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Pathways through Arslantepe
Essays in Honour of Marcella Frangipane
Francesca Balossi Restelli, Andrea Cardarelli,
Gian Maria Di Nocera, Linda Manzanilla, Lucia Mori,
Giulio Palumbi, Holly Pittman (eds.)
SAPIENZA UNIVERSITÀ DI ROMA
2020
e volume has been published with the support and contributions of the Dipartimento di Scienze
dell’Antichità della Sapienza Università di Roma, of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and of
Holly Pittman.
Copyright @ Università Sapienza di Roma and Edizioni Sette Città
Impaginazione e grafica
a cura di: Fabiana Ceccariglia
Copertina: Tiziana D’Este
Illustrazioni delle sezioni interne: Tiziana D’Este, da foto di Mauro Benedetti, Filiberto Scarpelli,
Alice Siracusano, Roberto Ceccacci, Tiziana D’Este
ISBN: 978-88-7853-874-0
ISBN ebook: 978-88-7853-875-7
Edizioni Sette Città
via Mazzini 87
01100 Viterbo
info@settecitta.eu
www.settecitta.eu
Copertina: elaborazione grafica di Tiziana D’Este tratta dai dipinti parietali di Arslantepe
Finito di stampare nel mese di agosto 2020
I
E G
Premessa pag.
G P
Presentazione
M Ö
Introduction
M Ö
GİrİŞ
F B R, A C, G M D N,
L M, L M, G P, H P
Editors’ preface
F B R, A C, G M D N,
L M, L M, G P, H P
Prefazione dei curatori
Bibliography of Marcella Frangipane
Tabula Gratulatoria
EQUALITY AND INEQUALITY IN SOCIAL SYSTEMS
J B
e analysis of the settling modes to trace the social organisation of the Predynastic Lower
Egyptian sites: the example of Maadi
A C
e horizontal and vertical egalitarian systems in the vision of Marcella Frangipane: a
comparison with the Terramare society of the Po valley (Italy)
A C, G R
e origin of inequality in central and southern Italy during the Copper Age
A M C, C P, P P
Dierences in archaeological sources on early metallurgy between cemeteries and settlements
in northern Latium
H Ç A
Late Chalcolithic Anatolian fruit-stands: signicance, function and cultural interactions
C G, G P
Feasting the collapse. Ceremonial buildings at the beginning of the Early Bronze Age between
highlands and lowlands: Some considerations
B H
Late 4th millennium BCE infant burials from Oylum Höyük, Eastern Step Trench
N L
Tracing inequality: a reection on ‘royal tombs’ in eastern Anatolia at the beginning of the
third millennium BC
R Ö
Trajectories of complexity in the h millennium: A comparative approach
H P
Diversity in Late Chalcolithic 4 glyptic imagery: What did it mean?
M R
Approaches to the nature of the Kura-Araxes societies in their homeland
G J. S
Leadership strategies and the multi-linear development of social complexity in Ubaid
Mesopotamia and Susa A southwestern Iran (5500-4000 BCE)
ECONOMY, PRODUCTION AND POWER
L B
On the Neolithic equids of Umm Dabaghiyah, Iraq
M C S
Redistribution, central storage and social consumption in south eastern Italy during the nal
Bronze Age
P Ç, I D, S G
Storage facilities during the Middle and Late Chalcolithic periods at Güvercinkayası
M B D’A
Une liaison dangereuse: mass-produced bowls and cretulae at Arslantepe during period VI A
C L, D Z
e Chalcolithic technologies in Anatolia: a review of the studies on chipped stones
C M
Pathways to social complexity in the Highlands: on the relationships between the Light-Ware
and the Black-Ware craing communities in the Caucasus and beyond (c. 4300-2800 BCE)
A M, L S, C V
Food production at Arslantepe (Turkey): botanical evidences from kitchens of the late
Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age
C S, B S
Observations concerning pottery trays in the Caucasus during the Chalcolithic and Early
Bronze Ages
K. A Y, M A
A Mitannian Period mold from Alalakh: digging below the oor of Idrimi’s level IV palace
ADMINISTRATION AND BUREAUCRACY
E C
Stamp seals of the local Late Chalcolithic from the Kahramanmaraş Region
R L
Clay sealings from Telloh: new evidence from a 3rd millennium BC corpus
S M
Gable seals from Tell As: a group of Chalcolithic stamps across Syria and Anatolia
A MM
Experiments in recording practices in 4th millennium BC Northern Mesopotamia
A M
Administrative practices in the Syrian Jezirah: sealings from Jebel Aruda
C M
Use (and non-use) of seals in Neo-Hittite Anatolia
L M
“Kunuk aḫḫī” the “seal of the brothers”: notes on the use of a collective seal at Ekalte during
