Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 7 (2016) 900–904

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Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jasrep

The Uruk Expansion and Beyond: Archaeometric and Social Perspectives

on Exchange in the IVth Millennium BCE
Henry T. Wright
The University of Michigan and the Santa Fe Institute

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This review of papers on the contribution of archaeometry to the understanding of the Uruk Expansion shows
Received 21 April 2016 that there is very little evidence for the exchange of pottery among the widely scattered Uruk settlement enclaves
Accepted 22 April 2016 of IVth millennium Mesopotamia or the similarly scattered settlements of the later Proto-Elamite expansion. The
Available online 27 May 2016
limited evidence of the transport of ceramics indicates that only a few examples of a few forms were carried to
distant places. The widespread similarities of ceramics in the Uruk world and it successor seem more likely to
Keywords:
Ancient Near East
have been created by itinerant potters than by the transport of pots. Likewise, the wide similarity of both Uruk
Uruk and Proto-Elamite administrative technology such as numerical counters and tablets, seals, and sealings seems
Proto-Elamite to be a result of itinerant officials, who with few exceptions recorded and sealed on local clays. Where we have
ceramic provenance some indication of what was administered, as at Godin and Yahya, it seems to be small scale and local production,
bitumen rather than long-range exchange. However, some materials, most definitely bitumen, were moved in substantial
seals and sealings amounts over hundreds of kilometers. However, we do not yet have any direct evidence of how such distant ma-
terial transport was administered or regulated.
© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Cultural Dynamics in the Uruk World and Beyond
By the middle of the IVth millennium BCE, the distinctive Uruk ar-
chitecture, ceramics, seals and sealings, and other technologies were
widely used in Lower Mesopotamia and the nearby plains in the pied-
mont of the Zagros Mountains to the north and east. During the span
from 3600 to 3100 BCE, these material elements appeared in regions
distant from this homeland. Assembling the scattered qualitative evi-
dence of early to mid-20th century excavations, Algaze (1989, 1993)
explained this in terms of an “Uruk Expansion”, which, he argued,
could be understood as a network of Uruk colonies and outposts in
Upper Mesopotamia and beyond, emplaced to facilitate the procure-
ment of material resources. This seminal work inspired much additional
research and argument (Rothman, 2001; Postgate, 2002), and many dif-
ferent propositions involving more balanced patterns of trade (Stein,
1999), conflict and the movement of refugees (Johnson, 1988-89) and
other processes that might have driven the long history of Uruk involve-
ment in lands far from Lower Mesopotamia (see the brief review in
Emberling and Minc, 2016–in this volume).
What is termed the “Proto-Elamite” phenomenon developed in the
high valleys of the Southern Zagros during the mid-IVth Millennium
BCE (Alden, 1979, 1982, 2013). At the end of the IVth millennium, the dis-
tinctive architecture, ceramics, writing, administrative artifacts, and other
technologies of this cultural phenomenon appear to the northwest, north-
east and southeast of the southern highlands of Iran (Desset, 2011;
Helwing, 2013; Petrie, 2015) in a seemingly rapid expansion similar in
scale to the Uruk Expansion. This expansion has also been explained in
terms of the procurement of raw materials. However, the displacement
of Uruk sites from the Southern Zagros and the establishment of Proto-
Elamite sites nearby (Wright, 1987, 2013) argue for population move-
ments or even conflicts and political expansion.
