periods of time that are punctuated by long periods for which we have no written records.
The information offered here is only designed as a starting point.THE LATE URUK PERIOD: THE BEGINNINGS
The Uruk period, so named after the famous southern Mesopotamian city of Uruk,
modern Warka, encompasses roughly the fourth millennium BC. The very end of the
Uruk period sees the first emergence of state formation and the rise of urbanism and
complex societies and the invention of writing. The Late Uruk period saw the birth of
the city-state (Yoffee 2004 ), a form of political governance that remained important
throughout the late fourth and third millennia.
The chronology of the fourth millennium, especially in southern Mesopotamia, is
still rather vague, mainly due to lack of recent samples for radiocarbon dating (Wright
and Rupley 2001 ) and most scholars avoid giving precise dates for the historical periods
of the fourth and third millennia. Moreover, the chronology of northern Mesopotamia
and other regions that were in contact with southern Mesopotamia, such as Anatolia,
the Levant, and Southeast Iran, followed different prehistoric and chronological
networks, which can only at times be linked to southern Mesopotamia.
As a result of a conference on the Uruk period (Rothman 2001 ), a new chronological
framework for the Uruk period was developed. This framework sought to replace the
common nomenclature of ‘Early’, ‘Middle’ and ‘Late Uruk period’ with the more
neutral terms LC 1 – 5 , where LC stands for Late Chalcolithic (Rothman 2001 : 7 – 8 )
(Table 6. 1 ).
Radiocarbon dates from the city of Uruk itself, which would indicate that the Eanna
precinct stratigraphic level IVa was built after 3500 BC, are problematic (Wright and
Rupley 2001 : 91 – 93 ), and radiocarbon samples from other areas indicate that the Late
Uruk period (LC 5 ) came to end there before 3000 BC(northern Mesopotamia) and
3100 BC(south-western Iran) (Wright and Rupley 2001 : 121 ). This has led some scholars
to favour an end of the Late Uruk period (LC 5 ) at 3200 / 3150 BC(Nissen 2001 : 152 ).
Although the city of Uruk itself was likely the most important and largest place
of the Uruk period, it has been pointed out several times that there are problems
regarding the stratigraphy and hence the dating of Uruk finds (Nissen 2001 ; 2004 ). In
addition, excavations of Uruk period sites in southern Mesopotamia were rather
restricted (Pollock 2001 : 185 ), and thus our knowledge of the Uruk period in southern
Mesopotamia is rather fragmentary.
As mentioned earlier, the Late Uruk period is important because it sees the
emergence of states and the first cities (Algaze this volume; Nissen 1988 ; Pollock 1999 ).
Among the innovations that can be observed are a great increase in settlements, leading
to complex settlement patterns, a complex bureaucracy, the invention of writing,
monumental art and architecture as well as other technological innovations. It is
assumed that an increase in settlements, a trend that already began in the preceding
Ubaid period, led to population growth and thus to a need for a higher degree of social
organisation.
The earliest written records were found in rubbish layers that most likely date to the
very end of the Late Uruk period (LC 5 = stratigraphic layer Eanna IVa) (Nissen 2001 :
151 ). According to Nissen ( 2004 : 6 ), ‘almost everything we ascribe to the (Late) Uruk
period – whether architecture, or seals, or writing, or art – originates from the short
–– Nicole Brisch ––