“Who Was King? Who Was Not King?”

Abstract

The last two decades of archaeological and textual research have documented tremendous diversity in the ways that Greater Mesopotamian complex societies constituted themselves as polities (Fig. 1). This increasingly representative database, combined with the use of more processually oriented models of social action, have led to a gradual shift in research perspectives from a “top-down” emphasis on managerial structure toward a “bottom-up” perspective on the organization of Mesopotamian chiefdoms and states (see, e.g., Stein 1994a; Yoffee 1995). The traditional structural approach treated Mesopotamian complex societies as homogeneous, highly centralized entities whose urbanized governing institutions defined and controlled virtually every aspect of economic, political, and social life. This largely implicit view derived from the historic emphases of Near Eastern archaeology and philology. For over a century, archaeologists had concentrated on the excavation of monumental public buildings such as palaces and temples in major urban sites (see, e.g., Lloyd 1980). Similarly, Assyriologists tended to view the cuneiform archives of these centralized institutions as complete and representative records of the full range of activities, institutions, and interest groups in Mesopotamian society. This urban, elite-oriented focus was perfectly understandable, given the fact that Mesopotamia is the earliest known and best-documented ancient urban society.