Bronze Age World System Cycles [and Comments and Reply] Author(s): Andre Gunder Frank, Guillermo Algaze,

J. A. Barcel, Christopher Chase-Dunn, Christopher Edens, Jonathan Friedman, Antonio Gilman, Chris Gosden, A. F. Harding, Alexander H. Joffe, A. Bernard Knapp, Philip L. Kohl, Kristian Kristiansen, C. C. LambergKarlovsky, J. R. McNeill, J. D. Muhly, Andrew Sherratt, Susan Sherratt Source: Current Anthropology, Vol. 34, No. 4 (Aug. - Oct., 1993), pp. 383-429 Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2743750 . Accessed: 06/04/2011 10:48
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CURRENT ? I993

Volume 34, Number 4, August-October I993 ANTHROPOLOGY Foundation Anthropological for Research. rights All reserved byThe Wenner-Gren OOII-3204/93/3404-0003$3.00

Bronze Age World SystemCycles'

by AndreGunderFrank
This essayexplores geographical the extent theworldsystem of and datesits cyclicalups and downsduring Bronze the Age and, in a preliminary theearlyIronAge.The scope ofthesetwin way, a tasksis exceptionally wide and deep: wide in exploring single muchofAfro-Eurasia, in worldsystem thatencompasses deep economicand politicalcyclessincemore identifying systemwide than5,000 yearsago.
GUNDER FRANK iS Professor Development of Economics and Social Sciencesat theUniversity Amsterdam address: of (his H. Bosmansstraat 1077 XG Amsterdam, 57, Holland).Bornin Berlin in i929, he was educatedin theUnitedStatesand received a Ph.D. in economicsat theUniversity Chicagoin I957. He of in has taught departments anthropology, of economics, history, of in politicalscience,and sociology universities Europe, North and His earlier America, LatinAmerica. on work, primarily deand "the development underdevelopment," of pendence became well knownfrom Capitalismand Underdevelopment his in LatinAmerica(New York:Monthly ReviewPress,i967). Subsequentworkon world-system international history, contemporary and politicaleconomy, social movements represented the is by Accumulation following publications, amongothers:World ReviewPress,I978); Crisisin I492-I789 (New York:Monthly the World Economy (London:Heinemann, ig80); and The EuroConn.: Lawrence pean Challenge Hill, I983). The pres(Westport, entpaperwas submitted finalform 5 xi 92. in i ANDRE

i. It is a pleasure acknowledge to thehelpofall themanyauthors whomI havequotedso muchabove,among them especially Mitchell Allen,Christopher Edens,Barry Gills, and ShereenRatnagar, who additionally sent me verydetailedwritten comments a on previous draft. Theywill recognize inputoftheir my helpbutperhaps not much of theircriticism thisrevision. in Severalfriends and Hill [i99i], combining designathe and particularly Philip Kohl, KristianKristiansen, Andrew Chase-Dunn and tions of Gills and Frank[I990, I99I] and Wilkinson Sherratt helpedenormously making onlytheir also by not ownbut also their friends' [I987], suggestthatwe call it) that eventuallyexpanded unpublished manuscripts availableto me.

