Patterns of trade in third‐millennium BC Mesopotamia and Iran

Abstract

Southern Mesopotamia's lack of most raw materials made it dependent to an unusual degree on trade and other forms of procurement from foreign lands. The appearance of wide‐ranging trading networks extending far into the surrounding highlands of Anatolia and Iran may be traced in the archaeological record of the late fourth and third millennia. From the mid‐third millennium, the archaeological and textual evidence combine to suggest an increasing dependence on maritime exchange along the Arabian/Persian Gulf at the expense of overland trade with Iran. Finished goods of eastern manufacture are conspicuously rare in Mesopotamia. Among those that do occur, some stone vessels are identified by their inscriptions as booty rather than objects of trade. Evidence is reviewed which suggests that such non‐reciprocal mechanisms of procurement may have been more significant than has previously been recognized.

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