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Kate Haggarty

Dr. Cooper

AMNE 372

31 January 2023

“Households and the Emergence of Cities in Ancient Mesopotamia” Article Review

In his article “Households and the Emergence of Cities in Ancient Mesopotamia,” Jason

Ur critiques existing models for the development of urbanism, instead arguing that a transference

and expansion of the household model was far more likely. As Ur postulates that Ancient

Mesopotamia was marked by an adaptation of this patriarchal structure rather than a shift

towards a bureaucratic one in the third and fourth millennium BCE, he emphasizes that cities

were a byproduct of development rather than a radical emergence. Ultimately, the author’s

thoroughly detailed argument stresses that this model’s dynamism and flux is what allowed it to

endure, while also questioning the terms and organizational structure by which many scholars

define Ancient Mesopotamian society.

A key element of Ur’s article is his analysis of existing models regarding shifting social

structures in Ancient Mesopotamia. A turn toward a more urban society is often regarded as a

successful reactionary response to potential changes, whether it be shifting environmental

conditions, a growing population, a changing economy, or increasing social stratification. With

this, many of these models also include a distinct creation of the state, accompanied or followed

by the development of urbanism as is recognizable in a modern context. These functional models

assign little importance to kinship, and despite a lack of empirical evidence to prove these

theories, many of these suggested models are accepted because they rely heavily on modern

social systems familiar to contemporary scholars. Thus, there is a backward projection of

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contemporary class driven and economic reasoning, even though these ancient societies were

likely not as socially restraining or strictly hierarchical as they are today. Instead, Ur underscores

that because of the previous existence of a kinship model, it would not have been a revolutionary

concept to those enacting social change, thereby illustrating a logical progression that highlights

Ancient Mesopotamia’s “metaphoric extension of the household” (Ur, 250).

Further in his article, Ur examines the perceived agency (or lack there of) of ancient

peoples according to different archeological models and analyzes their effects on social

structures. Some have theorized that individual social agency was restricting to a powerful elite,

if it was ascribed at all, limiting the majority of society to blindly follow social rules and norms.

However, Ur describes a different, recursive social relationship as follows: “Structure does not

exist independently from human actors but is continually created by their actions… Humans can

deliberately alter their structures but are not wholly free to do so” (Ur, 251-252). Thus, he more

equally distributes power with structuration-based agency, in which social change is deliberately

enacted through the transference of known_ structures like the household. This concept is more

logically rooted in indigenous society, and it’s more even attribution of agency increases its

durability. Beyond the idea of agency, Ur highlights that in writing from the third millennium

BCE, terms essential to an urban state were notably absent, including words for “the state” and

the concept of an office. Instead, there is terminology such as oikoi (members who wanted to

satisfy patrimonial leaders) and a flexibility of positions that points to the dominance of a kinship

structure over a bureaucratic one. With this, evidence suggests that societies were comprised of

“interrelated and nested households that varied in scale from nuclear families to institutional

households” (Ur, 256) that could dynamically and vertically change positions within an ever-

changing hierarchical flux.

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Other evidence, including Ancient Mesopotamian polity, institutions, and architecture,

also indicate the implementation of a kinship model on an expanded scale. For example,

individuals who maintained large households often outsourced work on animal and canal

management; with this, there is evidence of “employees” grouped by kinship who were

commissioned for such jobs. Similarly, administration of institutions like temples was tied to a

single household, and though some families had power independent of the king, evidence from

cylinder seals (distributed by the patriarchal king to signify a personal relationship) indicates that

varying relations to the king are generally what created the nesting household model.

Furthermore, the parallels between Ubaid houses and Uruk temples and households illustrate a

social structure based on the extension of the household model. In both cases, buildings were

tripartite and T-shaped; temples (the “physical loci of the state” (Ur, 260)) and homes of the

Uruk period show remarkable similarities to houses of the earlier Ubaid period, with the main

difference being a larger scale and increased decoration in the later period. Not only is there a

continuity between periods of architectural structures, but there is also a conflation of socio-

political and domestic spaces with this mirroring of architectural structure.

In considering this evidence, Ur ultimately argues that the formation of cities and

urbanism is likely due to several concurrent processes and shifts. He describes the expansion of

the household as emergent and “descriptive rather than predictive” (Ur, 263), finally contending

that “categories like ‘urban’ and ‘state’ must be able to subsume a great deal of variability if they

are to be applied to Mesopotamia in the Uruk period” (Ur, 264).

Personally, I found this article very approachable, and I appreciated the thorough detail

that made this topic understandable to someone with little background knowledge of the Ancient

Near East. In particular, the review of other models regarding urbanism in Ancient Mesopotamia
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helps readers to understand previous opinions, as well as the scholarly landscape in which this

argument is situated. This gives a more comprehensive background that is important to

understanding the facets of the kinship model that differ from its counterparts. However, there is

a distinct lack of context regarding the geography or general population, which made it difficult

to understand the scale of the household structures being employed in Ancient Mesopotamia.