The world systemand its cycles have long determined the economic, political, and cultural opportunitiesor limitationsfacedby regions,peoples, and theirpolitical institutionsand leaders. Cyclically alternatingglobal warmingand ice ages probablyalso affected economic and politicalfortunes. Even today,a risingeconomic sea liftsmost boats even if some capsize. A recedingworld economictideor stormy weathersinksmanymoreships of state,but the same crisis thatgeneratestheirdecline offers new opportunities (literal)upstartselsewhere. to The historicalreviewoffered here will show thatpolitical-economic fortunesand hegemonic rivalryand its outcomes were alreadybeingvitallyaffected particiby pation in a world system in the Bronze Age. Detailed of demonstration how the system operated is left for anothertime and/orto othersbetterqualifiedthan I. It to may be usefultherefore attemptto state at the outset what is and what is not proposedhere and to anticipate and answer some objectionsto both. The first objectionmay be that the task is impossible to accomplish. In particular,it may be rightly argued or thatI lack the professional training experiencein arfor knowlchaeologyand history it and have insufficient edge of the area, the period,the materials,and the problems and pitfallsof their study.My use or citation of particular facts,sources,and/or"authorities"may also appearobjectionableon the groundsthat (supposedlyor perhapseven reallyunbeknownstto me) theyhave been discreditedby "the profession."Anotherobjection (or perhapsanotherversionofthe same one) is thateven the best archaeologists and historianstodaylack the factual evidence and analyticalmethodsnecessaryto establish or even indicate the extentof such a world systemand its cyclical ups and downs. My perhapsinsufficient answeris thatfoolsrushin where archangelsfearto tread. It is not thatI can claim to know better, but perhapsin knowingless about the obstacles as well and bringing the freshand unencumberedperspectiveof an outsider to the task I am more willing and perhapseven able to try.Thus, I make bold to propose a new outline of the world system and older datings of its cyclical rhythm thanhave othersheretofore. doingso, however,I can In challengeothersmore competentthan I to test and revise my tentativefindings. A second objection will be that there was not one worldsystemin the BronzeAge but,ifany,many.Even in by the criteriaof participation a single systemthat I shall set out below, there probablywere several such "systems" in BronzeAge and later times,and certainly none of them was world-encompassing. There is, however, increasingevidence that one such world system did unite a vast arrayof regionsand peoples in a common historical process. Apparentlythis world system was centered on West/CentralAsia and the Eastern Africa but extended far beyond Mediterranean/North this. Moreover, it was this central world system (as

