This article was downloaded by: 10.3.98.104 On: 09 Oct 2021 Access details: subscription number Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG, UK The Sumerian World Harriet Crawford Sumerian Agriculture and Land Management Publication details https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/doi/10.4324/9780203096604.ch3 Magnus Widell Published online on: 29 Nov 2012 How to cite :- Magnus Widell. 29 Nov 2012, Sumerian Agriculture and Land Management from: The Sumerian World Routledge Accessed on: 09 Oct 2021 https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/doi/10.4324/9780203096604.ch3 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR DOCUMENT Full terms and conditions of use: https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/legal-notices/terms This Document PDF may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproductions, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The publisher shall not be liable for an loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.
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This article was downloaded by: 10.3.98.104On: 09 Oct 2021Access details: subscription numberPublisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG, UK
How to cite :- Magnus Widell. 29 Nov 2012, Sumerian Agriculture and Land Management from: TheSumerian World RoutledgeAccessed on: 09 Oct 2021https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/doi/10.4324/9780203096604.ch3
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR DOCUMENT
Full terms and conditions of use: https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/legal-notices/terms
This Document PDF may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproductions,re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.
The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete oraccurate or up to date. The publisher shall not be liable for an loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damageswhatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.
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.ch3 CHAPTER THREE
SUMERIAN AGRICULTURE AND LAND MANAGEMENT
���Magnus Widell
This chapter focuses on the agricultural landscape and the administration of fields,as well as agricultural procedures and production in the late third millennium, in
particular in the period of the Third Dynasty of Ur.1 Other important forms ofsubsistence, such as pastoralism or horticulture, were organised and structured verydifferently in ancient Sumer, and will not be considered here. The Third Dynasty ofUr, or the Ur III state, refers to a ruling dynasty based in the city of Ur and their short-lived territorial state during the last century of the millennium. The Ur III period isoften described as an extremely administrative and bureaucratic period of time with anunprecedented level of central authority. There is no denying that the administrationand bureaucracy of this period was extensive and very well developed. However, itshould be stated that this period was not all that different from both earlier and laterperiods, and it is clear that a large part of the organisation of the Ur III state rested onalready established principles in ancient Mesopotamia, and this is especially true foragricultural procedures and production levels. Nevertheless, the roughly one hundredyears of the Third Dynasty of Ur represent a period that is extremely well documented.In fact, with over 90,000 cuneiform tablets documenting the administrative affairs ofthe state published to date, and tens of thousands of additional tablets kept inmuseums and private collections around the world awaiting publication, the Ur IIIstate is, at least from a purely quantitative point of view, the best documented era inthe entire history of ancient Mesopotamia.
Chronologically, these administrative and economic tablets are unevenly distributedover the century or so that was the Ur III state. As Figure 3.1 shows, almost no textshave been recovered from the earlier part of the state’s domination. We only have ahandful of tablets from the eighteen-year reign of Ur-Namma, the founder and unifierof the Ur III state, and only the last seventeen years of the forty-eight-year reign of Ur-Namma’s successor, Shulgi, produced tablets in any significant numbers (i.e. fromShulgi year 32). Also the decline and eventual collapse of the Ur III state remainrelatively poorly documented in the textual record. With the notable exception of Ibbi-Suen year 15, the final two decades of the state’s last king (i.e. from Ibbi-Suen’s fourthyear) have only produced very modest numbers of cuneiform tablets.
In other words, we are dealing with an exceptionally short period of time with anextreme concentration of information. Roughly 83 per cent (49,009 tablets) of all theUr III tablets with a known year date (59,015) come from a short period of twenty-five
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years, from Shulgi’s forty-fourth year as king to the second year in Ibbi-Suen’s reign.It is this extreme level of administrative and economic documentation over only a fewdecades that make the Ur III state so suitable for a study attempting to recreate ancientMesopotamian management of cultivated land, agricultural procedures and pro-duction levels. Like most ancient economies, the Mesopotamian economy was basedon agriculture, and the textual evidence from the Ur III period provides very detailedinformation on practically every aspect of the agricultural production, and offers a widerange of very specific data that would be very difficult, or impossible, to obtain withan equivalent level of detail and/or reliability through studies of alternative material.
