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Structure and Dynamics: eJournal of
Anthropological and Related Sciences
UC Irvine
Peer Reviewed
Title:
Critique of Guillermo Algaze’s “The Sumerian Takeoff”
Journal Issue:
Structure and Dynamics, 1(1)
Author:
Adams, Robert McC., University of California, San Diego
Publication Date:
2005
Publication Info:
Structure and Dynamics, Social Dynamics and Complexity, Institute for Mathematical Behavioral
Sciences, UC Irvine
Permalink:
http://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/5m8043vf
Keywords:
First cities, Southern Mesopotamia, Competitive Advantage, Multiplier effects, Innovations, Trade
patterns, Complexity
Abstract:
Drawing upon modern economic theorists, Guillermo Algaze emphasizes continuous, interlocking,
self-reinforcing processes of growth and external trade as keys to "takeoff" toward southern
Mesopotamia's regional leadership in the fourth millennium B.C. But the search for historical
causality, always complex, would better avoid supposed universals of individual motivation
as determinate roots of behavior everywhere and concentrate in the first instance on fuller
consideration of the specific context and time. Without denying a role for Algaze's factors, I suggest
that ever-present risks of subsistence variability were probably more decisive in encouraging
social stratification and a higher degree of regimentation within locally contending city-states
there. Enhanced military effectiveness then surely played a part, alongside trade and possibly
overshadowing it, in ensuing regional dominance.
My discomfort with this article is primarily with its didactic,
positivistic tone, rather than its ably argued, if somewhat too narrowly
focused, contents. We are informed already in the Abstract, on the authority
of “economic geographers” without knowledge of the ancient Near Eastern
background, that “regional variations in economic activity and population
agglomeration are always the result of self-reinforcing processes of resource
production, accumulation, exchange, and innovation.” And again, “that
emergence of early cities in the southern Mesopotamian alluvium must be
understood in terms of, both, the unique ecological conditions that existed
across the region during the fourth millennium… and the enduring
geographical framework…” (emphases added).
Such apodictic statements have the somewhat musty flavor of
pronouncements of limited sets of law-like regularities that were popular in
anthropology some decades ago. They tend to impose a self-enclosed,
reductionistic framework on processes of change that were highly complex
and cannot be understood so deterministically. And while prehistoric
archaeological findings alone may not (presently) be sufficient to uncover
many of the complexities involved, I think it is vital also to take fully into
account the deepening and amplification of causal interpretations that later
Mesopotamian (and other) historical materials make possible.
Here is a very brief synopsis of a more balanced, and I think more
plausible, explanatory framework:
1.) The account given of southern Mesopotamian convergence of
environmental and socio-technical advantages ignores major factors of
unpredictability in agricultural productivity, due primarily to fluctuations in
irrigation water supplies. Resultant risks had to exercise a decisive influence
on long-term developmental change and transformation.
2.) Maximization of agricultural output was surely an attractive target that
was always sought but only sometimes approached. Serious, repeated
shortfalls could be catastrophic when fields plowed and seeded in
October/November later failed to receive adequate water supplies to produce
expected (or sometimes any) harvests.
3.) This placed a premium on large-scale, centrally controlled harvests, on
longer-term storage, on imposing discipline needed to restrict popular
consumption in order to maintain reserves, and then quite naturally, on
prioritizing distribution in favor of elites and inner circles of assured loyalty.
4.) Southern Mesopotamian peer-polities were all commonly exposed to
these and related risks, although in any given year there were gross
differences in how deeply they were individually affected. Some, with
Adams: Critique of Guillermo Algaze’s “The Sumerian Takeoff”
1
relatively full granaries, thus became targets of any urban neighbors facing
subsistence crises. Whether by persuasion or compulsion, an in-gathering of
rural population – urban growth – both maximized GDP in good years and
assured a population base permitting larger defensive forces. Of course, it
could also exacerbate an internal crisis in a bad year (or sequence of years).
5.) Taken together, this uncertainty led toward growing, but also
increasingly stratified and regimented, urban populations. Comparatively
well disciplined military cadres thus became available, whether for offensive
or defensive service. To my knowledge, there were no comparable factors of
inducement then operating in surrounding regions.
6.) I would argue that the “self-reinforcing” maximization of an inherent
ecological advantage through good, benevolent management, initiated
through what Algaze later describes as “the central role of trade as a spur,”
simply does not constitute an adequate explanation for the southern
Mesopotamian “Takeoff”. The process he highlights certainly must have
played a part. But no less, and I think probably more, important was the
military superiority these southern city-states attained, gained in their
constant rivalry for highly promising but risky and uncertain subsistence
resources, that accounts for southern city-state growth and (to a large degree
coercively imposed) advances in socio-political-technical as well as military
organization.
7.) Of course, the absence of critical resources in southern Mesopotamia –
especially timber and metals – also attracted predatory city-state attention.
The population at large, and not merely the politico-religious elites, thus
would often have supported offensive, long-distance efforts.
8.) With this background, expansive Urukian incursions west, north and east
become much more readily understandable. I do not exclude the possibility
that some incursions may have been immediate outgrowths of particular
southern subsistence crises.
9.) Warfare, and its many indirect as well as direct consequences, is very
hard for both site-oriented and regionally oriented prehistoric archaeologists
to identify. Hence it has not been readily taken into account as a major
developmental factor. But throughout history it has repeatedly been one.
That is, of course, another vast field of discussion, but cf. the Roman Empire
and the entire European expansion of the 15th
– 18th
centuries.
Structure and Dynamics, 1(1), Article 10 (2005)
2
References:
Adams, R. McC. 1978. Strategies of maximization, stability and resilience in
Mesopotamian society, settlement and agriculture. Proc. Am. Phil. Soc. 122:
329-35;
Nissen, H.J. 1980. The mobility between settled and non-settled in early
Babylonia: Theory and evidence. In M.-T. Barrelet, ed., L’archeologie de
l’Iraq du debut de l’epoque neolithique a 333 avant notre ere. Colloques
Internationales de la CNRS, 580:, 285-90.
Adams: Critique of Guillermo Algaze’s “The Sumerian Takeoff”
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