States of Clay, 3700-2500 BCE: Investigating the Earliest Bureaucracies of the Middle East through Integrated Analysis of Clay Objects
Early societies of the Middle East, especially in Iraq (Mesopotamia) and Iran, used clay as a medium for administration of a wide range of social, political and economic activity. They wrote on clay, they sealed on clay, and they made tokens and counters out of clay. Despite the wealth of material evidence for these ancient bureaucracies, with hundreds of thousands of inscribed clay tablets and sealed objects available for study, there has not previously been an attempt to apply a multi-stranded methodology in order to investigate the material components as representing a coherent system of bureaucracy. In this talk, we present ongoing research into the some of the world’s earliest, and best-attested, bureaucratic systems of Mesopotamia and Iran, at the very dawn of urbanism and the early state.
