Intro: the Uruk Phenomenon
Uruk Period: Overview
In both Mesopotamia and Egypt, the 4th Millennium is the period when urban societies first developed. It has been observed that the rise of complex states and the emergence of cities goes hand in hand with social stratification (differences in class) and the rise of an elite class of individuals.
There are certain traits that characterize urbanism and complexity that are seen at Uruk period sites. These include labor specialization, institutionalized religion, administrative strategies like writing, the development of the arts and monumental architecture.
Uruk is both an archaeological "period" and a city in southern Mesopotamia. The "Uruk Period" is called such because its material culture was first discovered at the archaeological excavation of Uruk.
The later phases of the Uruk period are quite interesting because Urukian material culture spread out of southern Mesopotamia and can be found as far afield as Iran in the east and along the Euphrates in Turkey to the west. This phenomenon is known as the Uruk Expansion. Archaeologists have found entire sites of "Uruk" colonies in places like Turkey, which indicates that long-distance trade played some role in the spread of material culture.
Certainly, our understanding of the period is limited by the nature of our sources--few "everyday" Uruk contexts have been excavated (example: houses), which gives us a disproportionate view of elite and monumental contexts.
Sources: Uruk Material Culture
Fast Wheel Pottery
The fast wheel was introduced during the Uruk period, meaning that pottery could be mass-produced for the first time. This led to a dramatic decline in overall quality of the ceramics, and there is a shift from painted to unpainted ceramics.
Bevel Rim Bowls
Image: Bevel Rimmed Bowl from Habuba Kabira South (Credit: Wikimedia Commons, IAS University of Mainz)
The most diagnostic artifact of the Uruk period is the Bevel Rimmed Bowl (BRB). BRBs were mold made, mass produced and often discarded intact, indicating that they were considered highly disposable.
BRBs are somewhat "ugly" in a way. They were lightly fired resulting in a soft, porous fabric. Typically, the exterior of the BRB is rough, while the interior is smooth.
Bevel Rim Bowls may be of standardized sizes, indicating that they may have been used as ration bowls, a way to serve up grain to workers within the context of a redistributive economy. But not all scholars agree with this interpretation.
Other proposed functions include:
- Making yogurt
- Votive offering
- Bread moulds--this one seems plausible since these bowls are often associated with kitchen areas and resemble Egyptian bread moulds. Also, the Sumerian sign for bread, NINDA, looks like a BRB.
Cylinder Seals
Cylinder seals provide valuable information about chronology since their styles change over time. Also, cylinder seals depict a variety of scenes which shows us the priorities and interests of their makers. Cylinder seals also frequently have legends, short texts that describe the seal's owner etc.
Like stamp seals, cylinder seals are used to indicate approval and authorship. In later period, cylinder seals were often worn around the neck on a string. The string was used to roll the repeated motif out onto clay to "sign off" on something.
Although stamp seals were used throughout the Uruk period, cylinder seals gradually became dominant in Mesopotamia. In southern Mesopotamia, however, stamp seals were never as popular as they were on the periphery.
Uruk cylinder seals are large, made of soft limestone, and often have a knob at one end.
A large, male figure (a “priest-king” or “ruler figure”) is first seen on some cylinder seals of the Uruk period. He is bigger than the other figures in the scene, and wears a net skirt and head band.
Monumental Art
The three artistic icons of the Uruk period are the:
- Lion Hunt Stele Links to an external site.
- Warka Vase Links to an external site.
- The Mask of Warka Links to an external site.
Stone sculpture like the “Lion Hunt Stele” from the site of Uruk is another period innovation.
The Warka Vase and the Mask of Warka made the news in the early 2000s when they dissappeared from the Iraq Museum during looting following the U.S. military invasion. The Warka Vase, an invaluable piece of world cultural patrimony, was later returned in pieces. The Mask of Warka was also taken during the invasion but, thankfully, was returned intact.
The proliferation of art during the Uruk period indicates both craft specialization as well as an ideological agenda being furthered by a powerful elite.
Cuneiform Tablets (Writing)
The earliest tablets are administrative documents which record the distribution or sale of commodities like bread and sheep.
The earliest Uruk tablets from the site of Uruk itself are from Level IV. Uruk tablets found on the periphery are only numeric (i.e. not pictographic). This suggests the Uruk expansion came to an end before the advent of pictographic writing.
Monumental Architecture
Uruk is the only site from this period with a large excavated sample athough it is believed to be the largest and most important site of the period based upon archaeological surveys performed by Robert McCormick Adams.
The Eanna Precient at Uruk boasts elaborate layouts of monumental buildings, all enclosed by a precinct wall. One distinctive architectural element is the use of columns decorated in "cone mosaics," colored cylinders of clay arranged to form mosaic designs.
The nearby Anu Temple, or White Temple, is is also important. It is built on a massive mudbrick platform and may be a proto-ziggurat. The exterior of the structure was plastered white.
Digital reconstruction of the White Temple, Uruk (modern Warka), c, 3517-3358 B.C.E. © artefacts-berlin.de Links to an external site.; scientific material: DAI.
Course notes credit: Tiffany Earley-Spadoni