SPECIAL FEATURE: PERSPECTIVE PERSPECTIVE SPECIAL FEATURE: Different types of multiethnic societies and different patterns of development and change in the prehistoric Near East Marcella Frangipane1 Department of Antiquities, Sapienza University of Rome, 00185 Rome, Italy Edited by Linda R. Manzanilla, Universidad Nacional Autonóma de México, Mexico City, D.F., Mexico, and approved April 28, 2015 (received for review December 15, 2014) After briefly examining the forms of cultural contact in pre- and protohistoric societies in relation to the problem of the varying perception of territories and their “borders” as well as of “membership” in those societies, and after a brief reconsideration of the concept of culture and ethnicity in such archaic contexts, this paper then examines three examples of multiethnic societies in the Near East, and specifically in Upper Mesopotamia and Southeast Anatolia, in the fifth, fourth, and at the beginning of the third millennia before the common era (BCE), re- spectively. These examples are dealt with as emblematic cases of different models of society, types of interaction with alien groups, levels of integration, and development dynamics. Each of these cases is examined with respect to its socioeconomic context, the archeological evidence of “multiethnicity,” the types of interaction between different components, the degree of cultural integration achieved, and the effects on the dynamics of change and the development of the societies examined. By analyzing and comparing these examples, the paper aims to show how interethnic contact impacted differently on different societies according to their types, the reasons and purposes of the interaction, and the degree of integration achieved. intercultural contact | economic integration | cultural integration | Upper Mesopotamia | East Anatolia Intercultural contacts and community intera- Examining and interpreting the dynamics The flexibility of boundaries in prestate ctions not only are well-attested in archaeol- and effects of cultural contacts in archaeology societies was probably one of the main ogy, but also have often been the main focus involve several questions, such as the inves- conditions for the constant and widespread of interest by scholars. One of the main tigation of the directions of the cultural movements of individuals and groups, which reasons why these phenomena have acquired transmission and the understanding of the are well-attested in several pre- and pro- such importance in archaeological research is creation of meaning and attribution of value tohistoric societies in various regions of the that the dynamics of cultural transmission to “imported” features in the context of a new Near East. The very wide circulation of have indeed been one of the main drivers of society (8). objects and materials and the appearance of processes of change (1). Also equally important is the question of culturally hybrid features may have been the Different schools of anthropology have the geographical boundaries of the cultural/ result of a variety of forms and ways of variously explained cultural contacts by em- ethnic entities coming into contact. These contact, ranging from repeated or occasional phasizing either population movements or boundaries were, in my opinion, attenuated events—meetings, feasting, etc.—to perma- interaction spheres and hybridization, tech- and flexible in prestate and early-state soci- nent shifts of some people into new regions, nological transfer, or exchange and trade. In eties, when political territories and borders such as those brought about by village “fis- particular, theories stressing trade-oriented had not yet been precisely established (9, 10). sion” mechanisms, large-scale exogamic “expansion” and cultural permeation have In these societies, the individual and group marriage rules, or other forms of group de- dominated the debate in recent decades, identities may have been more related to tachment from their original motherland. their social and cultural affinities (belonging and relations between differently complex so- Phenomena of these kinds are very evident to tribes, villages, kinship groups, clans, etc.) cieties have been considered as prime movers in the Mesopotamian environment in the than to territories with precisely defined bor- for the development of pivotal phenomena, seventh to sixth and fifth millennia before ders. Even though there must have certainly such as the emergence of state and urban the common era (BCE): They can be inferred existed important relations with the land “ societies (2–7). The world-system model has from the wide dissemination of some cultur- where a community lived and produced its ally identifying” objects (painted vessels with been applied to early societies, being based on subsistence—which was probably also per- the theoretical assumption that unequal and well-defined styles and iconographies and ceived as one of the features of their iden- other types of symbolically significant unbalanced trade relations between different tity—I suggest that the “borders” of these ethnic groups necessarily result in the acqui- exhibited pottery, figurines, and items rich territories were not exactly designed before in symbolic meaning), which crossed sev- sition of the dominant group model by all of some kind of political, and economic, central- the communities involved in the relationship. eral and sometimes distant territories, not as ization arose, bringing about needs to pre- the result of “trade,” in the seventh to fifth This approach does not sufficiently account cisely define the limits of the territory from for the variety and complexity of the dy- which the central authorities had the right to namics of contacts and mingling among extract surpluses and labor. Only then the Author contributions: M.F. wrote the paper. prehistoric communities, which depend on identity of groups probably began to be related The author declares no conflict of interest. the different social and economic structures to precisely delimited “political spaces”—cities, This article is a PNAS Direct Submission. and needs of the populations involved. regions, institution spheres. 1Email: [email protected]. www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1419883112 PNAS Early Edition | 1of8 Downloaded by guest on October 2, 2021 millennia BCE (10–13). Different in nature the same society and/or region means recog- new features that closely recall another cul- were the contacts attested by the presence nizing self-perceived different group identi- ture (“Ubaid”) in Southern Mesopotamia. of “colonial” settlements and alien group in- ties and their material expressions. Northern and Southern Mesopotamia had trusions in various sites of Upper Mesopota- Another important aspect is to distinguish, been characterized by deeply different types mia and along the Middle Euphrates in the in the cases of cultural mingling, when and of societies in the sixth millennium BCE, al- fourth millennium BCE (3, 5, 14–16). how long the self-awareness of the differences beit linked to each other by repeated and Many of these phenomena led to the was maintained: In other words, when does a continuous relations and contacts over more creation of hybrid or “multicultural” societies. “multiethnic” (or multicultural) society per- than two millennia (21). The novelties ob- But the question one has to ask when ceive itself as such? Were the differences that served in fifth millennium societies are rec- trying to recognize the possible different we observe in the material culture consciously ognizable in various aspects of the material groups coming into contact is how we can exhibited expressions of a group identity? culture—new types of domestic architecture, define them: Were they different ethnic The first thing to establish is whether a group, village arrangements, public buildings, pot- groups? What does the word “ethnic” mean? while manifesting cultural features of differ- tery, and other daily life objects—that in- And what perception did these groups have ent origins, symbolically tends to emphasize dicate that the transformation also affected of themselves and of their diversity? or minimize them. The differences may be the communities’ social, economic, and or- The relation between ethnicity and culture annulled as the result of a powerful process ganizational structure. This change was so in the study of societies of archaeological of integration, whose outcome can be either all-encompassing that the final effect of the interest is one of the most complex issues, the hybridization of the two cultures or the process was the “disappearance” of the cul- particularly when the analysis has to depend supremacy of one over the other, with the ture and way of life of the Halaf commu- exclusively on sources of material culture, as effect of doing away with the original multi- nities that had occupied those areas for is the case with prehistoric societies. But, in cultural situation. The community self-per- more than one millennium. recent times, some authors have correctly ception can therefore change over time by How and why did this far-reaching change shown that such a difference is of subtle or incorporating original multiple identities take place? How long did this process last? negligible importance, if not nonexistent (17– into one. What does the disappearance of the Halaf 19). Ethnic identity, as Herring has pointed The third crucial aspect of the problem we culture mean? Is there any evidence of a out, is a “construction”: