Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-24hb2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-19T08:14:47.880Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

9 - Monitoring interannual variability: an example from the period of early state development in southwestern Iran

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2009

Paul Halstead
Affiliation:
University of Sheffield
John O'Shea
Affiliation:
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Get access

Summary

This brief paper presents an example of a refuse-filled pit from a rural settlement of the Middle Uruk Period (mid-fourth millennium bc) in south-western Iran, to illustrate the importance of, and potential for, recovering very fine-grained temporal evidence from the archaeological record. The pit provides evidence of seasonal variation in production, consumption and administration. This information is used, in turn, to document the differing responses to successive good and bad years by the rural community.

Evaluating explanations of complex cultural processes often demands precise differentiation of temporal sequences of years, of seasons and – when we seek to utilise the remains of social, ritual or military action – even finer-grained event sequences. It is thus surprising that archaeologists interested in process still fail to analyse, or even to recover, such data. In fact, most archaeological records present opportunities to isolate samples deposited in short spans of time, and the techniques available for ascribing them to specific seasons or years are becoming more diverse all the time.

The Susiana Plain region is an eastward extension of the steppe and alluvial desert environments of Mesopotamia proper. This plain contains more than 1400 km2 of well-drained cultivable soils; during the early periods discussed here, before the three major rivers of the plain entrenched their beds, much of this area could be irrigated with small canals.

Type
Chapter
Information
Bad Year Economics
Cultural Responses to Risk and Uncertainty
, pp. 106 - 113
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1989

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×