Lecture 4.1: States and the Urban Revolution:
- Life BEFORE the Urban Revolution
- I am reading from the book, Cannibals and Kings, by Marvin Harris (1977,
Vintage Press)
- They never knew how much food they were going to get
- Had to find thatch
- Collect firewood, visit their mother
- Earth, water, and plants were all game for everybody
- Life After the Urban Revolution
- With the rise of the state, all of that was swept away
- People had to pay if they wanted something
- There appeared kings, presidents, generals, police chiefs, lawyers, etc.
- Humans learned to bow down
- The Urban Revolution
- Coined by Childe, V. Gordon (1950)
- Before Childe, archaeologists did not try and find out what exactly these sites
were
- He organized these differences into a list of 10 traits (most influential)
- 1. Cities
- The earliest cities were very different, and had 3 key traits: lots of
people lived in them, many different types of people, and political
or kings for governors to own
- 2. Production of a surplus
- People who lived in states had to pay rent and taxes, had to grow
food for the family
- Those that did not farm had to produce food for the rest of the
people
- They had to produce a surplus so everyone could eat
- Surplus potatoes
- 3. Full-time specialization
- Each family built their own house, tools, goods
- In states: people had special specializations
- Soldiers, bureaucrats
- 4. Social classes and inequality
- 2 social classes: elite and commander class
- The elite class was 2-5% of society
- You could tell by the size of their house
- 5. A state form of government
- Power becomes centralized
- Households and communities lose power and autonomy
- The state government is formed and gains power
- States do two things for people
- They provide services and benefits
- Defense and civil protection
- Roads, water, and other public services
- Education
- They exploit people
- Taxes
- Loss of individual freedom
- Development of social inequality
- The major features of the Urban Revolution
- Cities
- Production of a surplus
- full -time specialization
- Social classes and inequality
- State form of government
- 6. Monumental public works
- Massive canals
- Massive buildings
- The pyramids were for kings to show off their power
- Stone henge
- Monumental buildings at ASU
- Buildings that are larger than they have to be
- The stadium
- 7. Long-distance trade
- Did not originate with eh urban revolution
- It increased after it
- The kings and elites wanted luxury goods from distant areas to
show off their wealth
- Merchants were working to get those luxury goods
- 8. Predictive sciences
- After the urban revolution science took off
- They established accurate calendars
- 9. Writing
- Earliest writing developed during the urban revolution
- Why?
- States had much more information to track
- Government specialists appeared for the first time
and needed to track information
- The Incas did not have writing, but they used a Khipu to
track information
- 10. Sophisticated art styles
- Art from ancient states
- Art from tribal people’s
- Primary and secondary states
- Primary states
- The earliest states to develop in an area
- They made the transition to states through local processes
- Secondary states
- States that developed alter, through contact with existing states
- Many were formed when states and empires expanded
- Some were conquered and became parts of empire
- Others developed state institutions in order to deal with
expanding states
- The URban revolution around the world: Primary states
- New World
- Mesoamerica
- Home of Aztecs, Mayans
- Peru
- Old world
- Nile Valley
- Great Zimbabwe
- Lower Mesopotamia
- Indus
- Hsia
- List of primary states
-
- The Vikings
- Came to the New world first
- Why did this happen?
- Population pressure theories
- Warfare
- Agricultural intensification
- Elite control theories
- Wealth from trade
- Elites fool people
- 4 different archaeology approaches for old states
- 1. Indiana Jones archaeology
- Looting tombs, robbing artifacts
- Lots of adventure
- 2. Old-time monumental archaeology
- Excavating tombs and palaces, “robbing” artifacts
- About kings and the 1% in the ancient past
- 3. Monumental archaeology today
- Excavating tombs and palaces
- About kings the 1% in the ancient past
- They do not steal
- 4. Social archaeology
- Excavating house, fields, and workshops
- The daily life of the 99% in the past
- Early states are also called early civilization
Lecture 4.2: Mesopotamia:
- Our focus today
- Ubaid (ca. 5900-4200 BC):
- Eridu: Temples, canal irrigation, and the roots of urbanism
- Uruk (ca. 4200-3100 BC):
- Uruk: the world's first monumental urban center; social stratification and
priest-kings; population growth, city-states, craft specialization, the
invention of fast potter’s the wheel, wheel, plow, writing
- Alluvial Plains Environment
- No abundant natural resources
- Hot and dry
- swamps
Lecture 4.3: Tour of Ancient States
- Egypt: Pyramids and mummies, but no money?
