Isolation or Interaction: Prehistoric Cilicia and the Fourth Millennium Uruk Expansion

Abstract

The late fourth millennium BC in Mesopotamia may be understood in terms of a complex economy that expanded across western Asia. Some suggest that this trading network may be described as an Uruk-dominated world system in which the southern Mesopotamian core expanded to incorporate the peripheral regions of Syro-Mesopotamia, the Iranian highlands, and southeastern Anatolia. Alternatively, others suggest that the Late Uruk expansion was a catalyst for the development of the Mesopotamian hinterlands, resulting in socio-economically complex regional centers. Such centers may have competed for resources to satisfy both a local elite class as well as a newly established exchange system with southern Mesopotmia. Whatever its nature, within the realm of this Mesopotamian political and economic expansion, but on its fringes, was the region of Cilicia. This study examines the Cilician reaction to this economic expansion period. The Late Uruk period forms the main focus of this study, although the periods preceding are also of considerable importance; the Cilician history of economic interaction with neighboring regions prior to, during, and after the Late Uruk period is traced. An explanation for Cilicia's apparent absence from the late fourth millennium Mesopotamian economic structure is offered.