desire of these polities to control their

borders. 2 Only one statute in the entire treaty is not

concerned with travel and its consequences. There are

explicit rules about how caravans, messengers, cattle

herders, and other travelers should conduct themselves

2 This treaty is one of the most famous texts found at Ebla. The

most recent translation/commentary is that of Fronzaroli (2003),

but there are several important earlier treatments as well (Sollberger

1980; Pettinato 1986; Lambert 1987; Kienast 1988; Edzard 1992).

LAUREN RISTVET

BASOR 361

Fig. 2. Tell Leilan (ancient Šehna). The modern road runs through the ruins of the northern city gate in the outer city wall;

the walled acropolis is visible in the background (photo by author).

outside of their home territory, and discussions of mat-

ters such as extradition, legal domain over foreign

citizens, and property rights. Section 37 succinctly

expresses the treaty’s main theme: “without my per-

mission, no one can travel through my country, if you

travel, you will not fulill your oath, only when I say

so, may they travel” (ARET XIII 5: section 37). The

Ebla and Abarsal treaty is not alone in its focus on

borders and movement; a fragmentary treaty between

Ebla and Burman is also concerned with regulating

caravans (ARET XIII 5: III, 1′–3′). Of course, most

premodern states had notoriously weak borders. Out-

side the conines of the city and a small hinterland,

political control may have meant little. Polities like

Ebla have always had to contend with unwelcome

visitors and loss of population, given the ease with

which people could enter and leave the space of the

state—such as the later, stateless hab īru and habbātu

(Scott 2009:7). Moreover, premodern polities, unlike

their modern counterparts, were often noncontigu-

ous, and rarely overlapped completely with a given

territory (Ristvet 2008). Yet the insistence in Ebla’s

treaty on maintaining absolute control over territory,

despite its practical impossibilities, highlights an im-

portant emic understanding of the state. The Abarsal

treaty equates sovereignty—the exercise of efective

state power—with tight control over a kingdom and

its subjects.

