Mobile or stationary? Chemical analysis of clay administrative devices from Tell Brak in the Late Uruk period

Abstract

One of the most diagnostic artifact types of the Uruk expansion is the impressions of cylinder seals on clay administrative devices which served to secure packages of commodities or to mark documents. Regardless of their findspot, the stylistic and iconographic isomorphy of the seal imagery, as well as the identity of the functional types, strongly suggest that as an artifact type the glyptic art and associated administrative practices derive from a single cultural source, which is understood to have its origins in the southern alluvium. Chemical characterization of the clay on which seals have been impressed has been undertaken by Blackman on samples from various sites to determine whether local or nonlocal clays were used in these administrative processes. Newly presented here are the instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) results for Late Uruk sealings from excavations at Tell Brak, one of the major Late Uruk sites in the Jezira. Pittman contextualizes these results within larger universe of Late Uruk administration. The results are consistent with our understanding that most administrative activity at Late Uruk sites was a local affair and that the uniformity of imagery and administrative function over such a large geographic region cannot be understood as solely the result of the movement of goods.