As current conditions in the Near East severely limit fieldwork, we
have time to think about the evidence recovered during the past half
century and to consider new ideas about the economic and political or-
ganization of the earliest Mesopotamian states, using new analytical ap-
proaches on extant material in museums to evaluate some of the many
propositions regarding the “Uruk expansion”. Archaeometric ap-
proaches have greatly improved in recent years, and some methods
now available were not even dreamed of when the fieldwork was
done. Minc (2016–in this volume) provides a very useful summary of
the state of analytical approaches in her paper on provenance determi-
nations, which is supplemented in the discussions by Sanjurjo Sánchez
et al. (2016–in this volume); Mutin et al. (2016–in this volume), and
Schwartz and Hollander (2016–in this volume). These discussions
stand on their own and should be read in their entirety. I focus my com-
ments on the substantive results of the use of new perspectives and
methods on materials of the Uruk and Proto-Elamite expansions. I first
discuss the contributions on single sites or small areas, the building
blocks of trans-regional systems; I then discuss the studies of larger
samples from many sites in different regions.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2016.04.010
2352-409X/© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
 H.T. Wright / Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 7 (2016) 900–904
2. Establishing Local Baselines in Ceramic Archaeometry
Archaeology is fundamentally local. Without solid studies of locali-
ties, sites, and particular classes of artifacts, studies of far-ranging rela-
tions and trans-regional processes are unconvincing. This volume
presents four local studies, three of which (Humeida, Godin, and
Yahya) focus on particular sites in context and two of which focus on
key classes of artifacts (beveled rim bowls from Tell Humeida and near-
by sites, and ring scrapers from Tal-i Kureh and related sites).
In the Middle Euphrates region, several Uruk sites have been investi-
gated by Syrian, Spanish, and French teams. A large assemblage of beveled
rim bowls from Tell Humeida date between 3800 and 3500 BCE during
Middle Uruk times; a similar assemblage is known from Tell Ramadi far-
ther downstream. Like the great majority of beveled rim bowls, these are
made from a vegetal-tempered clay similar to those used for mud bricks,
using a simple press-molding technique, and fired at a low temperature;
their uses are discussed below. The fragility of this common form suggests
that they were made not far from where they were broken, and would
therefore be useful indicators of local clays. The Middle Euphrates bowls
were intensively studied by the Spanish-Portuguese team of Sanjurjo
Sánchez et al. (2016–in this volume). After a relatively detailed presenta-
tion of the difficulties and results of various different analytical methods,
which account for the few significant elemental differences between the
geochemical compositions of the bowls, they conclude that the clays
used to make these bowls were very similar in sites stretched along
170 km of the Euphrates Valley. The authors suggest two possible expla-
nations for this homogeneity: either one settlement using one clay source
may be producing the bowls for the others, or alternatively, each settle-
ment may be producing its own bowls, but the sediments of the Euphra-
tes alluvium may be particularly homogenous. This possibility is
supported by another paper in this volume, in which it was noted that
the ceramics of Jebel Aruda are quite similar to those of the Lower Euphra-
tes alluvium (Emberling and Minc, 2016–in this volume). The Spanish
team proposes a method of determining sources of Euphrates clays
using clasts of materials from rocks brought by different tributaries enter-
ing the river. Clearly more fieldwork on available raw materials is needed,
when that is possible.
Godin Tepe was initially presented as a “colony” of lowland mer-
chants on the “high road” threading between the Central and Northern
Zagros to connect Mesopotamia with the resource-rich Iranian Plateau
(Weiss and Young, 1975). The oval compound on the high point of the
local town dates from about 3300 to 3100 BCE, firmly in the Late Uruk
Period. It yielded discarded ceramics with affinities to local traditions
of the Central Zagros, lowland Uruk traditions, and traditions elsewhere
in the Iranian plateau and perhaps even in Anatolia. Decades of careful
restudy of many aspects of the Godin evidence, summarized in an out-
standing final report (Gopnik and Rothman, 2011), have expanded
this understanding. The detailed ceramic studies presented by Gopnik
et al. (2016–in this volume) show that Godin was a small center in a val-
ley of the Zagros concerned primarily with local production and con-
sumption and secondarily with mediating the movement of goods
between Zagros valleys. This is supported by the numerical tablets,
which use a numbering system commonly used for recording amounts
of presumably local grain (Englund, 2006, 26; Hallo, 2011, 116-118).
The ceramics are almost exclusively made from clays local to Godin or
from nearby valleys with a similar geology. Even the ubiquitous beveled
rim bowl, thought by Godin researchers to be used for serving liquid ra-
tions to workers, are locally made. Only one vessel definitely came from
the lowlands: a large jar from the area of Susa. While the ceramic fabrics
do not inform us about whether either intra-regional procurement of ves-
sels among the Zagros valleys or the limited contact with Susiana was in-
stitutionally mediated, they clearly show that intra-regional transport
was limited and inter-regional transport was rare.
