World Systems and Alternative Models of Mesopotamian-Anatolian Interaction

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With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Gil Stein and his collaborators will conduct one season of fieldwork at the archaeological site of Hacinebi and the following year will analyze the materials they have excavated. Hacinebi is a 3.3 ha. mound strategically located at the major Euphrates river crossing point in southeast Anatolia, overlooking the main trade route from Mesopotamia to the copper and lumber sources located in Turkey's Taurus mountains. The site was inhabited during the 4th millennium BC and the small amount of later overburden makes it possible to expose broad horizontal areas of occupation and provide a representative picture of settlement organization and functions. Excavations in 1992-4 have established that Hacinebi has two main early occupations and artifact distributions in the later one suggest a possible Mesopotamian `colonial` enclave in one corner of this Anatolian settlement. With NSF support, Dr. Stein will expose pre-contact levels at Hacinebi in order to reconstruct economic organization and the degree of social complexity at the site before Mesopotamian expansion. Broad horizontal exposures of the upper level will allow comparison of pre contact and contact organization and in the latter permit examination of the relationship between local and immigrant groups. The first Mesopotamian city states pursued a strategy of aggressive commercial expansion into neighboring areas and recent research has located several sites which have been interpreted as such outposts, established to control trade routes while extracting raw materials in what may be the world's earliest known colonial system. Although some `colonies` have been excavated, virtually nothing is known about either the organization of this system or its effects on the development of local polities. Many archaeologists and historians have speculated on what form such interactions may take and have developed a world systems model which postulates domination of the periphery by the central group. However little data exists to support such a formulation and Dr. Stein has suggested that alternate models may in fact apply. By providing detailed data on local political and economic organization during this critical contact period at Hacinebi, Dr. Stein will conduct the first rigorous archaeological test of such models and will contribute significantly to our understanding of inter-regional interaction in the development and spread of social complexity in the ancient Near East.