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to incorporate the restof the worldinto a worldsysall Hard evidence on such (system-) widespreadalternattem that now does include one and all. ing phases of more rapid and slower economic expanA thirdobjectionwill be that,even ifthe existenceof sion, contraction,and/or crisis is, of course, hard to such a world system as early as the Bronze Age were come by. To my knowledge,prior to Gills and Frank admissible,it could hardlyhave experienced simultane- (i992) no one had even attempted any such assemblyof ous systemwide cyclical phases of rapid economic evidenceas is presented below. For economic upswings, expansionand subsequentcontraction slowergrowth. I examine evidence or at least assertionsregarding or variEven today, however, some economic sectors (micro- ous regionsin Eurasia of economic expansionofproducelectronics,biogenetics)and regions (in East Asia) are tion and/ortrade,population growth,increase in city out of step or phase with the systemwideeconomic cri- size, and even diplomatic missions. Conversely, for sis, but only an ostrich-like head-in-the-sand view can downswingsor crises, I seek evidence or assertionsof deny the existence of that crisis. I shall marshal evi- absolutelyor relatively reducedproduction and/or trade, dence that somethingat least analogous can be identi- population decline or reduced growth,decline in city fiedas farback as the earlyBronzeAge. size, and abandonmentof cities. For instance, I will draw on tests of the Gills and Other objections may focus on my failureto pursue relatedinquiriesinto more conventionalquestionssuch Frank(1 99.2) datingofcyclicalphases independently peras ecology,technology, state formation, class structure, formed researchers by using data on changesin citysize. language,race, culture,and religion.At a time ofnearly However welcome these are, their reliabilitymay be worldwide assertions of "ethnicity" and diversity,a compromisedby (i) my own interpretation (2) their of statementof world-system of unity in diversity intermay also interpretation (3) theirsource Chandler's(1I987) seem to committedactivists"politicallyincorrect." So- pretation of (4) Chandler's sources of city-size data, cial theoristsmay find especially lacking a theoretical which (5) are incompleteand (6) may be erroneousand analysis of how the relations among all of these and probably recordmoreand greater citysizes in West Asia otherfactors"make the systemtick." I do not denythe than in East Asia-all of which may be subject to still importanceof these and otherinternal/local/national/ other, unidentified problems, amongthemtheuse ofthe societal, institutional, cultural,and voluntarist/agency city-sizemeasure because it is more readily available factors. However,thosewho emphasizethemin practice than others.Thus, reliance on city-sizeand otherdata and theoryto the exclusion of the real world-systemic or assertionsis not meant to suggestthat they are all and cyclical "outside" forcesbeyondthemdo so at their definitively reliable but only that I am doing the best I the peril.This is because the latterdetermine opportuni- can with everylittle bit that may help. ties and limitationsof the former. all More oftenthan not, also, I must compare,contrast, Therefore, these and othermore conventionalsociopoliticaland cultural and combine statementsby otherswho have observed concernsand theoreticalproblemswill only be touched economic growthor decline here and thereto tryto get on in thetextand/or to relegated at best some suggestive a pictureof a world-systemwide patternand sequence. questions and answers in the conclusion. Sometimes,directeconomic evidenceofexpansionand/ Nonetheless, I shall begin with a briefattempt to or contractionis not readily available, and I must try place the presentinquiryin the contextof certainongo- to inferit fromrecordedsocial or political events-for ing discussions. One of these discussions is about the example,theriseand declineofempires,"civilizations," natureof and/orthe appropriate approachto the study political (in)stabilityand war/peace, and hegemonic Of of the "ancient economy," in which primitivists and power/intense rivalry. course,the evidence,my and of have locked horns forgenerationswith others'interpretation the same, and especiallymy insubstantivists modernists and formalists. "eco- ferencesare open to doubt and critique-and to imPlacing the apparently nomicist" approach adopted here in this context will provement! I draw on this information below in an attemptto perhapsmake it more defensible.A second discussion is the more recentone on whethertherewas one world reassemble the jigsaw-puzzle picture of the world syssystemor several and how to study the same. A brief tem in the BronzeAge. However,this jigsaw-puzzleasreviewof this discussion will also offer occasion to set semblydiffers fromthe usual kind in severalways that for this out the criteria identifying worldsystem.A third make it much more difficult: the numberofpieces in (i) on indeed infinite cut small discussion focuses more narrowly previousversions "the box" is indeterminate, (if of the s,ooo-year-world-system thesis (Frank i 990, enough),and it is possible to place or assemble only a and iggia; Frank Gillsi992, I992-93, I993; Gillsand few of them here. (2) There is no originaldesign or inFrank1990, 1991, I99.2) and the controversy inde- tendedfinalpictureon "the box" to guide the assembly. and pendent attemptsat empiricallygroundedtests of its (3) It is impossibleto followthe usually easierprocedure the long-cycle datingsthatthe thesishas elicited.This essay of defining outer marginof the picturewith pieces is an extension and revision of the most recent work thathave at least one straight edge. In this case, on the it includingempirical tests of its cycle datingsand addi- contrary, is the veryoutermarginor extensionof the tional evidence forthe Bronze and Iron Ages. It also at- world systemthat is most difficult identify. to Instead, of temptsto push the identification this succession of it seems easiest to begin with some pieces that appear cyclesmore than anothermillenniumback into the 4th to be in the better-known "core." (4) The task is not a The shapes of the pieces and their millenniumB.C. one-timeenterprise.

