Town and Village Economies in an Early State Society

Abstract

This paper examines economic specialization in an early state society through a study of animal bones from two periods at the third millennium B.C. town site of Kurban Höyük, southeast Turkey. Two alternative strategies of rural production are present. During the earlier Period IV a high degree of specialization coincides with other evidence for a complex regional economy. The later Period III shows a simpler herding system which corresponds to the decline in both settlement size at Kurban and the level of socioeconomic complexity in the Karababa Basin.