The First Cities and States

1. This chapter discusses the emergence of hierarchical social organization and the development of urban settlement patterns. It focuses on the emergence of chiefdoms and states in the Middle East and in Mesoamerica. The First Cities and States

2. Attributes of the State • A state is a society with a formal, central government and a division of society into classes. • A state controls specific regional territory. • Early states had productive farming economies, supporting dense populations. • Often these populations were nucleated in cities. • The agricultural economies usually involved some form of water control or irrigation. • Early states used tribute and taxation to accumulate, at a central place, resources needed to support hundreds, or thousands, of specialists.

3. Attributes of the State (cont.) • States are stratified into social classes (e.g., elites, commoners, and slaves). • Early states had imposing public buildings and architecture, including temples, palaces, and storehouses. • Early states developed some form of record-keeping system, usually in a written script.

4. Jericho • The first towns arose around 10,000 years ago in the Middle East. • Located in modern Israel. • It was settled by the Natufians around 11,000 B.P. • Around 9,000 B.P., the town was destroyed and rebuilt with square houses with plaster floors and burials beneath the floors. • Pottery first appears at Jericho around 8000 B.P.

5. Çatal Hüyük • Located in the central part of modern Turkey. • It was possibly the largest settlement of the Neolithic. • It flourished between 8000 and 7000 B.P. with up to 10,000 people living at the site. • People lived in square mud-brick dwellings that had separate areas for secular and ritual activities. • Ritual spaces were decorated with ox images and motifs. • Burials were placed beneath the house floors. • Çatal Hüyük shows no signs of state-level sociopolitical organization.

6. The Elite Level • Halafian pottery (7500-6500 B.P.) • Delicate pottery associated with elites. • Used as evidence for one of the first chiefdoms in the northern part of the Middle East. • Ubaid pottery (7000-6000 B.P.) • First found and identified at the site of Tell el-Ubaid located in the southern part of modern Iraq. • Is associated with advanced chiefdoms and perhaps the first states in southern Mesopotamia.

7. Social Ranking • Egalitarian society • Most typically found among foragers and tribes. • These societies lack status distinctions except for those based on age, gender, and individual qualities, talents, and achievements. • Everybody is born equal, but during the course of their lives achieve different statuses. • Ranked society • These societies have hereditary inequality, but lack social stratification. • There is a continuum of status as individuals are ranked in terms of their genealogical distance from the chief. • Not all ranked societies are chiefdoms; only those in which there is a loss of village autonomy are called chiefdoms.

8. Chiefdoms • A chiefdom is a ranked society in which relations among villages as well as individuals are unequal. • Primary states emerge from competition among chiefdoms, as one chiefdom managed to conquer its neighbors and integrate them into a larger political unit. • Chiefdoms first appear in the Middle East around 7300 B.P. and in Mesoamerica around 3000 B.P. • One of the archaeological markers of chiefdoms is the presence of wealthy burials of children too young to have achieved or earned prestige of their own, but were born into elite families.

9. Ethnography and the Archaeological Record • Archaeologists use ethnographic case studies to help interpret the archaeological record. • Through ethnographic analogy, archaeologists generate hypotheses that can be tested in through archaeological fieldwork. • Archaeology is to ethnography as paleontology is to zoology.

10. Advanced Chiefdoms • Excavations at Tell Hamoukar suggest that advanced chiefdoms arose in northern areas of the Middle East independently of the developments in southern Mesopotamia. • The site covers 32 acres and was surrounded by a defensive wall. • There is evidence of large-scale food storage and preparation, which indicates that the elites were hosting and entertaining in a chiefly manner. • The excavators have also recovered seals used too mark storage containers.

11. The Rise of the State • Uruk Period (6700-5200 B.P.) • First cities appear • Centralized leadership • Settlements spread north into modern Syria and Turkey • Writing • First developed in southern Mesopotamia. • Was used to keep accounts, reflecting the needs of trade. • The first kind of writing in Mesopotamia is called cuneiform. • Temples and Writing • Temples managed herding, farming, manufacture, and trade. • Priests used cuneiform to keep track of the temples’ economic activities.

12. The Rise of the State (cont.) • Metallurgy is the knowledge of the properties of metals. • Smelting is the process of using high temperatures to extract pure metal from an ore. • After 5000 B.P., metallurgy evolved rapidly. • The Iron Age began around 3200 B.P. • Bronze Age Mesopotamian States • Large populations were densely concentrated in walled cities. • Secular authority replaced temple rule around 4600 B.P. • A well-defined class structure, with a complex stratification into nobles, commoners, and slaves, was present by 4600 B.P.

13. Other Early States • Indus Civilization • The Indus state flourished between 4600 and 3900 B.P. • The major cities, Harappa and Mohenjo Daro, exhibited urban planning with carefully laid out wastewater systems and residential sectors. • The Indus civilization developed its own writing system. • China • The first Chinese state belongs to the Shang Dynasty (3750 B.P.). • The Shang state was characterized by urbanism, palaces, human sacrifice, and distinct social classes. • The Shang state developed its own writing system. • The Shang state is well-know for its bronze metallurgy.

14. Early Chiefdoms and in Mesoamerica • Three centers of early chiefdom development in Mesoamerica. • Valley of Oaxaca • Valley of Mexico • Olmec lowlands • The Olmec chiefdoms flourished between 3200 and 2500 B.P. • The chiefly centers consisted of large earthen mounds arranged around a central plaza. • They also have large carved stone heads.

15. Early States in Mesoamerica • Long-distance exchange networks linked these three regions of early chiefdom development. • These chiefdoms evolved rapidly through the intensity of competitive interaction. • State formation involves one chiefdom incorporating several others into the emergent state that it controls. • By 2500 B.P., the city of Monte Albán in the Valley of Oaxaca was founded. • The city of Teotihuacan flourished between 1900 and 1300 B.P. (A.D. 100-700).

16. States in the Valley of Mexico • In 2500 B.P., changes in maize cultivation (such as the development of a strain with a shorter growing season) allowed small-scale cultivation to take place in the relatively northern Valley of Mexico. • By A.D. 1, a settlement hierarchy, with communities of different size, function, and types of structures, had emerged, with the religious center, Teotihuacan, at the top of the hierarchy, smaller cities between, and rural farming outposts at the bottom. • Such a three-tiered settlement hierarchy (capital city, smaller intermediate cities, and rural villages) is considered evidence of state organization.

17. Teotihuacan • In the case of Teotihuacan, this pattern was associated with intensive, irrigation-based agriculture. • After its peak (A.D. 100-700), Teotihuacan experienced a rapid decline in size and power, its population dispersed, and it was succeeded by the lesser Toltec state (A.D. 900-1200), and then the Aztecs. • As agriculture intensified and immigration brought greater population growth to the valley, the basis for the Aztec state developed.

18. The Origin of the State: Definitions • Early states are extensive territorial polities that acquire and incorporate new lands and communities. • Empires are mature, territorially large and expansive states that are typically multi-ethnic, multilinguistic, and more militaristic, with better developed bureaucracy than earlier states.

19. Hydraulic Systems (Wittfogel) • In certain arid areas, states have emerged to manage systems of irrigation, drainage, and flood control. • However, hydraulic agriculture is neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition for the rise of states. • There are many societies with hydraulic agriculture that are not states. • There are many states that developed without hydraulic agriculture. • Water control increases agricultural production, which increases population growth, which requires a political system that can regulate interpersonal relations and the means of production.

20. Long-Distance Trade Routes in State Formation • Some researchers believe that states emerged at strategic locations in regional trade networks. • Like hydraulic agriculture, long-distance trade is neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition for the rise of states.

21. Population, War, and Circumscription (Carneiro) • This is a multivariate theory for state formation in that it incorporates three factors working together instead of a single cause. • According to Carneiro, wherever and whenever environmental circumscription (or resource concentration), increasing population, and warfare exist, state formation will begin. • Circumscription • Physically circumscribed environments include small islands, river plains, oases, and valleys. • Social circumscription exists when neighboring societies block expansion, emigration, or access to resources. • This theory explains many, but not all, cases of state formation. • Highland New Guinea has environmental circumscription, warfare, and increasing population, but the region has never been host to a state.

22. Why States Collapse • Invasion • Disease • Environmental degradation • Canals in Mesopotamia feed the cities but also poisoned the land. • As the water evaporated from the canals, the water-borne salts became concentrated in the fields. • Mashkan-shapir • States collapse when they fail to do what they are supposed to do, such as maintain social order, protect themselves against outsiders, and allow their people to feed themselves.

23. The Mayan Decline • The Maya state of the Classic Period flourished between A.D. 300 and 900 (1700-1100 B.P.) in what is now southern Mexico, Guatemala, western Honduras, Belize, and El Salvador. • Copán was the largest site in the southeastern region of the Maya area. • Last inscribed monument has the date of A.D. 822. • Copán’s collapse was linked to erosion, soil exhaustion, and overpopulation.