Contexts of metal consumption

Whilst the range of metal forms and materials consumed by Bronze Age societies is important for understanding consumption and flow, it is also important to consider the social contexts of consumption, or at least as much as can be reconstructed from the textual and archaeological records. More detailed contextual comparison on social practices involving superficially similar objects allows us to see if ideas about the use of metal objects were also transferred over long-distances, or just the forms and materials. This clearly has important implications for the nature of interconnections and level of integration and flows.

5.5.1 Metal flows and metal values in the ancient texts

Some textual evidence for metals has already been mentioned above with regards to the sourcing of raw minerals for processing. There are a few direct textual sources regarding metals from Anatolia, primarily from the Cappadocian Old

Figure 5.32. Metal objects classified by context of deposition, ‘Middle Bronze period’, according to Chernykh’s database.

Figure 5.33. The directionality of metal exchange according to Syro-Mesopotamian texts.

Assyrian tablets, but none from highland eastern Anatolia or Transcaucasia, and there are also no known texts found in Central Asia, so much of the information about metals in textual sources is skewed towards the Syro-Mesopotamian world.

Various textual sources hint at the directionality of the flow of raw metals to Mesopotamia (Figure 5.33). For example, texts suggest that copper was imported from Dilmun (probably Bahrain), tin from Meluḫḫa (possibly the Indus), silver from the east (Potts 1994, 148, 156, 162) – or in the early 2nd millennium, the north-west (Dercksen 2005) – though there is debate about the exact locations referred to by these geographical terms. But there is much less direct textual evidence of metal circulation involving eastern Anatolia or Central Asia. Additionally, whilst attention has often been focussed on raw material sources, much less attention has been devoted to attempting to make sense of the patterns of distribution of metals and metal objects once they had left the source region and entered the economy. The closest textual evidence to eastern Anatolia is that of the Old Assyrian caravan trade between Upper Mesopotamia and Central Anatolia. This has been relatively well studied through the large number of texts from Kültepe (Dercksen 1996, 1999, 2005; Veenhof 1972). These texts describe an exchange system that included the bulk transport of tin from Aššur (on the Tigris) as one of the commodities exchanged for silver in various towns of central Anatolia.

The tin was apparently bought in Aššur, having come originally from somewhere

‘in the east’. The documents also mention payments and shipments of copper within Anatolia, apparently from the mountains toward the Black Sea. Besides the archaeological evidence for metal ingots, this is one of the clearest illustrations of an organized trade in bulk metals, exchanged by their commoditized (or ‘liquid’) value rather than in socially-embedded forms or exchange systems – i.e. in market-based exchange of materials and not in the form of finished objects, or as part of a gift exchange system. It is likely of course, that ‘raw materials’ were exchanged in similar ways for centuries before and after. However, it is rather difficult to say whether the picture provided by the Kültepe texts is typical of the wider 3rd and 2nd millennia in central Anatolia, or a unique formulation, since the documents appear to span a period of, at maximum, 150-200 years (c. 1950-1750BC).

Other mechanisms (gift exchange, tribute, redistribution) could well have had a significant effect on the movement of metals and metal objects, as indicated by the large quantities of copper presented as ‘gifts’ (but in the expectation of other gifts in return⁷²) between rulers described in the ‘Amarna letters’ (for example, the messages between the Egyptian and Alašiyan kings, see Moran 1992, 104-105, letters EA33, EA34).

Another theme is the relative value of different metals to each other and to other materials. The textual evidence from Syro-Mesopotamia makes it quite clear that different metals had very different values within the same socio-economic system, in texts where prices are recorded comparing particular metals and other materials. Iron, when it started being used in limited amounts, may well have been more valuable than bronze – c. 30-40 times that of silver (Dercksen 2005; S.

Sherratt 1994b). It has been argued on the basis of utilitarian iron tools listed in Hittite texts that iron was not a high value material in central Anatolia during the later 2nd millennium – unlike other parts of the eastern Mediterranean (Košak 1985; Muhly et al. 1985, 73). But the context of references to iron in Hittite texts

72 The effective line between commercial exchange and gift exchange is thus rather narrow.

Figure 5.34. Conspicuous

places it alongside other valuable materials used for ritual objects: “silver, gold, lapis lazuli, rock crystal, iron, copper, bronze, alabaster and basalt”. This list resembles a hierarchy in itself, and one in which lapis lazuli is therefore higher than bronze, by some way. This reminds us that the overarching category of ‘metals’ is a modern construction, and, though the pyro-technical or material features associated with metals might have also led ancient peoples to group them together, it is equally possible that other attributes were more relevant. Thus in the 3rd millennium the association between gold and lapis may have been more important than between gold and iron, for example (see Sections 4.3.1 and 5.2.2)⁷³.

