Wealth-on-the-hoof and the low-power state: Caprines as capital in early Mesopotamia

Abstract

The new political communities that emerged in Mesopotamia during the fourth and third millennia BCE have long been held up as classic cases of early state formation. Over the past few decades, however, the veil has been lifted on these states – revealing their weakness, fragility, and instability. In this article, we build on the recently proposed “low-power model” to develop an alternative perspective on state finance that highlights the presumptive character of sovereignty in Mesopotamia. State makers managed to assemble a more-or-less effective vision of sovereign authority by exploiting the inherent ambiguity of certain forms of state capital. Sheep and goats offer a prime example. Drawing on a region-wide compilation of zooarchaeological data, as well as selected material from the cuneiform record, we redirect the archaeological discussion of caprines and the state in Mesopotamia. Caprines were not simply staple goods; they were complicated forms of social, political, economic, religious, and cultural capital, used to finance specific state projects and support specific state claims. In a world of aspirational states and incomplete authority, caprines offered a valuable means of strategic ambiguation, that is, a means of projecting a fuzzy image of broad-based sovereignty that did not yet exist in practice.