RECONSTRUCTING THE RURAL ECONOMY OF SOUTHERN MESOPOTAMIA DURING THE THIRD MILLENNIUM B.C.
Open Access
- Author:
- Alrawi, Zaid Ismaeel
- Graduate Program:
- Anthropology
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- October 08, 2019
- Committee Members:
- José M. Capriles, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
José M. Capriles, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
David Webster, Committee Member
Kirk Dow French, Committee Member
Mark Munn, Outside Member
George Chaplin, Special Member - Keywords:
- Mesopotama
Archaeology
Third Millennium B.C.
Rural Economy
GIS - Abstract:
- This dissertation addresses the rural economy of southern Mesopotamia during the Third Millennium B.C. Previous research suggested that during the Early Dynastic, the region was characterized by a largely dispersed and decentralized settlement system that progressively became increasingly centralized with the emergence of the Akhadian Empire and the subsequent Ur III State. Our knowledge about the economic organization of rural Sumer, however, is largely based on ancient textual evidence, which is biased toward the perspective of city-based administrators. Focusing on the Girsu peripheral region of southern Mesopotamia, I explore landscape management, craft production, and exchange. I constructed a geographic information system including remote sensing images, field observations, published archaeological maps, and ancient textual evidence to explore the nature of settlement patterns and their change over time. I also relied on recent landscape changes in the research area to infer the level and scale of changes that took place over time using both geographic and ethnographic information. As a result, I identify a continuous landscape management system with some changes that mostly responded to regional environmental and social fluctuations. In addition, although according to textual evidence, sites such as Menfesh were subject of various levels of control by emerging city-states, the archaeological evidence informed by ethnographic analogies, suggest that by actively managing the marsh wetlands, the rural communities of southern Mesopotamia, were able to maintain a resilient level of political and economic autonomy.