The First Cities and States

1
Chapter 11
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.
• 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.

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.

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

• 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.

13
Other Early States

• Indus Civilization
• China

14
Early Chiefdoms 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.

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.

16
States in the 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.

17
Teotihuacan

• In the case of Teotihuacan, this pattern was
  associated with intensive, irrigation-based
  agriculture.

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.
• 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.
• 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.

22
Why States Collapse

• Invasion
• Disease
• Environmental degradation
• 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.
• "Lost King of the Maya"