Data from excavations within third-millennium

cities has revealed a similar emphasis on obstruc-

tion and highly controlled access to certain political

spaces within the city. Evidence for this can be seen

in the construction of walled cities, perhaps the dein-

ing archaeological site-type of this period (ig. 2). The

Kranzhügeln , sites located in the arid area of the south-

ern Jezirah, are even named after their distinctive dou-

ble walls. During the course of the third millennium

b.c., fortiications were constructed—often coincident

with urbanism—at nearly every site in the region,

including Mari (Margueron 2004: 85–88), Beydar

(Lebeau 1997), Mozan (Buccellati and Kelly-Buc-

cellati 1988), Arbid (Bielínski 1997), Leilan (Ristvet

2007), Hamoukar (Reichel personal communication),

Nineveh (Stronach 1994: 93), Taya (Reade 1973),

Chuera (Novák 1995), Bderi (Pfälzner 1988), Titriş

(Matney and Algaze 1995: 42–43), Kazane (Gates

1996: 292), Bazi/Banat (Otto 2006: 11–13), Tell es-

Sweyhat (Zettler 1997: 48–50), and Ebla (Matthiae

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TRAVEL AND THE MAKING OF NORTH MESOPOTAMIAN POLITIES

1998). 3 These fortiication systems were complex and

could include an outer city wall, often with a moat,

and a separate inner city wall. Both outer and inner

city walls were usually built of mudbrick, sometimes

above stone foundations. Many of these walls were

connected to earthen ramparts or glacis and could also

be fortiied with towers (Cooper 2006: 70). At several

sites, including Mari, Leilan, and Beydar, the inner

and outer fortiication walls date to the same period

and may have been built at the same time, perhaps at-

testing to a holistic plan to limit movement within the

city (Margueron 2004: 87). At others, like Chuera, the

two sets of fortiications were not used contemporane-

ously (Meyer 2007: 137). The elaboration of excavated

city gates at Bazi and Beydar, and the associated seal

impressions at Leilan, indicate the importance of con-

trolling movement into the city, and between the inner

and outer cities (Ristvet 2007: 203). Within the city,

the inner wall enclosed the citadel, usually comprising

the palace and associated public areas. The height of

the tell itself was often incorporated into these forti-

ications. In some cases, such as the Bazi gate build-

ing and the Leilan Akkadian Administrative Building,

these fortiications were the administrative space (Otto

2006: 11). Even if the upper city was not fortiied, the

only ingress was via narrow staircases, further limiting

access to these public quarters. Survey at Taya, where

the foundations of mid-third-millennium structures

are visible on the surface, has revealed noncontigu-

ous walls that blocked the roads in the suburban area

outside the fortiication walls proper, indicating that

even beyond the city proper, control of access was of

concern (Reade 1973: 158).

City walls mark the separation between city and

countryside. In Mesopotamia, as elsewhere, they were

part of the very deinition of a city (Parker Pearson and

Richards 1994: 24; Van De Mieroop 1997: 73). City

walls served to keep citizens in as much as they kept

invaders out (Burke 2008). Moreover, gates not only

controlled access to the city and the countryside, they

were also used to deine the populace in other ways. In

the Ebla and Beydar texts, some citizens were divided

into work teams depending on their KÁ , a Sumerian

term that literally means “city gate,” although it also

designates the neighborhood under that gate’s surveil-

lance (Ismail et al. 1996: texts 28–29). The city wall

and gate thus had a diferent signiicance for diferent

audiences.

Magnetometry survey, traditional survey, and lim-

ited excavations at Mozan, Chuera, Taya, Kazane, and

Leilan have illustrated that the main urban roads radi-

ated from the citadel to the city gates and were prob-

ably planned before the lower towns in these cities

were built (Creekmore 2010; Meyer 2007; Pfälzner

and Wissing 2004; Weiss 1990). At Leilan, Kazane,

and Chuera, large sections of these roads were sepa-

rated from urban quarters by blank walls, and the

entrance to most domestic structures was from nar-

row alleyways. A similar pattern obtains for some of

the surveyed houses at Taya, although entrances could

also be directly from the road (Reade 1973: 160), as

they are at Titriş (Matney 2000: 25). In general, the

streets channeled traic to the citadel, connecting the

two administrative spaces of the gate and the palace.

The extensive excavations at Beydar provide an

example of how the straight radial streets and a se-

ries of gates and staircases created a speciic sort of

journey into the city and the palace, one that empha-

sized political control (ig. 3). 4 Such a journey would

have begun at the circular city’s southern gate, one of

seven such gates. Travelers would have followed the

straight course of “Main Street,” which probably tra-

versed the outer city, and then passed through another

elaborate gate in the interior city wall, before com-

ing to the south gate of the upper city. Beydar’s upper

city was set on a series of stepped platforms, creating

a discontinuous monumental stairway that led to the

palace. Temples lined this processional space, chan-

neling visitors into the political heart of the city. As

visitors traveled across the upper city from the south

gate to the main palace entrance, they had to cross

four checkpoints, corresponding to each terrace and

the palace itself. At one of these checkpoints located

just east of Main Street and north of Temple D, a mas-

sive square tower was excavated. The tower clearly

controlled access to the oicial block—the city’s pal-

ace—and contained a small upper room, perhaps for

a guard. The road narrowed before approaching each

checkpoint, only widening slightly just before visitors

arrived at the palace.

4 This is a description of access to the acropolis based on mate-

rial from ield F dating to Phase 3a/b (Beydar Phase IIIb, ca. 2450–

2300 b.c.), based on Bretschneider 2003; Lebeau 2003; and Lebeau

and Suleiman 2007. It is also probably valid for the earlier Phase 2

palace (Debruyne 2003). The presence of elaborate inner city gates

and gatehouses is known from the Italian excavations at Beydar

(Milano and Rova 2003: 375).

3 The most notable exception to this list of fortiied settlements

is Brak, ancient Nagar, the most important site in the Habur Plains

during this period. The lack of identiied fortiications at Brak is

puzzling, and two separate surveys have failed to locate it (Ember-

ling et al. 1999: 23; Jason Ur personal communication).

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