Mesopotamian texts indicate that silver had a widespread role as an almost universal mediator of value by which any saleable goods could be exchanged across Syro-Mesopotamia, sometime during the 3rd millennium BC (Moorey 1999, 237). This ‘monetization’ appears to be associated with a package of other cultural traits: sealing of commodities, weighing systems for standardization, and recording/notation systems, i.e. writing. Given the price differentials between silver and tin, which drove the Old Assyrian Trade system, it is clear also that values were not constant in different regions. No doubt these differential values were based partly on the effect of scarcity, but perhaps also on differing socio-economic systems of valuation and hierarchy which may have varied widely. It is these alternative systems of valuation that may account for the very different patterns of deposition of metals in the archaeological record.

5.5.2 Metal deposition: conspicuous sacrifice, identity and systems of valuation

Excluding the impressive remains of the Royal Cemetery at Ur, it was fairly uncommon for residents of 3rd and 2nd millennium Mesopotamia to deposit large amounts of metal as grave goods or as hoards. By contrast, a large number of metal objects for certain other regions come from grave or hoard contexts.

Chernykh (1992), notes that, in total, hoards and cemeteries comprise around 55% of the objects in his database compared to around 30% from settlements. In cases where spectacular numbers, or quality, of finds are deposited intentionally by ancient consumers in graves or hoards, the ritual or social significance behind such deposits must have been considerably heightened. Rich or ‘royal’ burials have for some time been viewed not simply as ‘reflections’ of the contemporary wealth (or poverty) of elites, but rather the material remains of dramatic performances of wealth (or, more properly, wealth sacrifice) which constitute a strategy used by emerging elites to establish new hierarchies. Similarly, the potential function of large metal hoards as a social strategy akin to ‘potlatch’, designed to manage the flow of metal wealth, was discussed by Andrew Sherratt in his study of the economic developments and interregional interactions within eastern Europe during the Bronze Age (A. Sherratt 1993). Both can be seen as examples of conspicuous sacrifice, or what Appadurai has called ‘tournaments of value’ – socially sanctioned or abrogated strategies designed to facilitate the competitive negotiation of status and hierarchy through the deployment of valued materials, ultimately designed to create “new paths of commodity flow” (Appadurai 1986, 56).

73 This may have changed in the 2nd millennium, when iron and gold are more often found together – for example the iron dagger with gold hilt from Tutankhamun’s tomb (see e.g. Maxwell-Hyslop 1974, 144), or the iron battle axe with gold mount from Ugarit (see e.g. Waldbaum 1978, 17).

David Wengrow has recently revisited Sherratt’s approach to conspicuous sacrifice on a wider scale with regards to both hoarding and spectacular burial practices across Eurasia between 2500 and 1800BC (Wengrow 2011). He notes that many of the hoarding deposits and rich burial assemblages of this time (along the Danube, the Ganges, the Levantine coast, in Transcaucasia, and in Luristan, see Figure 5.34) are located along major axes of exchange on the peripheries of

‘monetized’, urbanized centres. He argues that these deposits reveal a form of

‘sacrificial’ economy, in which social, ritual and moral values must focus on the sacrifice of wealth (such as depositing metals in the ground) to preserve social reproduction; this is in opposition to what he calls an ‘archival’ economy, in which values focus instead on the constant recirculation of wealth (such as recycling of metals). Wengrow focuses only on the period 2500-1800BC and does not explore the changes to the overall system; rather, perhaps for the sake of clarity, he presents a snapshot of the location of these two opposing ‘ritual economies’ during this particular period. His ideas could be taken further, if one looks diachronically and in more detail at the data and attempts to explain some of the complexities revealed when metal deposits are viewed through this ‘ritual economic’ lens (Figure 5.35).

