fertility of fields was maintained by a rigid fallow system. The hazards of salinization
caused by artificial irrigation were met by leaching and drainage. Unparalleled in
antiquity is the high seed–yield ratio of 1 : 16 up to 1 : 24 and yields of roughly 750
kilograms per hectare.^7 Second to cereal agriculture was date palm cultivation.
Animal husbandryTypical of Mesopotamian animal husbandry was the herding of sheep and – to a lesser
degree – goats. Sheep provided wool for high-quality textile production, the main
Mesopotamian staple for trade with the outside world. Cattle served in Mesopotamia
mainly as plough animals. Besides sheep, goats and cattle, donkeys and mules were
important for transport needs, especially for caravans in long-distance trade. Pigs,
ducks and geese were kept among individual households. Animal husbandry, with
its very high levels of breeding and herding, was interdependent with agricultural
production.^8 However, the need for pasture also competed for available land where
herding took place in more densely inhabited and agricultural areas. Especially cattle
made great demands for green pasture, since unlike sheep and goat they could not
find sufficient food in the steppe areas (Renger 1994 a).
Reciprocity and redistributionWhile the modes of allocation or the manners of acquisition of the daily necessities
of life took specific forms in Mesopotamia they gave rise to considerable debate
between economic anthropologists, economic historians and historians of the Ancient
Near East. For Polanyi ( 1977 : 35 f.) the difference between a premodern and a modern,
capitalist, market-oriented economy becomes especially evident with regard to
particular modes of exchange. Reciprocity and redistribution were rather easily accepted
even by Near Eastern scholars adhering to economic concepts that apply the market
principle to economic analysis. They do so despite the fact that reciprocity and
redistribution are essential parts of Polanyi’s concept of marketless trading, a concept
that denies the existence of markets in ancient societies and their economies. It should
be noted, however, that Polanyi does not totally deny the existence of trading, of
exchange mechanisms that he called market substitutes and market elements ( 1977 :
125 f.). But his basic assumption remains valid that the exchange of goods (and
services) takes place predominantly under reciprocal or redistributional conditions
and not necessarily in the form of market exchange governed by a supply-demand-
price mechanism.
The redistributive nature of Mesopotamian society and economy is most obvious
in the fourth and third millennia BCbut the reciprocal modes of exchange are much
more difficult to detect in the written records of this period. Official and private
letters from the eighteenth to seventeenth centuries BC, however, attest such reciprocal
exchange (Renger 1984 ) which opens the possibility that it also existed in earlier
periods. Moreover, considering the general context of these letters it becomes obvious
that reciprocity was operative only in parts, in segments of society. Other segments
were determined by redistribution. Reciprocity and redistribution as the primary
modes of exchange in ancient Mesopotamia should, therefore, not be seen in an
evolutionary context since they existed side by side during the entire history of
— Johannes Renger —