For the reconstruction of Sumerian agricultural procedures, we are almost exclu-sively dependent upon textual evidence, while data derived from the material cultureremain of a relatively minor importance (Hruska 2007: 54 and 63, n. 1). It should benoted, however, that this is only partly a result of the agricultural focus and the relativeabundance of cuneiform tablets in the third millennium, and perhaps reflects a generaloverestimation of the importance of written sources once they occur in the archae-ological record. As noted by Hans Nissen (1988: 3–4), a prevailing, and entirelyunrealistic, assumption that the numerous cuneiform tablets of the third millenniumwill answer all our questions regarding the period’s social and economic history hasregrettably resulted in a situation where crucial archaeological data on flora and faunafrom historical times have been neglected in archaeological excavations and subsequentstudies.
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3000
2500
2000
1500
1000
500
0
UN
1U
N 4
UN
7U
N 1
0U
N 1
3U
N 1
6Š
2Š
5Š
8Š
11
Š 1
4Š
17
Š 2
0Š
23
Š 2
6Š
29
Š 3
2Š
35
Š 3
8Š
41
Š 4
4Š
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AS
2A
S 5
AS
8Š
S 2
ŠS
5Š
S 8
IS 2
IS 5
IS 8
IS 1
1IS
14
IS 1
7IS
20
IS 2
3
Figure 3.1 Chronological distribution of tablets during the five kings and 106 years of the Ur IIIstate. Key: UN = Ur-Namma, S = Shulgi, AS = Amar-Suen, SS = Shu-Suen, IS = Ibbi-Suen
(data retrieved from BDTNS, 18 December 2010)
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.ch3 Since the Ur III tablets, like most Sumerian cuneiform documents, almost exclu-
sively stem from the archives of the major government households, they primarilyemphasise the importance of the agricultural work within such public agencies, andany possible small-scale agricultural exploitation conducted by smaller households orindividual families remain virtually unattested in the written documentation of thethird millennium.
THE AGRICULTURAL LANDSCAPE
During the second half of the fourth millennium BC, a series of climatic changes andensuing effects in the landscape profoundly changed the way of life in southernMesopotamia. A relatively sudden increase in average temperatures coupled withdecreasing levels of precipitations resulted in reduced flows in both the Euphrates andthe Tigris, impacting the sedimentation of the Mesopotamian plain (Kay and Johnson1981: 259 and fig. 4; see also Hole 1994: 127–131, and Potts 1997: 4–5). Within the spaceof a few hundred years, the annual floods that regularly covered large tracts of land inthe south were largely stemmed, leading to the gradual silting up of much of theswamps and marches that made up the estuary of the two rivers. New and fertile landbecame available for cultivation, while the decrease of violent spring floods made long-term settlements along the rivers possible, especially along the Euphrates. However, thearidification following the climate change also meant that the rainfall in southernMesopotamia in the third millennium would have been less than 250 millimetres perannum, and would not be able to sustain agriculture. The urbanisation of southernMesopotamia and the organisation and concentration of labour facilitated the con-struction and maintenance of large-scale irrigation systems, and the resulting modesof suprafamily collaborations made it possible to administer and control the southernMesopotamia essential biannual fallow regime (see Steinkeller 1999: 302f.). The collec-tive and extensive irrigation works, on which all depended, would in turn no doubthave intensified the social cohesion within the urban centres.2 As Robert McC. Adamswrites about the Mesopotamian city, and its inseparable connection to the agriculturallandscape of ancient Sumer (1981: 2):
How firmly the occupants of the lower Mesopotamian plain ever recognized thatalluvial terrain as a special object of attachment is uncertain, but their enduringloyalty to familiar associations and localities within it – to cities – is not a matter ofdoubt. Here we are concerned with the material conditions that must have playedan important part in originating and sustaining these roots of attachment. And itis impossible to escape the conviction that irrigation agriculture – or the com-parative security, population density and stability, and social differentiation andcomplexity that it induced – was at the very heart of these material conditions.
By paraphrasing Frank Hole, we may summarise the overall principles and features ofthe Sumerian agricultural landscape as follows (1994: 138): the climate shift of thefourth millennium made large-scale artificial irrigation a requirement for successfulagriculture in ancient Sumer. Such irrigation systems were extremely vulnerable andhad to be renewed annually. The necessary size of the systems, and the general labourintensity of the annual repair works, required a sizable organisation that went far
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.ch3 beyond the traditional family household. On the other hand, irrigation opened up new
land to highly productive agricultural exploitation, which enabled the Mesopotamianfloodplain to support a large population.
