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An Examination of the “Textual” Witnesses to Late Uruk World Systems |
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Written by Robert K. Englund
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Sunday, 23 September 2007 |
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Much discussion of the socio-economic history of ancient Mesopotamia has centered around the resource disparity between a culturally developed alluvial heartland and a less developed surrounding periphery, in particular regions to the northwest in Syria and Anatolia, and to the east and southeast in Persia and along the Persian Gulf. A general consensus states that rapidly improved methods of agriculture and animal husbandry, together with a social order amenable to their exploitation, facilitated in Babylonia the emergence of a surplus economy and a concomitant class formation, in particular including the emergence of an elite class seeking resources abroad that were unavailable in the alluvium. These resources included above all stone and metals, to a lesser extent wood, domesticated and wild animals, and humans.
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