To begin with, it is worth noting the similar but much earlier metal deposits of the Maikop kurgans (A. Sherratt 1997; Lyonnet 2007; Kohl 2009a) north of the Caucasus, dating probably to around the mid-4th millennium, which prefigure the more southerly Martkopi/Bedeni/Sachkere and Trialeti kurgans mentioned by Wengrow as examples of ‘sacrificial economies’ by at least a millennium. The concentration of copper ore sources in the eastern Anatolian-Caucasian region within which both sets of burials were made has provided an obvious candidate for the source of this metallic wealth: in both periods it has likewise been presumed that the builders of these impressive tombs were important agents in the distribution of metals to the north or south. Can we suggest then that the Maikop folk were also therefore acting within a similar ‘sacrificial economy’ – where items which have been kept in circulation in the south have greater local socio-political efficacy through funerary sacrifice?

To complicate the picture further: the Maikop kurgans are separated both temporally and spatially by groups who deposited very few metal objects in either graves or hoards. From the Kura-Arax ‘culture’, relatively few cemeteries have been identified, and those that have been contain relatively few metal artefacts.

This of course does not mean that the Kura-Arax folk were not producing and consuming metals. Indeed it has been suggested that they were producing metal objects on a similar scale to the Maikop groups (Chernykh 1992, 73). Rather they simply did not deposit them in the ground. Following Wengrow’s model, this suggests that the Kura-Arax groups did not subscribe to a ‘sacrificial economy’

(or at least, not one that we can recognize) – despite being located in apparently a very similar geo-economic location to both the partially contemporary Maikop and later Trialeti. But does this also mean that these groups had something like an

‘archival’ economy, or do we need to imagine some other form of ‘ritual economy’?

In the absence of the emerging urbanism that characterizes Late Uruk and Early Dynastic Mesopotamia (which are contemporary to the early part of the Kura-Arax phenomenon), it would be difficult to claim that Kura-Kura-Arax communities had any kind of ‘archival’ economy. It may, however, at least suggest that the Kura-Arax and Syro-Mesopotamian zones were far more integrated into an overall economic system than is often assumed.

The far-flung regions of Turkmenia also offer a more complex situation than the general model suggests. Intriguingly, supposedly opposed ‘archival’ and

‘sacrificial’ economies seem to be very closely located here. In particular, at Gonur Depe (Rossi Osmida 2002a; esp. 2002b; Sarianidi 2002a, 2006), a site of the

‘BMAC’ (Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex) dated to around 2100-1750BC, there are features of ‘archival’ urbanism (with monumental architecture perhaps for redistributive systems, and stamp seals) alongside metal-rich tomb assemblages, more akin to ‘sacrificial’ economies. The plundered graves of Bactria also show large amounts of metals being deposited in the ground (Sarianidi 1990a).

There are various chronological and interpretative questions to be explored further here of course, not least how we should compare various BMAC-related metal assemblages with possibly contemporary grave assemblages to the north-east (such as at Sapalli), to the earlier sites along the Kopet Dag of the Namazga IV/V (3000-2000BC) period, such as Altyn Depe (Masson 1968, 1988; Sherratt 1997; Kircho, Korobkova and Masson 2008) – which have relatively modest grave assemblages – and to grave assemblages in the Sumbar valley (Khlopin 1983; Chlopin 1986;

Khlopin 2002). We should also be reminded of the massive sacrifice of wealth represented by the Royal Cemetery at Ur and the pyramids of Egypt – both constructed within a dominantly ‘archival’ economy. The co-location of different types of ‘ritual economies’ makes the point that such systems may not be mutually exclusive either geographically or culturally. Indeed, there may have been many alternative overlapping (and potentially contradictory) value systems at work within the same regions that relate to shifting imperatives of individual agents or groups.

It is perhaps worth noting the apparently short-lived nature of ‘sacrificial’

phenomena relative to ‘archival’ practices. Perhaps we might suggest that burying large amounts of ‘wealth’ (in the form of metals or other precious goods) is inherently a short-term strategy since, once sacrificed, the items cannot be re-sacrificed – essentially resources are exhausted by excessive consumption.

