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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

Was trading by nomads crucial to the rise of cities? [sciencemag.org]

Nearly 4000 years ago, in the royal palace of the Mesopotamian city of Mari, King Zimri-Lim awoke from a nightmare in which nomads from the surrounding desert had captured his beloved wife. Archaeologists have long thought that that Zimri-Lim's fear, described in a cuneiform text, reflects the key roles that nomads played in early urban life. These mobile marauders, powerful enough to trouble the sleep of rulers, were tolerated for the exotic goods they carried from faraway places. Traveling hundreds of kilometers in search of grazing land, pastoralists have long been seen as likely architects of the long-distance trade networks that helped spur the rise of the world's first civilization around 3000 B.C.E., in what is now Iraq.

Because physical traces of ancient pastoralists are often all but invisible, researchers relied heavily on comparative studies of 20th century Middle Eastern nomads in building this picture. But archaeologists are increasingly using new methods to read the faint clues left by ancient nomads. Armed with data from animal dung, bones, dental calculus, and plant remains, these researchers suggest herders mainly stuck close to and served the needs of specific urban areas, rather than migrating between far-flung cities. "They were not traveling long distances, so they are not the natural conduit for trade," says Emily Hammer, an archaeologist at the University of Pennsylvania.

That assertion, which Hammer and archaeologist Ben Arbuckle of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill lay out in a forthcoming paper in the Journal of Archaeological Science, has touched off intense debate about how early urban life flourished. To Abbas Alizadeh of the University of Chicago in Illinois, who has spent decades studying pastoralists such as the Bakhtiari of southwest Iran, Hammer and Arbuckle "are completely wrong—I bet they've never even seen a nomad in their life."

The paper is not published yet, but should be around here when it is: Journal of Archaeological Science [elsevier.com]

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