- Egypt: The Setting
- Herodotus - “Egypt is the gift of the Nile”
- The Nile provides easy transportation routes
- Early Dynastic period
- Early Dynastic:
- 3100 - 2700 BC
- Unification of Upper and Lower Egypt
- The first kings
- The Narmer Palette
- The Scorpion king
- His name is on a ceremonial base head
- Wears a crown
- Carries an agricultural hoe
- Small scorpion in front of the face
- Old Kingdom period
- Old kingdom:
- 2700 BC - 2200 BC
- Earliest and largest pyramids
- First powerful kings
- Middle Kingdom period
- 2200 BC - 2050 BC
- Development of bureaucracy
- Beer cans and bread things in the workshops
- Shows they were provided these things
- New Kingdom period
- 1550 BC - 1100 BC
- The most powerful kings and expansion of an empire
- State expanded and conquered foreign people and made them pay tax
- The largest Egyptian city: Amarna
- New Kingdom
- Pharaoh: Akhenaten
- Ancient Egypt: A “command economy”
- Bureaucracy
- Scribes managed the economy
- Stress on careful measurement and accounting
- Complex, fraction-based mathematics
- Quarrying expedition of king Sensusret I:
- 1 noble
- 8 scribes
- 80 officials
- 18,700 laborers
- Plus: millers, bakers, brewers
- Workers Villiage: Amarna
- New kingdom
- Workers had a special task
- State-controlled their workers
- Childe’s Urban Revolution Checklist: EGYPT
- All are yes besides number 8: Sophisticated art styles
- The Indus Valley culture (2600 - 1900 BC)
- Big cities, an undeciphered writing system, but no traces of rulers?
- Mohenjo-Daro
- The “Citadel”: A large raised platform with public architecture
- The lower city: large residential neighborhoods, packed houses
- One big street running N to S
- Excavated streets and reconstructed houses
- Bathing platforms and wells
- Advanced plumbing and sanitation
- Latrines
- Kinda like bathrooms
- Roman toilets
- You went to the bathroom with the group and did your
business
- Drains
- Used stones and make beads to make necklaces and bracelets
- Undeciphered writing system
- Weird scripture on stones
- Childe’s Urban Revolution checklist: INDUS Valley
- Most of them add up beside 4 and 5
- Great Zimbabwe: Wealthy African merchants AD 1250 - 1450
- Do not know if this is a primary or secondary state
- The Crowded City (stereotype)
- Low-density tropical cities
- Cities are more spread out
- African low-density cities
- Hill Ruin
- The Center of the city was below the hill ruin
- The great enclosure
- Walls were built around the city
- The world system, Ad 1100 - 1300
- Supplied goods to north of Africa
- African merchants sent a giraffe to the emperor of China
- “Renders Ruin” (excavated 1903)
- Need a slide
- Importa from the coastal trade:
- Glazed Persian beads (13-14th century date)
- Chinese glazed dishes
- Near eastern glass
- Coral
- 10,000s of thousands of small glass beads
- Cowrie shells
- Coin from Kilwa
- Local goods
- Iron: wire, hoes, axes, etc.
- Copper, ivory, soapstone
- Childe’s Urban Revolution checklist: GREAT ZIMBABWE
- Everything fits besides 9 and 10: writing and predictive sciences
Lecture 4.4: Teotihuacan: Great city of the Ancient Americas
- Discovering Teotihuacan: where?
- “Las piramides”
- Pyramids
- Northwest of Mexico City
- 1519 CE
- Central Mexican Plateau
- Age and “original” appearance of ruins
- 150 BCE - 600 CE
- Hundreds of years of excavation
- Pyramids
- Moon
- Sun
- Feathered Serpent
- Rubble and vegetation
- Today
- Rubble cleared
- Feathered Serpent Pyramid Pyramid
- Pebbles mark reconstruction (pyramids)
- ASU excavations at the Feathered Serpent Pyramid
- Prof. George L. Cowgill
- Prof. Ruben Cabrera
- Prof. Saburo Sugiyama
- They all worked together on the pyramid
- They uncovered men nd women on their backs and they wore ornaments
(they were warriors), they were sacrificed when the pyramid was built
- The pyramid had no rooms (solid rock)
- There were child burials at the pyramid
- Not the Aztecs!
- Their capital was where downtown Mexico City is today
- Aztecs did not build Teotihuacan but knew of it
- Nezhualcoyotl
- One of the 3 kings of the Triple Alliance
- Aztec Triple Alliance 1325-1519 CE
- No one knew who built it
- Teotihuacan collapsed ca. 600 CE
- The arrival of Nahuatl speakers
- Teotihuacanos probably did not speak Nahuatl
- Mexica eagle-serpent myth - too late - ca. 1325
- Depicted on the Mexican flag
- Glottochronoloyg: Nahuatl speakers arrived ca. 800-900 CE
- Why built pyramids?
- Intended to make a strong impression
- Expression of power
- Common alignments
- Measurement system (Sugiyama)
- Astronomical alignments (Aveni)
- Man-made landscape
- Building costs
- Who paid?
