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IAS Talking Points Seminar: Economics Meets Archaeology - The Case of Mesopotamian City-States

26 February 2019, 6:00 pm–8:00 pm

Mesopotamia

We are delighted to welcome Dr Greg Dow and Professor Clyde Reed, IAS Visiting Research Fellows, for this talk. Dr Mark Altaweel (Institute of Archaeology, UCL) and Dr Manuela Dal Borgo (U of Cambridge) will provide a response. Professor Stephen Shennan (Institute of Archaeology) will be chairing the session.

This event is free.

Event Information

Open to

All

Availability

Yes

Cost

Free

Organiser

Institute of Advanced Studies

Location

IAS Common Ground
Ground floor, South Wing, UCL
London
WC1E 6BT
United Kingdom

We are interested in explaining why city-states arose in southern Mesopotamia roughly 5000 years ago. For this purpose, we combine the logic of economic theory with evidence provided by archaeologists. This raises a number of challenges associated with interdisciplinary research. After addressing these methodological matters, we discuss our project. Some important issues involve defining a state, showing that the Mesopotamian city of Uruk was indeed a state, developing factual premises that can be used as the basis for an economic model, and constructing an economic theory about how the city of Uruk arose. Our hypothesis is that as the regional climate became more arid, people migrated from locations where rainfall was vital for food production to locations where irrigation was feasible. Local elites who controlled irrigated land found it profitable to shift some commoner labor into urban manufacturing, which provided a source of tax revenue. We close with a brief discussion of whether it is possible to give general causal explanations for the formation of pristine city-states across various regions of the world.

All welcome. Please note that there may be photography and/or audio recording at some events and that admission is on a first come first served basis. Please follow this FAQ link for more information.