Wealth Building in Early Urban Mesopotamia: Strategies and Ideologies

Summary

Stratified occupational remains at mounded sites of third millennium Mesopotamia afford a temporal perspective on houses and institutions, as well as fluctuations in their resources. This paper draws on such data to evaluate the ways that houses and institutions accrued wealth and enhanced inequalities. Evidence for the production, circulation and storage of food and craft goods in early Mesopotamia informs about the kinds of resources used for wealth building, the processes through which goods took on value, and the role of risk in resource accumulation. Findings provide the basis for assessing the value and limitations of anthropological approaches to monetary economies in understanding resource accumulation and exchange networks in early urban Mesopotamian societies.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 21461