Topography and agricultural fields
While rural exploitation in the entire land of Sumer certainly always required artificialirrigation, topographical and environmental differences within southern Mesopotamiagave rise to significant regional variations in the nature of the necessary irrigationregimes. The area south-east of the major Sumerian cities, such as Eridu, Ur andLagash, towards the coast of the Persian Gulf, was defined by lakes and permanentmarshes. The ground water table was extremely high in the region, and agriculturalwork was largely impossible (Sanlaville 1989: 9).
Immediately upstream of the marshes and lagoons was a vast plain, characterised byextensive alluvial sedimentation and an exceptionally low gradient of the land, averagingfor the entire plain to as little as 3–4 centimetres per kilometre along the Tigris and 5–6centimetres per kilometre along the Euphrates. The deltaic plain (plaine deltaïque)extended from the large Sumerian city states in the far south to approximately the areaof Babylon and Kish in the heart of southern Mesopotamia. Throughout the deltaicplain, the ground water table remained very high, and salinisation of the otherwise veryfertile soil remained a very serious problem for the farming communities in this area(Sanlaville 1989: 8).
The northern alluvial plain included the Diyala basin and major Sumerian cities,such as Sippar and Eshnunna, and stretched from Babylon and Kish in the south to theJazirah plain on the Euphrates and the city of Samarra on the Tigris in the north. Thebroader area was dominated by a desert plateau, and agricultural exploitation was onlypossible in the narrow river valleys. The natural gradient of the land was approximatelytwice as high as on the deltaic plain, averaging about 7 centimetres per kilometre alongthe Tigris and approximately 10 centimetres per kilometre along the Euphrates, andsedimentation was not as pronounced as further down the rivers. The ground watertable was relatively low in the area, and intense cultivation with little regard for thegradual increase of salt in the soil was therefore possible (Sanlaville 1989: 8).
As already noted by Mario Liverani (1997: 221), agricultural procedures andirrigation systems reflect not only ecological and topographical conditions, but also arange of socio-political and administrative realities in a particular region. The thirdmillennium rural landscape in the deltaic plain was characterised by almost exclusivelyregular and elongated fields lined with furrows. Several detailed studies of a group ofapproximately seventy cadastral texts from the province of Lagash, primarily dated tothe seventh and eighth years of the Ur III king Amar-Suen’s reign, have presented apicture of rural landscape in the south being dominated by elongated and rectangularstrips of land. The majority of these strips of land would have ranged in size between90 and 135 Sumerian iku (GAN2), which would equal approximately 32–49 hectares(see Liverani 1990, 1996; Maekawa 1992; Figure 3.2).
While it is easy to distinguish a certain uniformity in the sizes of the different fields,with the typical fields ranging from 90 to 135 iku (≈ 32–49 ha), and with more than halfof the fields in the range 100–125 iku (≈ 36–45 ha), the exact shape (i.e. length–widthratio) of the different fields does not appear to have been standardised in the same way.
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In his study of the agricultural fields of southern Mesopotamia, Liverani stated that thelengths of the field areas typically exceeded the widths by a factor of ten, and heemphasised the extreme length and narrowness of the fields (1990: 158; 1996: 21).However, a closer analysis of Liverani’s own data and his chart plotting the length–width ratio of the field areas reveals that although fields with a length–width ratio of10 to 1, or even 20 or 30 to 1, certainly can be confirmed in the textual material, suchextremely long and narrow fields did not dominate the rural landscape of southernMesopotamia, and roughly 61 per cent of all the fields were less than eight times longerthan they were wide (Figure 3.3, Table 3.1). The typical field (i.e. the median field) wasroughly 6.5 times longer than it was wide.
FIELD MANAGEMENT
Liverani recognised the congruity in the sizes of the recorded fields, and he suggestedthat the standard field size in the Ur III administration was supposed to be 100 iku(i.e. 100 x 100 ninda, corresponding approximately to 36 hectares), although he alsoobserved that the fields often exceeded this suggested standard, and that the averagefield size actually seemed to be around 115 iku (Liverani 1990: 157). This assumption
Figure 3.2 Size measurements (in Sumerian iku) of the 452 fields (a-s a3) measured in the Lagashcadastral texts. Approximately 55 per cent of the fields ranged from 100 to 125 iku (≈ 36-45 ha;
dark grey) while roughly 70 per cent were in the range 90–135 iku (≈ 32-49 ha; dark + light grey)(chart adapted from Liverani 1996: 156; see also Civil 1991: 42)
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of a standardised (or ideal) Ur III field measuring 100 iku was corrected by KazuyaMaekawa (1992: 408), who pointed out that the standard size was not measured in ikubut in the alternative surface measurement bur3, and that the ideal Ur III field wassupposed to measure 6 bur3, which would equal roughly 39 hectares (1 bur3 ≈ 6.48 ha).This is an important observation and correction by Maekawa because it allows us toaccurately reconstruct how these areas of land were further (theoretically) groupedtogether or subdivided from an administrative point of view.
The cadastral texts themselves tell us that each field area, or perhaps better domainparcel,3 was the ultimate responsibility of a state administrator referred to as engar, besttranslated as ‘cultivator’. Based on a land survey text from Umma, Maekawa (1987:36–40) has demonstrated that the Ur III ‘cultivators’–usually in groups of five–wereunder the direction of an ‘inspector of plough oxen’ (nu-banda3 gu4), who in turn
Figure 3.3 Shapes of the 269 fields (a-s a3) measured in the Lagash cadastral texts. The vertical axisis showing the width and the horizontal axis the length of the fields in the Sumerian length
Note: Approximately 38 per cent of the fields had a length that was less than five times their width, and morethan two-thirds (roughly 68 per cent) were proportioned between 1:1 and 10:1 (length:width).
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.ch3 answered to an ‘overseer’ (ugula4) in charge of two ‘inspectors of plough oxen’ (and
therefore normally in charge of ten ‘cultivators’ and ten domain parcels) (Figure 3.4).Each ‘cultivator’ in charge of one field, or domain parcel, employed three ‘ox drivers’
(sa3-gu4). Since the surface of 6 bur3 (as opposed to the surface of 100 iku) can easilybe divided into three equal units, each measuring one square US (≈ 360 x 360 metres),it seems reasonable to assume that this represented the ideal size of cultivation underthe responsibility of each ‘ox driver’. Each square US would be further subdivided intosix family-sized plots measuring one ese3 (2.16 hectares) (Figure 3.5).
The ese3 measurement equals 6 iku, and each iku can be further divided into 100 sar,the traditional Sumerian garden plot, measuring approximately 6 x 6 metres.
The use of integral numbers of the bur3 for the measurements of field areas is notsurprising given that the bur3 served as the basis for calculations of sowing rates in theUr III period, with one bur3 of cultivated land typically receiving one gur of barley seed(≈ 300 litres) (Maekawa 1984: 87). Thus, the standard amount of seed for the 6 bur3‘field’ in these texts would be 6 gur (≈ 1,800 litres), the unit of the sa3-gu4 2 gur (≈ 600
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engar(1 field)
engar(1 field)
engar(1 field)
nu-banda3 gu4(5 fields)
engar(1 field)
engar(1 field)
engar(1 field)
engar(1 field)
engar(1 field)
engar(1 field)
engar(1 field)
ugula(10 fields)
nu-banda3 gu4(5 fields)
eše32.16 ha
Unit of ša3-gu4UŠ × UŠ (12.96 ha)
eše32.16 ha
eše32.16 ha
eše32.16 ha
eše32.16 ha
eše32.16 ha
eše32.16 ha
eše32.16 ha
eše32.16 ha
eše32.16 ha
eše32.16 ha
eše32.16 ha
eše32.16 ha
Unit of ša3-gu4UŠ × UŠ (12.96 ha)
eše32.16 ha
eše32.16 ha
eše32.16 ha
eše32.16 ha
eše32.16 ha
Unit of ša3-gu4UŠ × UŠ (12.96 ha)
a-ša3 “field”6 bur3 (38.88 ha)
Figure 3.4 Organisation of the supervision of fields and field workers in the Ur III period. Seenote 4 for alternative professional titles of the top official responsible for ten fields.
Figure 3.5 Administrative division of a ‘field’ (a-s a3) in the Ur III period
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.ch3 litres), the ese3 plot 1 barig and 4 ban2 (≈ 100 litres), and the single garden plot
measuring one sar (≈ 6 x 6 metres) should ideally receive 10 gin2 seed (≈ 16.67 ml).Of course, these divisions of the domain parcel merely represent abstract mea-
surements of administrative responsibilities and accountabilities, and would notnecessarily be physically defined in the agricultural landscape. The three ‘ox drivers’would together be responsible for the ploughing of the entire 6 bur3 during the ploughseason (not just ‘their’ 2 bur3 units), and the various low-level agricultural workersassigned to the field as a whole would by no means be restricted to labour in individualese3 plots.
Sustenance land
As mentioned above and in note 3, at least some of the agricultural workers on theprovincial domain fields (GAN2gu4) had usufruct rights to plots of arable lands referredto as GAN2suku ‘sustenance field’. Depending on the status of the agricultural workers,these allotted fields varied in size, usually (or at least often) by a multiple of three (seeMaekawa 1991: 213). The text BM 105334, recording a land survey in the province ofUmma in Amar-Suen’s second year as a king, has shown that the sustenance land thatwas allotted to the ‘cultivators’ measured 1 ese3, or 6 iku, while the subordinate ‘oxdrivers’ received sustenance parcels measuring half this size.5 Above the ‘cultivators’, the‘inspectors of plough oxen’ were each given sustenance parcels measuring 3 ese3, or 1bur3, for their services, while the overseer in charge of ten domain parcels received 9ese3, or 3 bur3 (see most recently Koslova 2005 and Vanderroost 2008, with additionalliterature).
According to Remco de Maaijer (1998: 55), the sustenance land was included in thelarger domain land area. However, as Natalia Koslova has argued (2005: 704), the factthat these two categories of land were consistently kept apart in the administrativedocumentation, implies that they were also separate units within the agriculturallandscape. In fact, land survey texts such as the Girsu text BM 23622+28004, in whichthe summary sections recording one estate’s total holdings of domain land, sustenanceland and tenant land (GAN2 nig2–gal2–la) can be compared to the sum of the individualentries of these types of land, seem to demonstrate that these three categories of landrepresented separate physical areas in the agricultural landscape (see Maekawa 1986).6
It is possible that de Maaijer’s position was influenced by Piotr Steinkeller, who a fewyears earlier had suggested that sustenance plots were not cultivated by their holdersat all, and that the sustenance plots, although physically tied to specific fields, simplyserved as abstract measurements of individual rations (Steinkeller 1999: 303 and notes51 and 52). The ‘holder’ of a sustenance plot would receive a fixed annual grain rationbased on the plot size according to a predetermined production rate irrespective of theinevitable regional and annual yield fluctuations. However, Steinkeller presented noconcrete evidence for this claim, beyond the correct observations that large-scaleagriculture is more productive than small-scale farming in ancient Mesopotamia, andthat centralised control over a large area of cultivation would facilitate more rigorousadherence to crucial fallowing patterns. Moreover, Steinkeller did not attempt toexplain why, in his opinion, the provincial administrative centres of the Ur III state incertain cases should deem it necessary to disguise perfectly normal worker rations ofgrain (se-ba) as fictive sustenance plots.7 What would the administration gain by
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.ch3 recording a fixed and annual grain ration as an abstract surface measurement of unde-
fined land?Steinkeller enumerated three factors that in his opinion made the existence of small
farms in the third millennium impossible: 1) the necessity of strict adherence to fallowrequirements, 2) the need for extensive irrigation systems, and 3) the volatile and shift-ing nature of the Mesopotamian rivers and canals, which eventually would obliterateany physical field boundaries. However, while there is no denying that these factorsgreatly influenced agricultural production and farming in southern Mesopotamia, theyare by no means exclusive to the third millennium, or even antiquity. If these factorsdid not prevent the operation of small farms in, for example, the 1950s, when AugustusPoyck studied farming practices in southern Iraq (see Steinkeller 1999: 319 n. 51), wecannot presuppose that they prevented such operations in the third millennium BC.As a matter of fact, the evidence supports the interpretation of the sustenance land asa physical feature of the agricultural landscape. In addition to the already mentionedland survey records, in which the sustenance plots are tallied up next to other types ofphysical fields, such as domain- and tenant plots, it should be noted that the differentsustenance plots are not recorded as uniformly productive, and yields (projected oractual) varied from one plot to another (see e.g. BIN 5 277), something one would notexpect if they merely represented abstract measurements of rations. Indeed, theconsiderable annual fluctuations in the harvest yields recorded for plots held by thesame individuals over several years (see Waetzoldt 1987: 131) show that the sustenanceplots and their yields were both real and relevant to the people to whom they had beenallotted.
Considering that half the arable land in ancient Mesopotamia by necessity wouldhave to remain fallow to prevent salinisation and soil degradation (see Gibson 1974:10f.8), individual household plots measuring an average of 2.16 hectares (1 ese), and insome cases as little as 1.08 hectares (3 iku), may appear rather small to successfullysustain a family household.
However, as suggested by Jacob Dahl (2002: 334), it seems reasonable to assume thatthe holders of sustenance parcels would be able to rely on the agricultural facilities andinfrastructure of the state, and thus be able to cultivate their plots without many addi-tional expenses for items such as plough teams and oxen, external labour requirementsand seed for planting (cf., however, Waetzoldt 1987: 130). Regarding the biannualfallow regime, it is not clear whether fallow land was included in the distributedsustenance parcels. In fact, considering the importance of strict adherence to the fallowrequirements in Mesopotamia, and the disastrous results following violation of fallow(Gibson 1974), it seems reasonable that the state would retain control of the two-yearfallow rotation, and simply distribute sustenance parcels from areas that were not leftfallow.9 In other words, a 6 iku sustenance parcel in the Ur III period would, at leastin terms of sheer productivity, equal a 12 iku field subjected to biannual fallow. Anallocated sustenance plot measuring 6 iku would require 12 iku of institutional land,and the total area of arable sustenance land controlled by the state would have to beroughly twice as big as the area that was allocated and cultivated every year to the state’sworkers; administrative texts would only consider the land cultivated in any given year,while all fallow land would remain unsurveyed (see Maekawa 1986: 99).
In addition to the institutional support that the sustenance plot holders in alllikelihood could expect from the state, it is important to remember that the households
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.ch3 with sustenance fields would have had various other sources of income, including
fishing and hunting in the marches, animal husbandry, date, vegetable and fruitcultivation, as well as monthly rations of agricultural products to individual householdmembers provided by the state in return for various types of labour (see Waetzoldt1987).
Finally, it should be pointed out that the deltaic plain of southern Mesopotamia wascharacterised by exceedingly high yields during the entire third millennium (cf.,however, Potts 1997: 14f.), although it is possible that the productivity may havedecreased somewhat during the later part of the millennium, perhaps as a result of ageneral increase in salt levels in the soil (see Maekawa 1974: 40–42 and Jacobsen andAdams 1958).
PRODUCTION LEVELS
The agricultural fields in the deltaic plain were, at least towards the end of the thirdmillennium, almost exclusively cultivated with winter-grown barley, in all likelihooda reflection of this crop’s very high tolerance of saline soils (Jacobsen and Adams 1958:1252; Gibson 1974: 10; Maekawa 1974: 41).10 Barley yields in ancient Sumer, andespecially in the Ur III period, have received a significant amount of attention byprevious scholars, with Kazuya Maekawa’s comprehensive study from 1974 remainingthe standard reference. The standard yield in the Ur III period used in administrativecalculations was 30 gur barley per bur3 land in Lagash, 34 gur/bur3 in Umma, and 20gur/bur3 in Nippur (Maekawa 1984: 83). Assuming that one litre of barley weighs 0.62kilogramme, this would represent yields of approximately 861 kilogramme per hectarein Lagash (and possibly Umma), 976 kg/ha in Umma (30 gur/bur3), and 574 kg/ha inNippur. These notional yields appear to be relatively realistic when compared to theyields recorded in the Ur III administrative texts.11 According to Maekawa (1974: 26),the average yield in the province of Lagash was 31 gur and 244 sila3 barley per bur3 landin Amar-Suen’s seventh year as king, and 25 gur and 11 sila3in the following eighth year,which would represent average yields of approximately 913 kg/ha and 719 kg/harespectively. Maekawa (1984: 84f.) has also demonstrated that the average yield inLagash in the ten-year period from Shulgi 42 to Amar-Suen 3 was 23 gur and 220 sila3barley per bur3 land (≈ 681 kg/ha). It is important to point out that these area yieldsare not particularly high.12 On the contrary, these yields can be compared with thesignificantly higher average barley yields of 1,396 kg ± 67.5 per hectare recorded on 77randomly selected fields irrigated by gravity flow and cultivated with primarilyprimitive agricultural technologies in the Diyala region in the 1950s (Adams 1965: 17).However, given the extremely low standardised sowing-rate of 1 gur barley per bur3 land(≈ 29 kg/ha), the nominal and recorded yields of the Ur III period seem to imply a veryhigh yield ratio of 1:20–30 (see Postgate 1984). Such impressive yield ratios can onlybe explained if we take into account that the farmers in southern Mesopotamia weredrilling seeds into the furrows with a so-called seeder plough (apin) pulled by oxen, atechnique that reduces the amount of seed grain by half, compared with broadcastsowing (Halstead 1995:14). This explanation for the high Ur III yield ratios seems tobe confirmed by the fact that average sowing rates in the Diyala fields mentioned abovewere roughly twice that of the Ur III fields (60–80 kg/ha).
