| Abstrakt: |
The Ur III period (2112–2004 BC) provides rich opportunities to evaluate the contributions of marginal and liminal groups to the political economy of the era, and to re-assess our understanding of what constituted such groups in an era of early state formation. These opportunities arise in part from the well preserved and detailed administrative corpora at major provincial centers like Umma and Ĝirsu, as well as from significant centers of royal activity like Puzriš-Dagan and Iri-sagrig. These archives document many of the activities of the two groups on which this article focuses: the large body of marginalized dependent laborers (Sumerian ĝuruš) who performed a great deal of the agricultural work in Mesopotamia, and the liminal figures who frequent our records, often associated with pastoralism, and who are identified as Amorites (Sumerian Mar-tu). The former group I identify as "insiders" who were socio-economically marginalized, and the latter group I identify as "outsiders" who occasionally had the opportunity to become privileged insiders. Our tendency in the study of early agrarian societies to regard pastoralists as "outsiders" allows for a critique of how we identify and describe liminal groups; and this has added significance for how we understand the state building projects of the Third Dynasty of Ur. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
