Community and State Violence in Middle Bronze Age Mesopotamia
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Violence stands at the core of many theories about how early societies worked. Assumptions that violence was widely used in both state and private arenas—to regulate competition, enact symbolic orders, and/or manifest “primitive” social forms—are common in many explanations of how state society worked. But an analysis of the forms, representation, and distribution of violence in Mesopotamian Bronze Age cultures shows that state and community violence was rare in fact. Taking into account the literary-generic production of violent imagery, the negative political value of using violence, and the pervasive low-level structural violence of household orders, we conclude that a concern for reputation and potential exclusion from communities were far more powerful forms of policing and sanction than was violence.
Authors: Steven J. Garfinkle, Seth Richardson
Institutions: Western Washington University, University of Chicago
Language: English
Topic: Ancient Near East History
Subfield: Archeology
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4408356561