Asian Interaction Sphere” following Caldwell ( 1964 ) and Lamberg-Karlovsky and Tosi
( 1973 ). Dilmun, Magan, and Marhashi were at least three of these polities, and even
they were divided into regions just like the “domains” of the greater Indus Valley or the
city-states of pre-Sargonic Mesopotamia. Only by understanding the intra-cultural and
inter-cultural relations in tandem can we begin to understand the complex networks
of trade and exchange as well as cultural and technological transfer that accompanied
such relations.
The neo-Marxian theorist Christopher Edens ( 1992 : 133 ) once wrote, “resistance at
[imperialism’s] peripheries involved intensification of production and mobilization of
labor in the contexts of secondary state formation, often using symbols of power and
administrative instruments borrowed from the imperialist state.” Mesopotamia, Elam,
and Meluhha were all polities with well-attested histories of colonization (Lamberg-
Karlovsky 1993 : 64 ), while evidence for such expansionist tendencies from Dilmun,
Magan, and Marhashi is much less prevalent. Although notions of “primary” vs.
“secondary” states in a third millennium context are inappropriate, Edens’s focus on
the transfer of “symbols of power and administrative instruments” is surely correct. The
efficacy of studying these material remnants of social interaction was most elegantly
demonstrated by Lamberg-Karlovsky ( 1975 ) in his discussion of seal design and use
across the vast area of Possehl’s “M.A.I.S.,” but have until recently received relatively
little attention. In the past few years, work by Marta Ameri ( 2010 ) on M.A.I.S.-related
seals from the far eastern edge of Meluhha, by Dennys Frenez on the sealings from
Lothal (Frenez and Tosi 2005 ), by Holly Pittman ( 2008 ) on the extraordinary diversity
of seals and sealings from Konar Sandal South, by D.T. Potts ( 2010 ) on Mesopotamian
cylinder seals found in Dilmun and Magan, and by Steffen Laursen ( 2010 ) on how
influences from Mesopotamia, Elam, Magan, and Meluhha all played a role in the
formation of “Gulf Type” seals from Dilmun, have contributed immensely to this
discourse. We must now expand such studies beyond the “symbols of power and
administrative instruments” to look for other types of cultural and technological
transmission, such as the ceramic, lapidary, and metallurgical crafts from these same
regions. Only in this way will we move beyond studies of the literate and administrative
social classes and begin to access the everyday people in their daily lives. It should be
the goal of archaeologists interested in Indus-Mesopotamian relations to understand
how people in all echelons of these societies interacted with each other and with
“others” in a tightly inter-connected and rapidly expanding Bronze Age world.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSThanks are due first and foremost to Harriet Crawford for inviting me to contribute
to this important volume, and for her patience and careful editing. Steffen Laursen,
Carl Lamberg-Karlovsky, and Holly Pittman all read versions of this chapter and made
significant corrections for which I am very grateful. Illustrations were provided by Greg
Possehl, Andreas Hauptmann, and Maurizio Tosi. Finally, Greg Possehl must be
thanked for initially encouraging me to write this chapter, for his guidance as I worked
through the copious literature on Indus-Mesopotamian relations (most of which he
wrote), and for his careful comments on earlier drafts of this chapter. We may not agree
on every point, but it is from his mentorship that I have come to appreciate the
importance of Gulf trade for the development of complex societies in the Bronze Age.
–– Christopher P. Thornton ––