Tepe Yahya IVC was initially presented as a distant outpost of the Post-
Uruk Proto-Elamite civilization in a high mountain valley of southeastern
Iran in Kerman province, close to sources of widely traded scarce
901
resources such as chlorite schist (Lamberg-Karlovsky, 1972). A variety of
evidence indicates this phase of occupation lasts from only 3100 and
2900 BCE. Subsequent detailed analyses, summarized in a key monograph
(Mutin, 2013; Potts, 2001), and much important work in adjacent areas,
have confirmed many aspects of this early paper, but show that mineral
resource procurement and processing was a minor endeavor at this
time. Both the Proto-Elamite tablets (Damerow and Englund, 1989) and
the artifactual remains indicate that local farming and herding were the
primary focus of the community during this period. The study of Mutin
et al. (2016–in this volume) of a large sample of Yahya IVC sherds (as
well as mid-third millennium Yahya IVB ceramics, not of concern in this
review), shows that most of the “Proto-Elamite”-related IVC vessels, in-
cluding grit-tempered plain ad painted jars and bowls, as well as fiber-
tempered beveled rim bowls and trays, were made of clays found near
the site. The fiber-tempered forms, shared with Uruk assemblages, are
thought to have been used for a particular cuisine, perhaps bread-
making (Potts, 2009; Goulder, 2010). In contrast, a number of grit-
tempered vessels with stylistically local painted designs have clays appar-
ently from nearby valleys in Kerman. Finally, a few vessels with visually
distinctive fabrics and painted design are made with clays from the
lower arid basins of Seistan and Baluchistan to the south and east of Ker-
man. None of the analyzed sherds were made from clays known to orig-
inate in the Southern Zagros to the west, and specifically not from the
clays of the relatively well known Kur River Basin with its major Proto-
Elamite center of Malyan. In addition, the sherds of the burnished ware
typical of Northern Iran found at Yahya are made of locally available
clays. This suggests that potters from distant regions came to Kerman
and made their characteristic products on site. As with Godin, while the
ceramic fabrics do not inform us about whether either intra-regional pro-
curement of vessels among the valleys of Kerman or the limited transport
from Baluchistan to Susiana was institutionally mediated, they clearly
show that intra-regional transport was limited and inter-regional trans-
port was uncommon.
One local study takes advantage of the fact that Uruk and Proto-
Elamite potters used a distinctive tool made of clay. In an insightful
paper, John Alden (1988) demonstrated that small ceramic rings wide-
spread in the Uruk Period were used to scrape excess clay from the inte-
riors and exteriors of leather-hard vessels, thus thinning them down
before firing. These would be made by potters with clays found near
their workshops, but might be carried to other localities by itinerant pot-
ters, as documented for ethnographic potters in Afghanistan (Matson,
1965) and suggested for early Kerman-area potters of burnished ware
by Mutin et al. (2016–in this volume). Archaeometric studies of Kur
River Basin clays and ceramics were initiated several decades ago by
Blackman (1981), and have recently been expanded with additional char-
acterizations by Minc (Alden and Minc, in preparation.). Geochemical
characterization of rings from the one area with a larger sample from a
workshop site—Early Proto-Elamite Tal-e Kureh in the Kur River Basin
in the southern Zagros—and examples from other sites, including a possi-
ble Uruk production site on the Susiana Plain, was undertaken to test
these ideas (Alden and Minc, 2016–in this volume). The geochemistry
shows that the ring scrapers on production sites were made from diverse
clays, rarely the local clays used for pottery production at the site. This im-
plies that some Uruk and Early Proto-Elamite potters were itinerant
(Wright, 2001). As we turn now from local studies to studies of the
trans-regional movement of ceramics and other materials, we need to
keep in mind that it may often have been craft workers rather than craft
products that moved.
