The debris of government: Reconstructing the Middle Assyrian state apparatus from tablets and potsherds

Abstract

While a good deal of attention has been given by prehistorians to the process of “state formation” in the ancient Near East, less effort has been devoted to exploring the nature of historical states through their archaeology. This article endeavours to redress the balance a little, by looking at some of the documentary evidence for the process of government in Assyria in the late second millennium BC, in particular at its level of intervention in local economies, and by placing it alongside the archaeological evidence for the presence of Assyrian administration, as reflected in the ceramic repertoires of Tell Sheikh Hamad on the Habur and Sabi Abyad on the Balikh. Both the literate administration and the material evidence for craft production display a degree of conformity which would seem to reflect an ethos of centralized control. This invites comparison with the material evidence for other Late Bronze Age palace regimes, whether archives of Mycenaean clay tablets or the ceramic repertoire of the Hittite empire. Here too written instruments and material markers of state control could be taken to reflect a concept of the “state” (as opposed to “empire”) which does not agree well with some analyses of social evolution in this region, and prompts some concluding thoughts on the relationship between the material record and the ethos of government in state-run societies.