- Society, with a complex system of politics and economy
- Costs of complexity
- Leaders (they needed to give a lot of support)
- Other specialists
- Joseph Tainter
- The cost of complexity can be to great that some people become
disaffected
- Political violence
- Burning on Avenue of Dead ca. 600 CE
- Sat on top of the pyramids
- Not forever
- Cities do not last, even very well-built ones
- Lessons for the present?
- Avoid the problem that beset the cities in history
- Conclusion
- Pyramids are the tip of the iceberg
- ASU field research continues
Lecture 4.5: Tiwanaku:
- Tiwanaku and the Lake Titicaca Basin
- The Inka Empire is the best-known South American empire, but empires existed
in the Andes even earlier
- The empire of Tiwanaku was one of the largest in the highlands of South America
between AD 500 and 1000, with a capital city next to Lake Titicaca, the largest
lake in South America
- The Capital Tiwanaku
- The ancient city of Tiwanaku was an enormous ceremonial center with large
pyramids and smaller neighborhoods.
- Dwellings surrounded the site, with perhaps 40,000 inhabitants, including
artisans who carved Gateway of the Sun from single stone block
- The civic-ceremonial core of Tiwanaku included two large pyramid complexes,
large places, sophisticated drainage systems, and an elite palace
- An enormous stone-faced, stepped platform mount, the Akapana, was 50
feet high
- Some of the stone blocks that was used to construct the Akapana were
11 tons and had to be brought to Tiwanaky from quarries more than 60
miles away
- The second main pyramid complex was called the Pumapumku
- The Gateway of the Sun was probably used as the entrance to the innermost part
of the Pumapunku
- Unfortunately, the Pumapunku has been heavily looted
- In Colonial Period, the Spanish looted the Pumapunky for stone for building
material
- Some of the blocks looted from the Pumapunky can be seen at the base
of the COlonial church in Laja, Bolivia
- Tiwanaku Agricultural Systems
- How did a large population maintain itself in such a harsh, high-altitude
environment at 12,580 feet?
- Camelid pastoralism and cultivation of grains like quinoa and high-altitude
tubers like potatoes, oca, and ulluco were employed
- The land was reclaimed from waterlogged lands adjacent to Lake Titicaca
- Fish, aquatic animals, and reeds from lake Titicaca were also important
resources
- Raised Fields of Tiwanaku
- A key to Twanaky success was engineering a vast zone of swamps along the
edge of the lake into richly productive farmland
- The swamps were turned into fields by constructing canals 5-10 meters
apart and 1-2 meters deep
- The soil from the ditches was piled onto the land in between to create
raised fields
- The raised fields were very productive and fed a population of perhaps
12-,000 people in the region
- Tiwanaku Trade and Expansion
- Long-distance trade was maintained with economic colonies established near the
Pacific Coast and tropical forests to the east
- Warm region corps were obtained through trade
- Trade connections were maintained by large llama
- Twianaky expanded throughout southern Peru, northern Chile, and parts of
Bolivia and Argentina
- One agricultural colony was located in the Moquegua Valley of southern
Peru and includes the site of Chen Chen
- 7day caravan trip
- Looks like a site for the agricultural colony to grow corn
- See artifacts from the Tiwanaku tribe
- Other Tiwanaky-affiliated sites are located in San Pedro de Atacama,
northern Chile
- Tiwanaku styles were there and the clothes
- Beer drinking vessels
- The artifacts are small, portable and important
- Tiwanaku Collapse
- Tiwanaku’s domination over the region diminished after AD 1000
- A number of smaller competing states emerged, each maintaining its own
local sphere of influence until the middle of the fifteenth century
- The specific cause of Tiwanaky’s collapse has not been determined
- The Relevancy of Archaeology
- Following the collapse of the Tiwanaku Empire by AD 1000, the raised fields
were abandoned
- In the last 30 years, archaeologists have discovered these ancient field
systems
- Local farmers were persuaded to use the traditional methods
- Yields are almost seven-fold as much as normal drying farming in the
area
- Raised field rehabilitation has improved agricultural yields today in the Lake
Titicaca Basin
- Tiwanaku is also an important cultural symbol in Bolivia today
- In 2010, Bolivian President Evo Morales held his inauguration at the
beginning of his second term earing a Tiwanaky-style-four-cornered hat in
a ceremony at the site of Tiwanaku
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Video 4.1: Visit Great Zimbabwe
- There was as much as a ton of gold a year extracted from the region
- You did not have to mine the gold to be wealthy, you also could trade
- It had thousands of Adobe buildings and housed more than 15,000 people
- The people flourished there for more than 200 years
- The great enclosure
- At the heart of the city
- Covered nearly 1800 meters
- Comprised of 1,000,000 stone blocks
- There is an inner wall with an intimidating passageway
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