3. Using Archaeometry to Assess Trans-regional Relations in Greater
Mesopotamia
Having developed an understanding of local variability in Uruk and
Proto-Elamite ceramics, one can now consider broader relations and is-
sues relevant to hypotheses about the Uruk expansion and the subse-
quent Proto-Elamite expansion. This can be done by examining a wide
902 H.T. Wright / Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 7 (2016) 900–904
range of ceramics from all the component regions of Greater Mesopota-
mia and the Iranian Plateau. Fortunately, ceramics from a variety of sur-
veys and excavations are available in museums and research institutes
in regions far from the conflicts of the Near East today. It was possible
to initiate a comprehensive overview study of Uruk ceramics using the
most developed methods in Oregon State University’s archaeometry re-
search center (Emberling and Minc, 2016–in this volume). Knowing,
given the site-focused studies exemplified above, that local ceramics
constituted a substantial proportion of any settlements repertoire of
vessels, Emberling selected sherds representing a limited set of stylisti-
cally distinctive Uruk vessels often said to be ‘identical’ to those from
Lower Mesopotamia. If any vessels were transported between regions,
it would be these. The archaeometric evidence is complex, but after
due consideration, the authors report limited evidence of transport.
There are no definite imported exotics among the 198 sherds analyzed
from the Susiana Plain (Ghazal et al., 2008 and reexamined here).
There is only one possible import of uncertain origin among 90 exam-
ined sherds from Lower Mesopotamia. There are only four possible im-
ports among 88 examined sherds from the Middle Euphrates, of which
one is an incised jar fragment probably from Lower Mesopotamia; and
three are of unknown origins, perhaps from farther west in the Levant.
The more interesting results relate to Lower Mesopotamia, Nineveh
in the Middle Tigris, and Tell Brak in the Khabur valley, a tributary of the
Middle Euphrates. Among the 33 sherds examined from Nineveh, three
small four-lug jars are from Lower Mesopotamia and one is from Brak.
Among the 95 sherds examined from Brak, two are imported, one a
small cross-hatched incised jar from Nineveh and the other a bottle
base perhaps from Lower Mesopotamia. Considering that these exam-
ined sherds were selected to emphasize types that might be exported,
even this reciprocal distribution through the rich plains at the foot of
the Zagros and Anti-Taurus—which textual evidence shows was a
major transport route from the Late IIIrd millennium BCE until Hellenis-
tic times—cannot be taken to indicate a major exchange. These small
jars and bottles could have carried precious commodities, but they
could as well have been the household possessions of families, groups,
or official entourages moving between regions. It is worth noting that
the bottles and incised jars in question do appear in Uruk representa-
tions of rituals (Heinrich, 1936: Tafel 2 right, 38; Lindemeyer and
Martin, 1993: Tafel 9, 24), and could have been viewed as necessary
for cultic observances in the Uruk world.
One might dismiss the limited evidence of Uruk pottery transport by
asserting that one would not expect fragile ceramic vessels to be
transported anyway, that the stylistic similarities could better be ex-
plained by the movement of potters. It is therefore important to look
at other materials. This is not as easy as it seems. One needs a material
from known sources, exhibiting distinctive chemical or physical attri-
butes commonly preserved on archaeological sites, and commonly
retained in archaeological collections. Obsidian, a felsic volcanic glass
formed in lava flows, is such a material and it is no accident that it
was the first material studied with quantitative archaeometry in order
to document long-range procurement in the Near East (Renfrew and
Dixon, 1976). Alas, obsidian was not commonly transported outside of
its Anatolian and Caucasian source regions after the poorly known
Early Uruk Period. Flints, which were transported, are common and lo-
cally highly variable (Wright, 2000), and the immense task of source
characterization in the Near East has only begun (Borrell, 2010). The
materials of stone bowls, such as calcites (including marbles), gypsums
(including alabasters) and sandstones, are also common and difficult to
source. Other stones are rare in Uruk sites. Metals, particularly copper or
copper alloys (Helwing, 2013; Vatandoust et al., 2011) and silver, were
first widely smelted and transported during the Uruk Period, but were
commonly re-cycled and are therefore rare in the archaeological sites.
In addition, their sources were often heavily exploited in later periods
and their original ores are difficult to characterize. One material that
can be studied and sourced is bitumen, which seeped to the surface in
several parts of Greater Mesopotamia.
