Page 131 - Life & Land Use on the Bahrain Islands (Curtis E Larsen)

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surrounding villages, thereby intensifying the demand for food. In the rural areas,
the majority of villages continued to be subsistence oriented but were required to
furnish foodstuffs to the non-food-producing population of the urban center. For
the first time, an early state module was formed that approximated the von TTunen
land-use model. Politically, this early state relates to Adams’s (1966) concept of a
religious hegemony.
In the case of the development of urban centers of Mesopotamia, this
period relates conceptually to the growth of Uruk as an urban center in the late
fourth and early third millennia B.C. (Adams and Nissen 1972). For Bahrain, this
change was clearly later, as there is no archeological evidence for the growth of a
major center prior to the Barbar period.
Although maritime trading contacts along the Arabian coast were made
during the early fourth millennium B.C., the political organization of a trading
network was not strongly felt until Akkadian times more than 1000 years later. The
basis of political strength during the late Early Dynastic period in Mesopotamia,
for example, consisted of individual city states held together by individual leaders
(Adams 1966). The subsequent advent of a conquest state under Sargon had wide
impact. The Akkadians instilled an ideology of universal control and attempted to
enforce it rather than accept other states as diplomatic equals. This system
dominated the early city states and spread its conquests into Syria and the Arabian
Gulf region, including Bahrain. Direct maritime trade between Agade and Meluhha
is a certainty at this time. For our model of Bahrain, this period marked the
establishment of an entrepot (3, fig. 19) at Qala’at al-Bahrain.
For the general purposes explored here, these exogenous influences may
be predicted to have intensified the differentiation of local ruling elites on the
island. No Early Dynastic or Akkadian cylinder seals, for example, have been

reported to have come from the island. On the other hand, Dilmun seals, although
later in date, show a local iconography implying that a local elite was in charge.
Tbe use of apparent local pastes in ceramices also argues for craftsmen moving to
the island thus, there is evidence to support this initial prediction.