C. C. Lamberg-Karlovsky

Bronze Age World System Cycles [and Comments and Reply]

This essay explores the geographical extent of the world system and dates its cyclical ups and downs during the Bronze Age and, in a preliminary way, the early Iron Age. The scope of these twin tasks is exceptionally wide and deep: wide in exploring a single world system that encompasses much of Afro-Eurasia, deep in identifying systemwide conomic and political cycles since more than 5,000 years ago.

Initial Social Complexity in Southwestern Asia: The Mesopotamian Advantage

The emergence of early Mesopotamian (Sumerian) civilization must be understood within the framework of the unique ecology and geography of the alluvial lowlands of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers during the late 5th and 4th millennia B.C. The former gave Mesopotamian societies important advantages in agricultural productivity and subsistence resource resilience not possessed by contemporary polities on their periphery, while the latter gave them enduring transportational advantages. This material imbalance created opportunities and incentives that made it both possible and probable that early Mesopotamian elites would use trade as one of their earliest and most important tools to legitimize and expand their unequal access to resources and power. Given this, a still hypothetical but testable) model is presented that accounts for the precocious socioeconomic differentiation and urban growth of southern Mesopotamia in the 4th millennium as social multiplier effects inadvertently set in motion by evolving trade patterns. This trade was first largely internal, between individual southern polities exploiting rich but localized ecological niches within the Mesopotamian alluvium during the Late Ubaid and Early Uruk periods. By the Middle and Late Uruk periods, however, inherently asymmetrical external trade between growing southern cities and societies at their periphery in control of coveted resources gained more prominence. In due course, import-substitution processes further amplified the one-sided socio-evolutionary impact on southern societies of these shifting trade patterns. Unequal developmental rates resulting from the operation of these processes over time explain why the earliest complex societies of southwestern Asia appeared in southern Mesopotamia and not elsewhere.

The Uruk Expansion: Cross-cultural Exchange in Early Mesopotamian Civilization [with Comments and Reply]

Comments and Reply] Author(s): Guillermo Algaze, Burchard Brenties, A. Bernard Knapp, Philip L. Kohl, Wade R. Kotter, C. C. Lamberg-Karlovsky, Glenn M. Schwartz, Harvey Weiss, Robert J. Wenke, Rita P. Wright and Allen Zagarell Source: Current Anthropology, Vol. 30, No. 5 (Dec., 1989), pp. 571-608 Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2743567 . Accessed: 06/10/2014 22:44

Archaeology and Language

This review of recent archaeological work in Central Asia and Eurasia attempts to trace and date the movements of the IndoIraniansspeakers of languages of the eastern branch of ProtoIndoEuropean that later split into the Iranian and Vedic families. Russian and Central Asian scholars working on the contemporary but very different Andronovo and Bactrian Margiana archaeological complexes of the 2d millennium b.c. have identified both as IndoIranian, and particular sites so identified are being used for nationalist purposes. There is, however, no compelling archaeological evidence that they had a common ancestor or that either is IndoIranian. Ethnicity and language are not easily linked with an archaeological signature, and the identity of the IndoIranians remains elusive.

The Balance of Trade in Southwestern Asia in the Mid-Third Millennium B.C. [and Comments and Reply]

Trade frequently is considered an important and distinct subsystem that is integrated within a prehistoric cultural system. This paper rejects this interpretation and attempts a structural analysis of a specific trading network that existed in southwestern Asia in the mid-3d millennium B.C. in order to uncover the motivational factors and contradictions operative in trading relationships. An ideal dichotomy between sparsely populated, resource-rich highland centers and densely settled lowland cities is proposed, and the evolutionary significance of the relationship that developed between these areas is discussed.

Is poverty in our genes? A critique of Ashraf and Galor, "The 'out of Africa' hypothesis, human genetic diversity, and comparative economic development," American Economic Review (Forthcoming)

We present a critique of a paper written by two economists, Quamrul Ashraf and Oded Galor, which is forthcoming in the American Economic Review and which was uncritically highlighted in Science magazine. Their paper claims there is a causal effect of genetic diversity on economic success, positing that too much or too little genetic diversity constrains development. In particular, they argue that “the high degree of diversity among African populations and the low degree of diversity among Native American populations have been a detrimental force in the development of these regions.” We demonstrate that their argument is seriously flawed on both factual and methodological grounds. As economists and other social scientists begin exploring newly available genetic data, it is crucial to remember that nonexperts broadcasting bold claims on the basis of weak data and methods can have profoundly detrimental social and political effects.

Trade and Politics in Proto-Elamite Iran [and Comments and Reply]

During the Proto-Elamite period, 3300-2800 B.C., a political and economic hegemony seems to have arisen in the southwestern highlands of Iran. The power of this hegemony was derived from its control over the major trade routes between the Iranian plateau and Mesopotamia; its extent is defined by shared styles in ceramics, art, and architecture and by the use of a distincitive system of writing and recording. Proto-Elamite influence grew rapidly during the last centuries of the 4th millennium B.C. and declined equally rapidly when maritime trade through the Persian Gulf was established several centuries later. This reconstruction is supported by independent evidence-the ratios of imported to exported materials-from Farukhabad, a site outside the Proto-Elamite sphere of influence in lowland western Iran. This paper emphasizes the role that long-distance trade can play in the rise and decline of prehistoric complex societies. Proto-Elamite hegemony was a political and social phenomenon but was based on exploitation of an economic situation. The important factor was not change in mode of production or control over means of production such as arable land or natural resources, but control over trade.

The Bronze Age: Unique instance of a pre-industrial world system?

This paper considers the crosscultural trade of the 3d millennium b.c. across the region between the Euphrates and the Indus from the perspective of worldsystem theory. This theory was developed for the international economics of the past few centuries, but in the 3d millennium b.c., when neither labour nor land was a commodity, economic processes were totally different. The Bronze Age was, however, unique even in ancient times in that the great river valley civilizations relied on metal for production and that metal (copper, tin, lead, etc.) was scarce and had to be procured from afar, from less developed regions. Thus trade involved not just luxuries but also basic requirements, interaction between societies at contrasting levels of technology and social organization, and organization by ruling elites. While making the point that Bronze Age economies were not inchoate versions of our own, the paper examines the nature of trading cultures and traded items, the technologies of transport, trade initiatives, comparative metallurgical development, and other features in an attempt to determine whether the trade underdeveloped some partners.This paper considers the crosscultural trade of the 3d millennium b.c. across the region between the Euphrates and the Indus from the perspective of worldsystem theory. This theory was developed for the international economics of the past few centuries, but in the 3d millennium b.c., when neither labour nor land was a commodity, economic processes were totally different. The Bronze Age was, however, unique even in ancient times in that the great river valley civilizations relied on metal for production and that metal (copper, tin, lead, etc.) was scarce and had to be procured from afar, from less developed regions. Thus trade involved not just luxuries but also basic requirements, interaction between societies at contrasting levels of technology and social organization, and organization by ruling elites. While making the point that Bronze Age economies were not inchoate versions of our own, the paper examines the nature of trading cultures and traded items, the technologies of transport, trade initiatives...

Converting currencies in the Old World.

Raw materials recovered from archaeological excavations in the Indus Valley, the Persian Gulf, Mesopotamia, Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean reflect the existence of long-distance trading during the Bronze Age, which united these regions into networks of commercial exchange. As each region relied on a different set of weights for trading, a straightforward conversion system must have been in operation. Here we describe a simple and universal conversion system that could have provided an economic key to the trade networks of the Old World between 2500 and 1000 bc.