We owe our understanding of ancient bitumen exploitation to
the curiosity of petroleum chemists concerning the early history of their
material (Forbes, 1936; Marschner et al., 1978; Connan and Deschesne,
1992) and to the improved characterization of petroleum sources in gen-
eral, motivated by the need to identify modern petroleum spills near
coastlines, ports, and sea lanes. Fortunately, bitumen has been found on
many sites of the Uruk Period. Because bitumen can be re-cycled, mixing
material from several sources, and because it can be altered by
weathering, source identification is not easy. However, building on
these earlier studies, Schwartz and Hollander (2016–in this volume)
have undertaken a study of Uruk bitumen transport. They undertook
“whole sample bulk isotope studies” which can broadly differentiate
“southern” or Lower Mesopotamian sources (including both Hit on the
Middle Euphrates and the geographically distant southwest Iranian
sources) from “northern” or Upper Mesopotamian sources (including
sources near Kirkuk and probably other sources in the Middle Tigris re-
gion). Their best-dated Uruk samples are from northwestern or Upper
Mesopotamia. The uses of bitumen attested in this region are as cakes
or ingots prepared for transport, adhesives for tools such as the fixing of
sickle blades and other tools into hafts, and for the waterproofing of
reed bundle boats. Many kilograms of bitumen are found discarded at
some sites. Schwartz and Hollander observe that sites of the local Late
Chalcolithic (ca. 4000-3700 BCE, i.e., before Uruk contacts) use bitumen
from the Middle Tigris, while sites of the period of Middle Uruk contact
use mostly Lower Mesopotamian sources (probably from Hit on the Mid-
dle Euphrates). Late Uruk sites (ca. 3300-3100 BCE) in Upper Mesopota-
mia return to Kirkuk and other sources in Upper Mesopotamia. Note
that some of these sites and sources are only a few hundred kilometers
apart, and this massive transport of an important technological material
is properly ‘intraregional’ or ‘interregional’, but not demonstrably trans-
regional. The report of stacks of cakes of matt-impressed bitumen from
a storeroom at Middle Uruk Sheikh Hassan (Boese, 1995) indicates insti-
tutional control, but nothing about how the movement was mediated.
Thus far, this overview has dealt with objects such as ceramics and
bitumen, which might provide indices of social and economic inter-
course. More than once there has been cause to remark that though
there is some evidence for transport, there is none for how the move-
ment of people and goods could have been mediated or regulated. We
do, however, have classes of artifacts that were used in control activities.
Thanks to a long and fruitful collaboration between art historians and
archaeometricians, we can consider trans-regional variability in Uruk
Administrative technology. In a paper which draws together many
strands of evidence (Pittman and Blackman, 2016–in this volume) we
are given evidence to begin answering questions about social and eco-
nomic mediation. The paper begins with a clear summary of Uruk
seals and their iconography and the uses to which seals were put.
Then previously published work on local assemblages of seals and
sealings which have both iconographic and archaeometric studies is
summarized. This includes both pre-Uruk local Late Chalcolithic sealing
assemblages from Tepe Gawra and Hacınebi in Upper Mesopotamia
(Rothman, 2002), and post-Uruk Proto-Elamite sealings from Malyan
in the Kur River Basin in the southern Zagros and Susa in lowland south-
western Iran (Pittman, 2013) and the large sample of mostly local Post-
Uruk seals and sealings from Arslantepe in the Upper Euphrates valley
in the Anti-Taurus mountains (Frangipane, 2007). Of greater relevance
to the present concern is the small Late Uruk sealing assemblage from
Hacınebi of only nine sealings which had a homogenous Uruk style
with close iconographic relations to Susa. These seals are mostly
impressed on local clays, but a few were on Susiana Plain clays, includ-
ing sealings on small jars or bottles, medium-sized jars, and a clay tablet
or docket without numbers. After these summaries, new evidence from
Tell Brak is presented in detail. Thirty-five sealings were studied, all of
which share a generalized Late Uruk iconography that shows no specific
affiliation with other sites. Of these, neutron activation analysis shows
that eight are from outside the region, but have not yet been linked to
any center in Lower Mesopotamia. Thus the Brak sealing assemblage
 H.T. Wright / Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 7 (2016) 900–904
has a similar minor but significant component of exotic clays like that
from Hacınebi, but we cannot say more without making geo-chemical
or stylistic linkages to Mesopotamian sites as Pittman and Blackman
(2016–in this volume) have done for Hacınebi. In general, all of the
Upper Mesopotamian Uruk sealing assemblages appear to be predomi-
nantly on local clays and used to seal relatively small vessels, baskets,
etc., indicating that the sealing technology was used primarily to control
local transactions and local storage.
