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DEBATE REOPENED
Current theory holds that Uruk peddled its wares by imperial domination. New access to Iran is painting a more complex picture
TEHRAN-The Bronze Age Middle East may not have had international retail giants like Ikea, but for a while it did have something similar. Around 5000 years ago, large numbers of people in a vast area stretching from Anatolia to Iran to the Arabian Peninsula were eating and drinking from the same kinds of bowls and cups, all of which incorporated a style set by the southern Mesopotamian city of Uruk.
How Uruk's influence spread so far and wide is a contentious issue among Near Eastern archaeologists. Was this ubiquity, known as the Uruk expansion, simply a successful trading network or was it a protoempire? The prevailing theory holds that Mesopotamian imperialists dominated large parts of the region, including the ancient city of Susa and its surrounding plain, in modern-day Iran, and exerted control as far as Iran's central plateau to the east. New access to these sites will allow Western archaeologists and their Iranian colleagues to put this theory to the test. "The opening of Iran will have a revolutionary effect on our understanding of the Uruk expansion," says Gilbert Stein, director of the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute.
Uruk-style pottery began to appear throughout the Middle East from 3500 B.C.E. By this time, exciting technological advances were taking place in the region around Uruk. Artisans were using a fast potter's wheel, making mass production of pottery more tenable; farmers were starting to use plows and wheeled carts; and scribes were experimenting with ways to record trade. The archaeological record there shows a growing appetite for copper, lapis...