Conversely Mesopotamian communities’ adherence to the ‘archival economy’ may simply have represented a cultural necessity in a land with no metal ore resources of its own. An alternative view comes precisely from another supposedly interstitial zone. In a complementary essay to Wengrow’s, Bachhuber attempts to explain the deposition of metal objects in the Alacahöyük Royal Tombs as a measure not of the ‘wealth’ of the areas at that particular moment, but rather as the consequence of the “coexistence of two divergent valuations of metal in north-central Anatolia during the period of the royal tombs at Alacahöyük (Figure 5.36) – namely an indigenously constructed sacrificial value, and a liquid value ultimately derived from foreign commercial enterprise” (Bachhuber 2011, 170) – systems analogous to Wengrow’s ‘sacrificial’ and ‘archival’. He argues, on the basis of ethnographic parallels of contact between monetary and non-monetary systems of value cited by Bloch and Parry (1989), that there may have been a moral imperative behind the sacrificial deposition of metal, designed to deal with the introduction of new ideas about the value of a material which was already a culturally significant material, in order to “uphold its [local] ideological value”. If correct, Bachhuber’s ideas might be taken to suggest that other short periods of rich deposition of metals (or other materials) might be taken to precisely indicate zones of contact between regions with differing value systems, or at least regions in which there is struggle between competing value systems – and might also explain the apparent co-location of

Figure 5.36. Major conspicuous deployment of metals in funerary contexts in Caucasia and Anatolia and location of major copper sources.

Figure 5.37. Regional adoption of sealing practices (cylinder/stamp) by date (adapted from Rahmstorf 2011).

value systems in Central Asia mentioned above. A similar model of competing value systems might be advanced regarding the location and significance of the Arslantepe ‘royal tomb’, dating a little earlier to c. 3300-2900BC (Frangipane et al. 2001), here between post-Urukian and Kura-Arax cultural spheres – although the exact nature of each valuation system is unclear. In terms of the extent and direction of flows of metals, such deposits would indicate at least a certain level of intensity of material and information flow between the regions in question.

If these interpretations of the data are acceptable, it is interesting to note that the movement of materials and metal forms did not seem to stop at the boundaries between value zones, and that exchanges were still undertaken. This means that Chernykh’s metallurgical provinces or foci do not necessarily coincide with systems of values. There might be possible exceptions to this flexibility, however, in the distribution of certain forms integral to one of the value systems, for example standardized ingots, could be argued to be associated with Wengrow’s ‘archival’

or Bachhuber’s ‘liquid’ economy. The trouble is that ingots which made their way outside of the ‘archival’ system are the ones most likely to be deliberately deposited in the ground. Perhaps more productively, it may be possible to trace alternative networks and zones, such as those involving such value systems, through non-metal materials, including weights, or seals (see below, Section 5.6).

5.5.3 Materiality of metals: liquidity, partibility and origins of exchange value

The physical properties of metal were probably of vital importance to their elevation to the status of near-universal mediators of value from the 4th millennium BC onwards. Metal objects can be melted down and ‘recycled’ into different forms with quite different purposes of consumption, an infinite divisibility that can facilitate universal measurement (even if those measures are in flux). Contemporary with the emergence of metal as value mediator across parts of western Asia and the eastern Mediterranean in the 4th and more particularly 3rd millennia, are the creation of means of ‘measurement’ (such as weighing systems) and various attempts to ‘standardize’ material culture. For example, one of the features of wheel-made pottery, gradually ascendant in the 3rd and 2nd millennia from the Aegean to Central Asia, is its connection with mass-production and tendency towards standardization⁷⁴.

Such processes of abstraction and standardization changed the way in which economic transactions could be undertaken and hint at very intense and far-reaching interactions across a large part of the Old World. The metallic economy, weighing systems and standardized production are directly related to the way in which, as part of the process of ‘urbanization’, face-to-face knowledge of and obligations between individual members of small-scale societies are replaced by basic abstract yet widely-shared codes by which individuals may interact with relative strangers within much larger social configurations. In an urban setting, networks of obligation and exchange of labour and materials may be bypassed through abstract value (e.g. through intermediate materials such as metals).

Simultaneously, the ability to redeploy this socio-material capital over longer

74 One can also compare one interpretation of the hand-made bevel-rimmed bowl characteristic of Late Uruk Sumer and northern Syria as an early attempt to standardize volume for payments in grain or bread (Goulder 2010).