the Late Bronze Age
S P, R B, C K
Seals and sealings from Dehsavar
ORIGIN OF STATE
P B
A tale of three cities, about proto-urban centers and their organization
M C
Tracing a model of proto-urbanization in Northern Aegean and Western Anatolia in the late
4th millennium
M Ö
1964 excavations at Söğüt Tarlası and the reminiscences of an Uruk related assemblage
H S, M B, İ A
Between the plains and the mountains: a brief look at upper Tigris region in the Post-Uruk
period according to data from Başur Höyük
RESTORATION, MANAGEMENT AND EXHIBIT OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITES
R B, L G
Restoration at Arslantepe: a balance between quality and compromise
Z E, K. K E
Traditional architecture and the disguised Cem houses of Onar village, Malatya-Arapgir
G F
Wall decorations at Arslantepe: study and conservation
N K
Cultural heritage management of a prehistoric site in northwest Turkey: Aktopraklik
ARSLANTEPE
C A, G L
Structural damage from earthquakes in the Late Chalcolithic palatial complex of Arslantepe,
Malatya (Turkey)
F B R
Pottery analysis and the archaeological context. Choosing samples, counting, weighing and
interpreting materials in context
S C
Tales from the oor: investigating the use of space in the site of Arslantepe (Malatya, Turkey)
by means of micro-residues
G M D N
Reappraising the Middle Bronze Age at Arslantepe and in the Malatya plain
F D F
Building a digital repository for the Arslantepe archaeological record (ArsDB)
Y S E, V D’A
Plano-occipital attening: intentional or unintentional treatment?
P F
Pottery archaeometry in a multi-layered settlement: methodological and theoretical
considerations
G S
Preliminary faunistic research of the Middle Bronze Age (V-A) at Arslantepe
F M
Contextualizing crisis? Some thoughts on the end of the Bronze Age in the Euphrates region
MISCELLANEA
I C
Red painted plaster at Neolithic Yumuktepe: a case of symbolic remembering?
J Mª C
Mud brick platforms during the Iron Age in Central Asia impressions in Izat Kuli, Dahistan
(Turkmenistan)
A G
Material for a history of Eneolithic research in Italy
M I, Y Y, G Ö
Karaz - From today to yesterday. Kura-Araxes pottery of the Erzurum plain: study and obser-
vation of its decorations
L N
A Late Bronze II terracotta gurine of Ishtar from Ruseifah, Jordan
F P
A fragment of an old syrian sculpture from Ebla
F S
A lesson in photography. For my shoes there are no sundays
H T
An overview of potsherds with building and tree depictions recovered in Domuztepe
B U
e domestication of plants and the role of Anatolia
M V, R B, L C, M P,
M B
Materiality of two vessels in Southern Turkmenian style from Shahr-i Sokhta (Sistan, Iran,
c. 3100-2900 BC)
Leadership strategies and the multi-linear development of
social complexity in Ubaid Mesopotamia and Susa A
southwestern Iran (5500-4000 BCE)
G J. S*
* Oriental Institute, University of Chicago
A
Between and BC, complex societies developed across the Near East, laying the foundations for the rst
urbanized states in the th millennium. Comparison of these earliest complex societies in three regions - ) the South
Mesopotamian Ubaid, ) the “Northern Ubaid” of Upper Mesopotamia, and ) Southwestern Iran in the Susa A (Susa
I) period makes it clear that aspiring leaders used a range of alternative leadership strategies that varied by region. e
earliest leaders seem to have mobilized supporters and concentrated surpluses through persuasion and consensus, using
existing community social structures such as kinship networks, patron-client relationships, economic rewards, prestige
goods, feasting, and ritual. Control of ritual was one way to extend the sphere of inuence for aspiring leaders far beyond
the kinship system. Inter-regional comparison of developmental dynamics suggests that economic processes such as sta-
ple nance and local-scale ritual were major factors in corporate leadership strategies and the development of emergent
complexity in Ubaid Southern Mesopotamia. By contrast, a combination of wealth nance, prestige goods exchange,
and control over large scale public ritual appears to have played a much more important role in the development of the
th millennium BCE Susa A/I polity of Southwestern Iran.
