treatment of Elam see D. Potts 1999 ). Recently, Abbas Alizadeh ( 2006 , 2010 ) has
offered an insightful model for the emergence of the Elamite world. To inform the
archaeological record, Alizadeh avails himself of modern ethnographic as well as
ethnoarchaeological data. The role of pastoral nomadism and their antagonistic
relations with centralized states is his central theme. It is an old one. The resistance to
central authority by the tribes of the Zagros is also a persistent theme in early travel
literature, that is, Henry Layard’s ( 1887 ) travels through the Zagros in 1840 – 1842.
Alizadeh’s model, based upon the archaeological and textual record:revolves around the idea that social hierarchy could develop in the Zagros valleys
with arable land and enough precipitation for dry farming and that circumscribed
conditions of these valleys would encourage the expansion of the political and
economic base of the tribal khans to include the demographic and economic
resources of the lowlands [southwestern Iran: Susiana]. Successful unification of the
highland and lowland resources as well as easily defensible heartlands in the
mountains, control of major trade routes, and the preservation of a tribal structure
with strong bonds between rulers and the ruled created a series of durable and strong
states that eventually gave rise to the historical “federative” state of Elam...
highland pastoralists were in a position to dominate the lowlands [Susiana] and
create a diversified political economy that included farming, herding and trade...
the gradual development of state organizations in the early fifth millennium, such
as an increase in regional population, improvement of agricultural techniques, the
development of local elites, increased demand for goods not locally available,
increase in overlapping territories and hostile contact, ambitious khans vying for
more power and expansion... culminated with the integration of the lowlands and
the highlands enabling the highlanders to establish a durable and powerful state that
under different dynasties lasted for more than 2000 years.
( 2010 : 360 , 375 )Almost fifty years ago Robert Adams ( 1962 : 115 ), with far less information at hand than
available to Alizadeh already observed that:
Elamite military prowess did not derive from a large, densely settled peasantry
occupying irrigated lowlands in what is loosely considered the heart of Elam.
Instead, the enclave around Susa must have been merely one component in a more
heterogeneous and loosely structured grouping of forces.The first half of the third millennium experienced endemic competition for an elusive
hegemony among the Mesopotamian city-states as well as periodic confrontations with
Elam. Half a millennium of periodic conflict resulted in the supremacy of Sargon’s
unification of Mesopotamia ( 2350 BC). It was not to last. Sargon’s empire was to endure
for only six generations before succumbing to defeat by the highlanders from the Zagros.
For the next 1 , 500 years Mesopotamia and Elam experienced an oscillation between
unification and fragmentation. The single constant was conflict and warfare. Textual
evidence now dominates our understanding of the relations between Sumer and Elam.
–– C.C. Lamberg-Karlovsky ––