Kiara Anderson
Professor Fitzhugh
Archaeology 205
March 4, 2023
Make up Lab 6 – Artifact Analysis
This article has three distinct parts, the first analyzes colonies, the second expands on Mesopotamia
in the fourth millennium, and the last section analyzes the evidence and artifacts of the Uruk trade
colony.
The author is investigating the political and economic relationships between the Mesopotamian
colonies and the local inhabitants of southeast Anatolia. They are hoping to understand the evidence
found of intensive interaction with Southern Mesopotamia. Their main question is “how did an ethnically
distinct foreign community survive and perpetuate itself as a distinct social entity for such an extended
period of time?” This question is important because it helps us understand how the dynamics of the
Mesopotamian local interaction, and the organization of the local host communities, impacted the trade
system and the future development of southeast Anatolia.
One struggle with this study was defining the term colonies, as there is lots of debate over what this
term means, and therefore the author gave their definition as it pertains to this study. Another struggle
was understanding the chronology of the artifacts found, as well as the location of where they were
found was difficult. They created a system of “phases” as well as maps and a table to try and help make
this easier.
Stein looks at these artifacts and analyzes things such as their chemical composition to understand
material origins and manufacturing locations, and aesthetics or personal ornaments to try and find
evidence of appropriation.
He includes numerous artifacts that mainly consist of different ceramics such as bowls, lids ladles
cups, and cooking and storage vessels. They also analyzed other artifacts such as cylinder seals, tokens,
clay tablets with numerical inscriptions, and architectural evidence.
Stein concludes that there was a clear distinction between the Mesopotamians as their own social
group that through trade and exchange where able to maintain both economic and peaceful relations
with the elites of the local polity for an extended period. The foreigners were only able to survive and
flourish at the “sufferance of local rulers, most likely by forging strategic alliances with them through
marriage or trade relations.”
With what we know about archaeological dating methods, we can hypothesize that these
archaeologists could have use a radiocarbon dating method to find more precise dates and a timeline. By
measuring the decay of carbon on the specimens we can find more exact time measurements. When
Stein and others were making their conclusions about these people and the artifacts, they found they
may have used a style of thinking known as mid-level. This is a type of think that involves both field work
and questions about what things are (low level theory) as well as questions such as why society works a
certain way (high level theory). It asks questions such as how do humans and non-humans lead to the
transformation of the archeological record, or in this case, how do two distinct cultures navigate a trade
relationship while maintaining cultural uniqueness, and how did that affect society in that region today?