Keywords: Ubaid, complex societies, Susa A, South and Upper Mesopotamian
One of Marcella Frangipane’s greatest contributions to the study of ancient Near eastern civi-
lizations has been her emphasis on the fact that there was great variability in the organization of the
earliest complex societies and in their processes and trajectories of development. Although many
factors - structural, historical, organizational, environmental, economic, and demographic, etc. - were
all important in the initial development of social complexity, one especially useful way to understand
this variation is to examine the role of agency – specically the strategies that the earliest leaders used
to gain dierent kinds of social power. is paper compares the earliest complex societies of South
Mesopotamia, North Mesopotamia, and the Susiana plain of Southwest Iran in the late th and th
millennia BCE to highlight some of these dierent pathways to power (Fig. ).
e world’s rst complex societies developed in parallel across the Near East in th-th millennia
BC – emerging from the earlier Neolithic food producing village cultures of the region. e surpluses
of animal products and crops produced by these village societies were forms of wealth that could be
mobilized or concentrated by the earliest elites, who then attempted to convert these economic advan-
tages into centralized, and later formalized political power. e economic and political development
of these incipient complex societies or chiefdoms was very gradual for almost years, but at about
BCE, there was a major acceleration in the rate and magnitude of social change. By the mid th
millennium BC, the social landscape had been radically transformed with the rapid emergence of
powerful institutionalized leaders, social hierarchy, marked economic stratication, and increasingly
centralized polities that we can recognize as “states”.
e.g. Frangipane , , .
e.g. Blanton et alii ; Clark ; Earle , ; Feinman ; Frangipane ; Hayden ; Mills ;
Stanish ; Yoee ; Vaughn et alii .
4 Gil J. Stein
Anthropological-archaeological thinking about initial complexity has changed enormously in
the decades since the chiefdom model was rst developed. e key change has been a movement away
from adaptationist-functionalist or social-evolutionary typological models of chiefdoms to models
that focus more on agency – specically the strategies through which aspiring leaders gained power,
and formalized socio-economic inequality as a new set of enforceable rules in the social system. As
part of this overall movement away from the social-evolutionary paradigm, the traditional understan-
ding of “chiefdoms” has been critiqued, and re-conceptualized in more dynamic terms of the political
economy of leadership, rather than societal typology (e.g. Earle ). To avoid the paralysis of termi-
nological debates, in the present paper I use the term “incipient complex societies” to refer to those
emergent centralized polities in the Near East that later developed into hierarchical state societies.
Brian Hayden and John Clark have highlighted the dierent political strategies such as feasting,
patron-client relations, and bride-wealth that early leaders used to gain power, mobilize surpluses, and
gain power in emergent complex societies. Richard Blanton and Gary Feinman have proposed the
continuum from inclusive, group-focused “corporate” political strategies to more exclusive, patron-
client “network” political strategies as a useful way to understand the emergence of leadership and
how multi-linear developmental pathways to complexity might have occurred.
More recently, the focus on leadership strategies has broadened to examine how aspiring leaders
interact with the broader community. Researchers have come to recognize that – in the early stages
of this developmental process - the earliest political leaders were in fact very weak – they had formal
positions of higher rank, but very little actual power. In these situations, aspiring leaders could not
really force the broader community to obey them. Instead of coercion, the earliest leaders had to use
persuasion, rewards, inspiration, and consensus as ways to attract followers, mobilize surpluses, and
gain real power. In other words, the broader community had to agree to participate in the social chan-
ges in a social contract that ultimately increased the power of emerging leaders and led to true ine-
quality. In focusing on the emergence of centralized leadership, we have to look at how these aspiring
leaders mobilized four dierent types of power: ideological, military, economic, or political - and the
ways that these forms of power were concentrated, exercised, and institutionalized in a community.
