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>The political economy of inter-regional exchange in fourth millennium B.C. Anatolia: Geochemical analyses of bitumen artifacts from Hacinebi Tepe, Turkey.
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The political economy of inter-regional exchange in fourth millennium B.C. Anatolia: Geochemical analyses of bitumen artifacts from Hacinebi Tepe, Turkey.
In order to examine the impact of state level societies on smaller, emerging complex societies, this project focused on the Uruk Period (3700--3100 B.C.) Mesopotamian trading colony of Hacinebi, located in a preexisting Anatolian settlement on the Euphrates River in southeast Turkey. Before this research, the identification of exchange patterns proved difficult because trade goods were rare and hard to provenance with chemical analyses. The study of bitumen artifacts, petroleum goods that were remnants of exchange or "exchange debris", proved to be the one of the most successful ways to identify trade patterns because bitumen was abundant in archaeological contexts, traded over wide areas, used as a packaging material for other trade goods and sourceable to specific regions of the Near East. The analysis of over 700 samples allowed me to reconstruct the exchange economy of the region from the periods before and during inter-regional trade with Southern Mesopotamia in order to identify the impact this trade had on local settlements in Anatolia. Specifically I was testing the hypothesis that trade with Mesopotamia either produced an economic overspecialization in local communities making them vulnerable to collapse, or stimulated an increase in social complexity in these same societies.; With the emergence of Mesopotamian trade in the region, there were dramatic changes in the Local economy demonstrating: (1) a major shift in bitumen sources used; (2) an increase in both Local and Mesopotamian trade; (3) an increased centralization and control of Mesopotamian trade goods in Local contexts; (4) an exclusion of Mesopotamian trade goods in Local contexts; (5) an increase in Local bitumen production activities with a new focus on exportation. However, there was very little apparent change in the level of social complexity, copper production, agricultural production or administrative activities in Local contexts. Likewise there was no economic or political domination of Anatolians by Mesopotamians or signs of an economic overspecialization at Hacinebi. I believe this was due to the inhabitants' role at Hacinebi as "middlemen" or mediators of exchange, not metallurgical specialists. The results of this study can potentially change the way anthropologists view the role of trade in the development of complex societies.
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