exchange. Semi-precious stones were usually imported unworked, but sometimes
exotica like the magnificent long carnelian beads of the later third millennium, or the
etched carnelian ones, both typical of the Indus valley, were brought in. Vessels of calcite
and of steatite were also imported ready made by a number of different routes, especially
in the second half of the third millennium. Other imports could include ivory, shells,
spices, and more mundane goods such as bamboo and red ochre, a favourite pigment.
These goods were carried by victorious armies, by nomads and increasingly by
professional merchants. These were both southern Mesopotamian and foreign. The
first tentative evidence for foreign merchants comes from the people who carried the
copper from the mines of Oman in the early third millennium. By the middle of the
millennium there is circumstantial evidence for people from Magan, Meluhha and
Elam living within Mesopotamia and by the Ur III period that evidence is undeniable.
The indigenous merchants apparently worked for both the state institutions and in the
private sector. They were family firms organised by a senior member known as an
overseer and the bulk of their business was within the plain itself (Snell 1977 ). The seal
and the tablet were the most important tools of their trade and merchants began to
keep their own business archives by the Ur III period. They also increasingly used silver
as a medium of exchange, ‘pricing’ other goods against it. In the Ur III period, one
shekel of gold cost ten of silver (Garfinkle 2008 : 68 ). Silver had the advantage that it
was imperishable, easier to store than barley and less cumbersome than copper.
No doubt the professional merchants also took gifts to their partners overseas and
brought home trinkets and souvenirs, while nomadic herders offered small luxuries to
the farmers in the settled villages on their cycle of movement. The importance of booty
and tribute has also been recognised. These methods of moving goods across long and
short distances are not mutually exclusive and many of them no doubt co-existed. The
importance of trade proper to south Mesopotamia is hard to overestimate. It provided
essential raw materials and the luxuries demanded by an increasingly stratified and
prosperous society. It was also a powerful engine of social and economic change,
shaping many aspects of Sumerian society, notably methods of production and the
development of a diverse and sophisticated world.
NOTES
1 The cache of statues in the Square temple at Tell Asmar for example.
2 Early Dynastic (ED) I, II, IIIa and IIIb.
3 The term is used here to cover a group of geologically related stones which includes chlorite,
steatite and softstone.
4 I am grateful to Rita Wright for this reference.
5 There is no substantial settlement on Bahrain until the late Agade period.REFERENCES
Algaze, G. 1986. The Uruk World System.Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
—— 1993. The Uruk World System.Chicago: Chicago University Press
—— 2004. Trade and the origins of Mesopotamian civilization. Biblioteca OrientalisLXI: 5 – 19.
Badler, V. 2002. A chronology of Uruk artefacts from Godin Tepe. In Artefacts of Complexity: tracking
the Uruk in the Near East, ed. Postgate, J.N, pp. 79 – 110. London: British School of Archaeology
in Iraq.
–– Trade in the Sumerian world ––