Some of the strategies used to gain these dierent kinds of power are: feasting, religious rituals, long
distance trade for prestige goods, intensied agro-pastoral production, and (in later stages) warfare.
Control over religious ritual is one common strategy used by aspiring leaders, because it enables them
to extend the range of potential supporters far beyond the limits of their own kin group to include
and mobile a much wider social eld (Fig. ). e incipient complex societies of South Mesopotamia,
North Mesopotamia, and Southwest Iran seem to have diered signicantly in the pathways to power
followed by their leaders.
S M – U (. - BC)
e Ubaid culture of southern Mesopotamia provides the earliest evidence for the emergence
of emergent social complexity in the Early Chalcolithic period from the th -th millennia BC, and it
forms the basis for the development of urbanized state societies in the th millennium BC. e Ubaid
material culture style originated in southern Mesopotamia during the Ubaid ,, and phases; in the
Fried ; Service .
Yoee ; Pauketat .
Hayden ; Clark .
Blanton et alii ; Feinman .
See for e.g. Frangipane ; Vaughn et alii .
e.g. Mills ; Stanish .
Mann .
Carter, Philip ; Henrickson, uesen ; Oates .
Leadership strategies and multi-linear social complexity in Ubaid 5
subsequent Ubaid - phases it spread to northern Mesopotamia. e Ubaid is best known from the
sites of Eridu and Oueilli. We have evidence for irrigation economies, - ha towns dominating
clusters of satellite villages, the development of increasingly large temples in these centers and socio-
economic dierentiation. In southern Sumer, we can see eld and canal systems positioned to supply
the regional centers of Eridu and Ur with agricultural goods. At Oueilli, a large granary attests to the
concentration of signicant agricultural surpluses, and we see evidence for centralized cra produc-
tion . At Eridu, excavations showed the development of temples with a formalized ground plan, orien-
tation, and architectural features. e best evidence for socio-economic dierentiation comes from
the village site of Abada in central Mesopotamia, where extensive horizontal clearances showed major
dierences in size between house A – the largest house at the site, and the other contemporaneous
residences. House A remained the largest house over three successive building phases, suggesting
that dierences in wealth were passed along inter-generationally and were becoming formalized so-
cial ranking. However, these developments took place with no architectural, artifactual, or mortuary
evidence for powerful hierarchical leaders: the only hint of such authority derives from Eridu, where
the terracotta gurine of a male wearing an elaborate necklace and holding a mace may represent a
formal leader, but this interpretation remains tentative (Fig. ).
Leadership strategies and political organization almost certainly diered from those of North
Mesopotamia. Southern Mesopotamia was organized as a series of small-scale complex polities in
which leaders used their role in the temple-based ritual system to mobilize the surpluses generated by
irrigation in a system of staple nance. To eectively mobilize kin and community labor or resources,
leaders would have relied on what Blanton and Feinman have called corporate strategies emphasizing
social inclusiveness and downplayed visible status or economic dierences. e corporate character
of Southern Mesopotamia ts with Kent Flannery’s suggestion that Near Eastern chiefdoms are hard
to detect archaeologically because leaders based their power on coalition building, sacred knowledge,
and the use of their economic advantages to reward followers, rather than using a political economy
based on prestige goods.
Emerging leaders in Southern Mesopotamia thus seem to have been able to control and mo-
bilize large-scale surpluses in both agricultural and cra production. However, these early complex
polities still seem to have lacked several key markers of social ranking and centralized control. One
surprising aspect of Ubaid economy in Southern Mesopotamia is the absence of copper metallurgy
and copper prestige goods, even though copper was present at Northern Mesopotamian Ubaid sites.
Related to this is the lack of any real evidence for long distance exchange other than the trade in obsi-
dian – largely as a utilitarian commodity rather than a prestige good. Lower Mesopotamian sites also
have little evidence for administrative technology such as stamp seals and seal impressed closures on
containers or doors, despite the presence of this technology at Ubaid sites in northern Mesopotamia.
Leaders in southern Mesopotamia seem to have used corporate strategies and close links to ritual
institutions and religious ideologies as a means to mobilize economic surpluses from irrigation agri-
culture. Control over ritual allows a leader to extend his range of inuence far beyond the limits of his
kinship network to link with a much larger population. is ritual tie allows for both an increase in
Safar, Lloyd ; Huot , , .
Wright .
Huot ; .
Jasim , .
Stein : -.
Stein .
Blanton et alii ; Feinman .
Flannery .
Matthews ; Rothman ; Tobler .
Netting .
176 Gil J. Stein
scale of polity and in the numbers of people who can be mobilized to contribute either surplus goods or
labor. Larger scale systems of this sort can produce consistently higher levels of surplus, thereby incre-
asing economic dierentiation and providing the currency to attract and reward followers. At the same
time, the ritual role of leaders legitimates and reinforces their authority. is ritual-based authority
would have been grounded – at least initially - in consensus and shared ideology, rather than coercion.
Finally, the linkage of rulers to temples would have built up the role of temple towns as “ide-
ological attractors”, thereby naturalizing the sacred landscape as a permanent part of the political
landscape. e increasing size of the temples at Eridu is consistent with the centrality of ritual insti-
tutions in Southern Mesopotamia. e leaders of Ubaid south Mesopotamian polities fused three key
sources of power - political, economic, and ritual – into larger scale, richer, and more resilient systems
than had ever existed before. ese polities would have had a greater structural capacity for growth,
and eventually developed into the rst urbanized states.
N M - U, LC-, LC-
e leadership strategies and political economy of South Mesopotamia seem to have diered from
the contemporaneous polities of North Mesopotamia in the later Ubaid. e . ha regional center of
Zeidan in North Syria has evidence for economic intensication and specialization, prestige goods, admi-
nistrative artifacts, and large scale public architecture in the Ubaid period. Zeidan is a triple mounded
site with a continuous occupation sequence spanning the Halaf, Ubaid, LC- and LC- periods.
Our data on the Ubaid period farming system at Zeidan are fragmentary but very suggestive.
Zeidan is located on edge of the Balikh river oodplain where the traditional system of irrigation is
oodwater recession agriculture. Ethnographic studies suggest that tendencies toward stratication
were inherent in riverine societies using ood recession agriculture in arid regions. Each year, the
best land is reserved for the highest ranking families and lineages. Lower ranking families must pay
tithes to the higher ranking families to get access to land. ese practices reinforce wealth dierences
in a system of institutionalized economic inequality and allow for the rapid accumulation of surplus.
Both the location and size of Zeidan t perfectly within the set of conditions where one would expect
to see land tenure systems of this type. If this were, in fact, the case, then both agriculture and herding
would have created and perpetuated major wealth dierences ta Zeidan.
Zeidan has also produced evidence for cra specialization in ceramic and lithic production.
Excavations recovered a concentration of ten kilns on the south mound (Stein b: ). Evidence
for specialized lithic production comes from a workshop found on the Northeast mound. A con-
centration of blade and ake cores, cortical akes, production debris, and nished tools was found
with three deer antler punches to manufacture the blades. Zeidan also has evidence for a variety of
prestige goods made from exotic raw materials and carefully worked by skilled artisans: fragmentary
polished stone palette, a polished obsidian bowl, a mace head, and a chlorite wand (Fig. ). Traces of
large scale Ubaid public architecture include part of a large mud brick fortication or enclosure wall
. m wide and preserved to a height of . m. Excavations also exposed a large . m thick mud brick
buttressed wall - possibly the enclosure wall surrounding a large public building. In addition, admi-
nistrative artifacts such as tokens, sealing clays, seals, and seal impressions are also present at Zeidan
and Tepe Gawra. Finally, in the north we have evidence for the growth in long-distance exchange in
Stein , b, .
Anastasiou et alii ; Smith et alii .
Park .
Stein : -.
Stein b: .
Stein : -.
