Ethnicity and the state in early third millennium Mesopotamia.

Abstract

This dissertation examines the development of ethnicity as a social identity during and after the rise of the state. It explores the relationship among newly developing ethnic groups--whether within states or between states and their peripheries--as well as their relations with the state. Ethnicity is a strategic identity that can be emphasized or suppressed in alliance, or resistance, to states. Because states continue to develop after the rise of centralized government, and because struggles among competing ethnic groups are common in early states, understanding ethnicity is essential to understanding the later development of these societies. More specifically, the dissertation examines the evidence for the existence of ethnic groups in and around the early states of Mesopotamia, ca. 3300-2700 BC. Textual sources, given problems in our understanding of them and their own bias, are insufficient to identify and locate ethnic groups in Mesopotamia. Thus, to study this issue we must identify the distinguishing features of ethnic groups in the historical and archaeological record. I begin by briefly discussing the evidence for language distribution during the third millennium BC, and consider in considerably more detail the evidence of contemporary ceramic styles. Analyzing the mechanisms of production, distribution, and use of these styles, as well as the distribution of specific design elements within them, I suggest that styles of painted pottery usually termed Jemdet Nasr, Scarlet Ware, and Proto-Elamite marked the social boundaries of an ethnic group. Finally, I discuss the political causes and effects of the rise of such an ethnic group in early Mesopotamia.