Page 87 - Berkshire Encyclopedia Of World History Vol I - Abraham to Coal

this fleeting world / acceleration: the agrarian era tfw-27

Documenting a Neolithic Settlement in the Electronic Age

Since 1993, an international team of archaeologists remains lab doing the burial, think is a flute. It’s cer-
has been excavating the ancient city of Catalhoyuk in tainly the right shape, and it has had both of the ends
present-day Turkey, resuming an effort first begun in knocked off which suggests they wanted to use the
the 1960s. In an effort to bring alive the 9,000-year- inside for something. I have high hopes, Bleda seems
old artifacts being found at the Catalhoyuk “dig,” team to attract the interesting objects. It would be really
member Rebecca Daly maintains a weblog (blog) on amazing if this is actually a flute of some sort, it
the excavation website. Below is her entry for 28 July would be the earliest musical instrument. The burial
2004. was sprinkled with ochre both under and over it,
which suggests that it was a really important part of
Bleda is beginning the burial that was next to the
the burial process in this case. This was obviously a
sheep today, which thrills both of us, because we both
very significant burial anyway, what with the whole
suspect that there is some incredible stuff in that bur-
lamb, but this makes it even more so—there is some
ial. There are a lot of burials coming out now, the
suggestion of the order in which the burial activities
human remains lab are tearing their hair out trying to
took place.
get everything done. Just when they think they’re
Source: Mysteries of Catalhoyuk. (2004). Retrieved September 8, 2004, from http://ltc.
going to catch up, more things appear! Sure enough, smm.org/catal/updates/
Bleda has come up with an interesting bird bone
thing that both he and Lori, who’s from the human

during the centuries before 3000 BCE in southern concentrations of wealth and power. As they spread,
Mesopotamia in the region known to archaeologists as states carried with them a core set of institutions and
“Sumer” and also along the Nile River in modern Egypt practices associated with what are often called “agrarian
and Sudan. During the next thousand years evidence of civilizations.” Directly or indirectly, the spread of agrarian
cities and states appeared also in the Indus River valley civilizations reflected the increasing scale and density of
in modern Pakistan and in northern China. human populations. Cities were simply the most con-
In the Americas we can trace a similar pattern of evo- centrated and largest of all human communities. States
lution from villages toward cities and states, but the ear- were the large, coercive power structures that were nec-
liest evidence for both changes came much later.Although essary to administer and defend city-scale communities,
large communities and powerful leaders existed in Meso- and they were funded by the large concentrations of
america in the lands of the Olmecs (in Mexico’s southern wealth found in cities and their hinterlands.
gulf coast) by the second millennium BCE, most archae- Collecting that wealth by force often began with crude
ologists would argue that the first true cities and states in forms of looting that eventually turned into the more for-
the Americas appeared late during the first millennium malized looting that we call “taxation.” Managing large
BCE, in regions such as the OaxacaValley or farther south stores of wealth required new forms of administration
in the heartland of Mayan civilization. In the Andes, too, and new forms of accounting; indeed, in all emerging
statelike communities, such as the Moche culture, ap- states writing apparently emerged first as a technique to
peared at the end of the first millennium BCE. keep track of large stores of wealth and resources. Even
in the Inca state, where no fully developed system of writ-
Agrarian Civilizations ing emerged, rulers used a system of accounting based on
From these and other core areas the traditions of early intricately knotted strings (quipu).
statehood spread to adjacent regions as populations Defending large concentrations of wealth and main-
expanded and networks of material and cultural taining order within and between cities and city-states
exchanges knit larger regions together, generating greater (autonomous states consisting of a city and surrounding