Stein b; Tobler ; Matthews ; Rothman .
Leadership strategies and multi-linear social complexity in Ubaid 177
prestige goods made from obsidian, lapis lazuli, turquoise, carnelian, and copper, suggesting an in-
crease in the degree of hierarchy and elite inuence in the later th millennium. e evidence from
Zeidan, Gawra, and other sites suggests that Ubaid North Mesopotamia was a set of loosely organized
small scale polities whose aspiring leaders combined both staple and wealth nance to mobilize sur-
pluses from the production of subsistence goods and specialized cras, while forging long distance
exchange connections to procure exotic raw materials for prestige goods.
Some of the most important contrasts in political economy and pathways to power between
South versus North Mesopotamia lay in the realm of ritual institutions and ritual power. Although
temples were important in the political economy of Southern Mesopotamia, large-scale formal ritual
institutions did not play a major role in the development of early complex societies in North Mesopo-
tamia. e only known temples in North Mesopotamia are found very late in the Ubaid sequence and
appear only in Gawra level XIII. Large centralized temples disappear in the succeeding level XII and
are also absent from the succeeding Late Chalcolithic - strata at the site. Although the architectu-
ral form of the niched and buttressed long-room temple may have been transplanted to the north at
Gawra, the temples must have functioned in dierent ways from the south, since they did not have the
capacity to draw on the large scale surpluses of irrigation agriculture.
Aer the Ubaid, the Late Chalcolithic LC and LC periods in northern Mesopotamia show
major growth toward greater stratication, long distance trade, feasting, elite emergence, and the be-
ginnings of urbanization. By about BC, the southern extension of Hamoukar reaches a size of
up to ha, and has produced evidence for large scale long distance trade and specialist production
of ceramics, obsidian and copper. Tell Brak also reaches urban proportions large scale secular public
architecture and feasting activities provide strong evidence for powerful formalized leadership in the
LC- period. By the LC period ca BC, we can see that urbanized state societies had developed.
e emergence of institutionalized leadership in northern Mesopotamia was most likely based
on economic, rather than ritual power. In the LC period, when we do nally see clear evidence for
the residences of formal leaders in the form of the large, distinctive “round house” and the rich tombs
of Gawra XI-A/B in the post Ubaid LC-, it occurs without any visible tie to ritual institutions. I am
not saying that religion and ritual were absent in North Mesopotamia; I am simply proposing that
religious institutions were not as closely linked to emerging political leadership as they were in the
south. North Mesopotamian leaders appear to have relied primarily on their kinship network as a
source of followers and supporters, reinforced by the wealth accumulated through long-distance trade
in a prestige goods political economy. is would have contrasted with the southern Mesopotamian
polities, whose leaders would have been able to draw on the much broader pool of support mobilized
through both kinship and ritual ties.
S I - S: S A/S I ( BC)
Some of our best evidence for the development of emergent complex societies in southwestern
Iran comes from the Susa A or Susa I period in the late h millennium, when Susa was settled and
rapidly grew to be a major regional center of approximately ha; to the east, Chogha Mish also appe-
ars to have been a center of comparable size before the full emergence of Susa. Settlement patterns on
Stein .
Stein a; see also Rothman for an alternative interpretation of the niched and buttressed public build-
ings at Gawra.
Marro ; Stein .
al Quntar et alii .
Ur et alii ; Stein .
Stein ; Tobler ; Peasnall .
Hole : .
178 Gil J. Stein
the Susiana plain show a two level settlement hierarchy of regional centers and clusters of dependent
villages – similar what is present in the Ur-Eridu region of Ubaid southern Mesopotamia. is is
consistent with the typical settlement pattern for emergent complex societies. However, the available
evidence suggests that the polities of the two regions diered in basic aspects of agricultural economy
and surplus production. As far as we know, in contrast to southern Mesopotamia, canal irrigation
agriculture was not practiced on the Susiana plain in the Susa A or Susa I period, although oodwater
recession irrigation may have been in use. As a result, there would not have been the kinds of eco-
nomic intensication and large scale surplus production that would have developed in the irrigation-
based southern Ubaid subsistence economy. Equally important, the architecture, burials, and objects
from the Susa Acropole show that Susa A emergent complex societies had very dierent forms of elite
political economy, ritual organization and leadership strategies from those of Ubaid Mesopotamia.