4. Summary and Future Directions
This synthesis of the papers in the Uruk Expansion special issue
shows that there is very little evidence for the exchange of pottery
among the widely scattered Uruk settlement enclaves of IVth millenni-
um Mesopotamia or the similarly scattered settlements of the later
Proto-Elamite expansion. The limited evidence of the transport of ce-
ramics indicates that only a few examples of a few forms were carried
to distant places. The widespread similarities of ceramics in the Uruk
world seem more likely to have been created by itinerant potters than
by the transport of pots, just as the wide similarity of both Uruk and
Proto-Elamite administrative technology (such as numerical counters
and tablets, seals, and sealings) seems to be a result of itinerant officials,
who with few exceptions recorded and sealed on local clays. Where we
have some indication of what was administered, as at Godin and Yahya,
it seems to be small scale and local production, rather than long-range
exchange. However, some materials, most definitely bitumen, were
moved in substantial amounts over hundreds of kilometers. No doubt
other material such as stones and metals were similarly transported.
However, we do not yet have any direct evidence of how such material
transport was administered or regulated.
Without doubt there are additional steps to be taken that will ampli-
fy the strong contributions presented in these papers.
First, more local baseline studies are needed across the ancient Near
East. For some Uruk sites, samples are available and some have already
been archaeometrically characterized but not published. One would
need to assemble the data, perhaps do some supplementary analyses,
and write them up. Among these are Sharafabad, a small village on the
Susiana Plain (Wright et al., 1980, 1989); Chogha Mish, a large town
on the Susiana Plain (Delougaz and Kantor, 1996; Alizadeh, 2008), and
Jebel Aruda, a small town in the Middle Euphrates (van Driel and van
Driel-Murray, 1979). For others, substantial samples are available in
museums, but require archaeometric study. Among these are Uruk itself
in Lower Mesopotamia, the new sites recently excavated in the
Sulaimaniyya and Erbil plains in the northern Zagros front ranges, and
Habuba Kabira in the Middle Euphrates. Unfortunately, some site collec-
tions turned over to Museums (such as Hassek Höyük in the Upper Eu-
phrates and many collections in Syrian provincial museums) probably
have been largely destroyed.
Second, additional material studies need to be done and durable ma-
terials previously studied need to be re-examined. Schwartz and
Hollander (2016–in this volume) have already noted the need to
apply more advanced methods to bitumen analysis. New methods are
being developed to track the life histories of animals such as sheep, cat-
tle, and equids through archaeometric study of animal bones. Materials
such as flint, copper, and silver require new initiatives to improve
methods and apply them to mterial in museums.
Third, we need new approaches to tracking the seemingly ‘invisible’
materials (Crawford, 1973). Residues of oils, honey, and lipids in vessels
require new samples carefully curated. Fiber and fabrics can be studied
with impressions, but surviving organic molecules must exist, and may
help is to trace the cloth trade. The identification of wood, a widely
exported material, is possible, but is rarely undertaken.
Finally, the very difficult task of establishing how the movement of
goods was socially mediated needs to be confronted. We must move be-
yond assertions about ‘markets’, ‘redistribution’ and the like, and develop
appropriate and testable models of early Mesopotamian exchanges as
903
processes. Because complex societies manifest many different kinds of ex-
change, with the same people engaging in different kinds of exchange
from day-to-day, and because such constructs will necessarily involve so-
cial movement and conflicts as well as exchange, they will necessarily be
agent-based models involving many actors in complex spatial and tempo-
ral frameworks. The construction and testing of such models is difficult
but manifestly worthwhile (Wilkinson et al., 2007, 2013).
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