Trade, Women, Class, and Society in Ancient Western Asia [and Comments and Reply]

Abstract

Recent discussion of the effects on society of long-distance exchange has brought the once generally accepted view of early Mesopotamian society as "statist" under heavy fire. There is now broad consensus that by Early Dynastic III there were widespread exchange systems in which the production of commodities played an important role and that by that time individuals were engaging in exchange for personal gain. These important new insights have had the effect of pushing into the conceptual background the role of the central societal institutions. Despite their import, however, it is inappropriate to single out any one factor in attempting to delineate the transformative forces of a social formation. Early Mesopotamian exchange should be approached as part of the changing complex of social relations of production that characterized Mesopotamian society. I suggest that the modes of production characterizing Mesopotamia were quite different from the modern capitalist mode; that centralized production with public/communal labor was critical for the emergence of state power and the creation of the conditions allowing commodity relations and independent merchant activity; that the state took an active role in furthering state production but, perhaps quite unintentionally, created the conditions in which independent merchants could emerge; and that collective female labor played a key role in that process.