In contrast with Ubaid south Mesopotamia, where the burials are uniformly simple with only a
few plain ceramic vessels, the burials in the massif funeraire at Susa contain large amounts of prestige
goods such as the tall painted Susa A beakers (Fig. ). Although present in small amounts at other smal-
ler settlements and at Chogha Mish, the tall painted Susa A beakers are highly concentrated at Susa, the
paramount center in the Susiana region. ere is also a remarkable amount of copper in these high status
burials - copper axes, along with copper disks whose form and decoration suggest that they were
prestige goods and items used in ritual. Geochemical analyses of the Susa copper artifacts indicate that
the copper was imported to Susa from the Anarak mines on the Iranian plateau, more than km to
the northeast. is is important evidence for long-distance trade in a prestige goods economy.
e complex stamp seals and sealings from Susa mark the presence and power of elites linked
with ritual activity (Fig. ). Wright’s analysis of the Susa I/A glyptic suggests that the seals and seal
impressions fall into two groups. Out of a total sample of seals and sealings, can be classied
as “simple”, while only (concentrated in the Susa Acropole mortuary contexts) can be classied as
“complex” - with “Master of Animals” and cruciform motifs. is dichotomy in the glyptic numbers
and degree of elaboration is consistent with a social division between elites and commoners. At the
same time, the “Master of Animals” motifs on the complex seals and sealings show masked gures
who are clearly engaged in ritual performance. It is signicant that they are surrounded by other
plainly clothed gures bowing down to them (Fig. a).
e nal key line of evidence is the enormous square mud brick platform at the south end of
the Susa Acropole: – this structure measured meters on a side, and was at least m. tall, con-
sisting of two stages with corner recesses that give the entire platform a cruciform top plan, with an
estimated volume of , cubic meters. In design and scale, the Susa platform dwarfs the much
smaller Ubaid temples of Eridu and Ur. On top of the Susa platform were a granary and several other
buildings of signicant size and height. e Susa platform would have completely dominated the lan-
dscape, and likely served as an arena for the public ritual performances depicted on the seals and seal
impressions. e Susa A/I “Haute Terasse” platform on the Acropole may represent an elaboration of
the earlier monumental, public ritual building at Chogha Mish. e monumental size and ceremo-
nial function of the Susa acropole platform suggest that leaders were able to use ritual authority to
mobilize large groups of followers to provide the labor for its construction.
Johnson ; Wright .
Mashkour et alii .
Hole : ; Helwing : .
Moorey : ; Matthews, Fazeli : .
Amiet ; Le Brun ; Wright :, table .
Hole : .
Figure ; Canal a and b.
Wright : .
Hole : .
Leadership strategies and multi-linear social complexity in Ubaid 179
e emergent complex polity that developed on the Susiana plain in the mid-late th millennium
BC has clear evidence for stratication, a distinctive elite with shared symbols, monumental public
architecture, long distance trade for copper, prestige goods, complex two-tier administrative techno-
logy, and ritually based leadership with the capacity to mobilize large groups for extended periods
to construct monumental public architecture. Leaders of the Susa A/I polity seem to have used long
distance exchange for prestige goods in a system of “wealth nance”
, and elite art styles to reward
wealthier elites, while using ritually-based authority and public ceremonial performances to mobilize
surplus labor and agricultural goods from the broader population in the surrounding villages, thereby
institutionalizing their leadership role within a religious-ideological context.
Although the emergent complex polity of the Susiana was clearly quite powerful, we should
be careful not to confuse power with stability. Gilman notes that polities based on wealth nance
and long distance exchange can grow rapidly to positions of great wealth, but they are vulnerable to
collapse if there is any disruption of the trade routes that are so vital for their economic survival. At
the same time, the relatively weak structure of political authority encourages competition for power
between chiefs and other high ranking elites from their own or other kin groups; as a result, these
polities undergo periodic cycles of consolidation, conict, collapse, and re-constitution. e multi-
ple episodes in which the Susa Acropole platform was burned are consistent with the idea of a polity
that while impressive, was also vulnerable to periodic collapse through a combination of economic
disruption and political instability.
