Re-modeling Political Economy in Early 3rd Millennium BC Mesopotamia: Patterns of Socio-Economic Organization in Archaic Ur (Tell al-Muqayyar, Iraq)

Political economies of early Mesopotamia are traditionally modeled upon text-oriented research and unilinear schemes. Th ese approaches are fl awed in many ways and oft en over-emphasize the agency of elite groups. An integrated strategy combining archaeology, textual sources and anthropological theories is used here to draw a more nuanced picture of social arrangements in early 3rd millennium BC Ur. Th e aim of this paper is to shed light on the changes of political organization and on the manifold economic strategies put in place by political powers in an early urban system in southern Mesopotamia