contemporaneous burial of 2 , 000 individuals. It is equally plausible that this destruc-
tive evidence was brought upon the Susa A community by its Mesopotamian neigh-
bors. This, as we shall see, would be in keeping with third millennium evidence for
hostility and conflict, interrupted by periods of rare alliance, that tied Elam, the
cultures of the Iranian Plateau, to their neighboring Sumerian city-states throughout
the third millennium.
Not all regions of the greater Ubaid horizon experienced the collapse and abandon-
ment experienced in southwestern Iran. Settlements in northern Mesopotamia seem to
transition in a seamless manner to a post-Ubaid world while those along the shores of
the Persian Gulf, whether in Arabia or Iran, are abandoned. Ubaid and Ubaid-style
ceramics are widely distributed but the processes involved in their distribution, the
nature of interregional interaction, the varieties of political organization and their
socio-economic complexity remain topics for future research. The cessation of archae-
ological research in southern Mesopotamia and the fluorescence of excavation on large
sites in northern Mesopotamia (Tell Brak and Hamoukar) has led some to suggest that
centralized states arose, if not earlier, then at least contemporaneously to those of
southern Mesopotamia (Gibson and Maktash 2000 ; Oates 2002 ).URUK AND ITS EXPANSION
Following the Ubaid Culture, the Uruk lends its name to both a chronological period,
c. 4000 – 3200 BC, and to the largest city in southern Mesopotamia. It was a period of
momentous social change. Monumental temples were constructed forming engines
of innovation and social change. The temples coincided with the invention of a
technology of social control that included writing, standard units of weights and
measurements, and the use of seals and sealings for establishing the authenticity of
contracts. Temples, under the direction of priests, were supervised by one called an En.
Temple institutions directed an administrative bureaucracy of scribes devoted to the
recording and control of production, consumption as well as labor, and the redistri-
bution of agricultural produce.
At c. 3600 / 3500 BCa remarkable process was initiated. Uruk settlements were
established in distant and foreign lands. Uruk settlements and material remains are
found on numerous archaeological sites far distant from Mesopotamia. These Uruk
settlements are of considerable size, as at Susa in Iran, some are more modest as Hassek
hüyük on the Euphrates River in Turkey, while others are Uruk populations situated
within a community of indigenous residents, as at Godin, also in Iran (for a general
discussion, chronology, and Uruk expansion sites see Rothman 2001 ).
What impelled the peoples of southern Mesopotamia to build new towns in foreign
lands or settle within foreign communities? The subject has been addressed in several
books (Algaze 2005 ; Stein 1999 ; Collins 2000 ) and countless articles. Guillermo Algaze
( 2005 ) has been a major architect constructing both hypotheses and explanations of
the “Uruk Expansion.” He advances four “causes” that favored the Mesopotamian
(Sumerian) “take-off ” meant to explain why Mesopotamian civilization holds pride of
place.
- Trade, organized for the “control of coveted resources” (p. 8 ) involved the import
of elite goods, preciosities: metals, precious stones, timber, etc. derived from distant
–– Iran and its neighbors ––