C
e emergent complex societies of these three regions all had economic dierentiation and some
degree of centralized, hierarchical political leadership. However, they diered signicantly in political
economy and in the pathways to power followed by their leaders (Table ).
Leaders in Ubaid south Mesopotamia pursued corporate strategies that emphasized communi-
ty and kin membership in politics and smaller scale local ritual. ey combined ritual, kinship, and
socio-economic dierentiation into an infrastructure for hierarchy that allowed for larger, wealthier,
and more stable polities using corporate strategies to mobilize the large surpluses of irrigation agri-
culture in a staple nance system.
S. Mesopotamia N. Mesopotamia SW Iran
Power Sources Economic Ideological Economic Economic, ideological
Political Strategy Corporate Network Network
Finance Strategy Staple Wealth (and staple?) Wealth (& staple?)
Long-Distance Trade Absent Present Present
Prestige Goods Absent Present Present
Copper Metallurgy Absent Present Present
Seals & Sealings Absent Present Present
Irrigation Canal Floodwater recession Absent (?)
Role of Ritual Medium Low High
Table - Comparative Leadership Strategies and Pathways to Power
d’Altroy, Earle .
Gilman .
Wright .
Hole ; 2008, .
180 Gil J. Stein
By contrast, the north Mesopotamian th millennium polities of the Ubaid and LC - periods
relied on a combination of staple and wealth nance to mobilize surpluses through kin connections
and long distance trade for prestige goods, and complex administrative technology in a network stra-
tegy that dened elites and emphasized dierences between themselves and commoners. Ritual insti-
tutions in the north did not serve as a signicant source of power or legitimacy for leaders, who were
only able to extend their power up to the spatial and demographic limits of kinship organization.
e Susa A/I polity diered from both the north and south Mesopotamian Ubaid by combining
a political economy based on long-distance exchange or wealth nance to secure prestige goods, ritual
authority, and administrative technology of stamp seals and sealings in a network-based strategy that
linked political leadership to large-scale public ritual for legitimacy and authority. e ritually based
Susa A polity was elaborate but unstable and prone to periodic cycles of collapse. By contrast, the sta-
ple-nance based polities of Ubaid southern Mesopotamia were smaller scale and less elaborate, but
much more stable in structural terms. is comparison of southern Mesopotamia, Northern Mesopo-
tamia, and southwestern Iran suggests that the earliest complex societies in the Near East developed
by dierent pathways; the key to understanding those alternative trajectories is to focus on variation
in the strategies through which aspiring leaders gained and maintained power.
Note: is chapter is the revision of a paper originally presented at the th International Con-
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Fig. 2 - Schematic representation of the use of ritual to extend the social eld of inuence by aspiring leaders beyond the
domain of kinship relations.
Fig. 1 - Map of the Near East showing the location of the 6th-5th millennium BCE emergent complex societies of Nor-
thern Mesopotamia, southern Mesopotamia, and Southwestern Iran.
Leadership strategies and multi-linear social complexity in Ubaid 185
Fig. 3 - South Mesopotamian Ubaid terracotta gurine
from Eridu – possibly depicting an early polity leader
with elaborate necklace and mace or scepter as em-
blems of authority (Safar and Lloyd 1981).
Fig. 4 - Susa A/I painted beaker and burial from the massif funeraire at the base of the high platform on the Susa Acropole
186 Gil J. Stein
Fig. 5 - North Mesopotamian Ubaid prestige goods. A. Copper axes (Gawra); B. Mace Heads; C. Gound stone palettes
and mace heads (Gawra); D. Carved obsidian bowl Zeidan); E. Carved chlorite wand (Zeidan)
Leadership strategies and multi-linear social complexity in Ubaid 187
Fig. 6 - Seals and seal impressions from the Susa A/I period, with motifs including the “Master of Animals” and ritual
scenes: A. Drawing by Abbas Alizadeh; B. drawings from Hole 2010.
Fig. 7 - Plan of the Susa A/I high terrace platform.