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1 An earlier draft of this chapter benefited greatly from the comments and suggestions of Foy Scalf,for which I am most grateful. Needless to say, I alone am responsible for any remaining errors andshortcomings in the text.
2 Note, however, that the organisational coordination and social stratification necessary for thecreation and maintenance of large-scale irrigation systems do not necessarily require an urbanpopulation, and it is important to recognise the potential within different patterns of socialnetworks (see e.g. Wittfogel 1967 or Postgate 2003: 23f.). For a thorough discussion of non-agricultural urban systems in southern Mesopotamia in the fifth and fourth millennia BC, seePournelle 2007; Pournelle and Algaze forthcoming. For a more complete account of Sumerianirrigation, see T. J. Wilkinson’s contribution in this volume.
3 These areas of cultivation belonged to the provincial domain land (GAN2 gu4), as opposed to theprovincial sustenance land (GAN2 suku), which was distributed among at least some of theagricultural workers of the domain land.
4 The ugula of the nu-banda3 gu4 could in the Ur III texts also be referred to as dub-sar gu4, sabra,sabra-gu4 or sabra gu4-10. (See Maekawa 1987).
5 The typical sustenance plot in the Ur III measured 1 ese3 (6 iku), although various other sizes arealso attested (see Waetzoldt 1987: 128–132).
6 Note that it is possible that the sustenance land of the cultivators themselves (GAN2 suku engar),which is listed immediately after the domain land in the survey and not a summarised categoryof its own at the end of the text, may have been considered part of the domain land rather thanthe general sustenance land (see Maekawa 1986).
7 Note here, for example the Umma text YOS 4 211, where it appears that some individuals receivedsustenance plots, while other workers in the same text simply received regular rations (seeWaetzoldt 1987: 128f.).
8 According to Kilian Butz (1980–83: 484), the Ur III fields were probably fallow two years out offive, but he does not offer any concrete evidence supporting such an agricultural five-year cyclein the Ur III period. A system of alternate-year fallow was effective in Lagash in Pre-Sargonictimes (LaPlaca and Powell 1990: 76, 82), and since the amount of cultivated (and fallow) landappears to have remained constant in this province from year to year in the Ur III period, it seemslikely that a system of biannual fallow requirement was effective also in this period (see Maekawa1984: 74f.).
9 Cf., however, Govert van Driel (1999/2000: 81 n. 4), who assumed that fallow requirements wereincluded in (at least) the military sustenance plots of the Ur III state.
10 See also Jacobsen 1982, but cf. Butz 1979 and, in particular, Powell 1985. While the salt tolerantbarley certainly remains more suitable than emmer wheat (Triticum dicoccum) on the relativelysaline soil of the deltaic plain, it should be noted that barley, due to its low irrigationrequirements, actually has a tendency of increasing the soil’s salinity by the end of the growingseason (el-Gabaly 1971: 65).
11 Note that it remains unclear if some of these recorded yields represent projections estimatedbefore the harvests, rather than the actual yields calculated after the barley had been brought infrom the fields (see Postgate 1984: 100).
12 Cf. Kilian Butz (1979: 296): “Der Autor glaubt, dass auch dies [i.e. 26.4–32.7 gur/bur3] alsDurchschnitt zu hoch angesetzt ist, ganz abgesehen davon, dass der dafür nötige Dünger nichtin diesen Mengen zur Verfügung stand.”
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