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(core-periphery hegemonic)fitwith theirneighbors and change constantlyover time. Perhaps this change is near-random; perhapsit occursin cyclesthatshouldalso be identified. One the principaltasks, and here the (5) main one, is to identify such cycles. Of course, our picture of the world system depends on the survivaloftextualand the excavationofarchaeological evidence. Of course also, archaeologistsencounteruntold difficulties constructing generalpicture in a from individualartifacts. for Especially difficult present purposesis makinglocally foundartifacts reveal identifiablelong-distance connectionsand suggesting how importantor persistentthey were. Moreover,beyond the vagariesof what did and did not survive,the patternof archaeological digs and their analysis is a functionof present-day economic, cultural, and political vagaries. for Thus, Kohl (I984a) remarks, instance,on the Soviet focuson sites ratherthan regions(to which the workof E. N. Chernykhis a remarkablerecentexception)and theirpreferential access to sites withinthe (former) Soviet Union. This allows regionsto the south thereof to fall through today's political-economiccracks,however importanttheir earlier participationin our world system. Elsewhereas well, contemporary economic,political, cultural,or other reasons result in the neglect of some historically moreimportant sites in favor others of of less historicalsignificance. Anothersource of bias is my own "selection" of the evidence. Practically, two in senses of the word, my choice of pieces of the jigsaw puzzle is largely based on the documentationkindly suppliedto me bymyfriends from theirown and others' All writings. these and otherfactors undoubtedly introduce gaps and/ordistortions into the archaeologicaland historicalrecord.Moreover,the pieces I have selected tend to be more often"economic" (trade)than "political" (warfare), "social" (migration), and/or "cultural" and (diffusion), the archaeologicalrecord(or at least the documentationavailable to me) more readily permits the assembly of West Asian pieces-and, even then, onlyveryfew of these pieces can be assembled here.

Their position was challenged long ago, at least de facto.Amonghistorians, Weber's contemporary Werner Sombart(I967, I969) did so, and then so did the archaeunderestimated" the (i987a), even Childe "consistently strengthof the opposite case. Moreover, in a posthumously published essay even Polanyi wrote that "throughout, externaloriginoftradeis conspicuous; the of internaltradeis largelyderivative externaltrade,"the

ologist Childe (I936,

I942).

to Yet, according Kohl

In the I97os, archaeologistsrejected the PoI36-37). lanyi/Finley view and offered of reinterpretations the increasingly available data (Adams I974, LambergKarlovsky I975). About the same time, Crawford
(I973:273)

motive beingeither statusor profit (Polanyi I975:I54,

and therefore ownershipof land, property capital" and suggestedthat temples may have acted as banks. Since then,the empiricaland analyticalrefutation of the primitivist/substantivist has been almost argument unceasing. The evidence-primarily fromarchaeological finds-has been substantial.The relatedarguments about the importancein and forthe ancient economy of long-distancetrade,market relations,demand- and supply-related price formation, monetization,entrepreneurship,and capital accumulation have been so overwhelmingthatwe can at best only point to some of the tip of the iceberg. Among the more conceptual writings are those of Ekholm (I980), Ekholm and Friedman (I982), Rowlands, Larsen, and Kristiansen(I987), Kohl more empirical reviews include those of Dales manyothersto recount.(Edens and Kohl [I993]
(i987a, i989,
I99I),

observed"increasing evidenceforprivate

and Edens and Kohl (I993).

Ratnagar (I98I),

Lamberg-Karlovsky (I975),

and too
pointto

(I976),

The

The "Ancient Economy" Debate

In the debate about the "extentof the market"(to recall Adam Smith's phrase that relatedit to the "division of labor") in the ancient economy,Edens and Kohl (I993) distinguishthe followingpositions: among historians, the primitivists, such as Weber (and more recently Finley [I985]) vs. the modernists,such as Meyer; among anthropologists,the substantivists, headed by (the
I977)

such as Dalton, joined by Renfrewand his defenders, followersamong archaeologistswho saw some downthe-linetrade,vs. the formalists, such as Le Clair, Herskovits,and even Firth.In oppositionto the modernist/ who arguedthat moderneconomic analysis formalists, was applicable to the ancient economy,the primitivist/ substantivists(and, indeed, Marx beforethem) denied the importanceof marketrelations,capital accumulation,and long-distance tradein the ancient world.

Karl nonanthropologist!) Polanyi(I957,

and his

Lamberg-Karlovsky 975), for example, rejectedthe (I Polanyi position on the role of "profit,price-fixing, or wholesaling,supply-demand, even privateownership of land forsurplusproduction.... It is the centralthesis ... that all of these existed in a marketnetworkat least by the end of the fourth millenniumin Mesopotamia." Many recordsfromthe 3d and 2d millenniaattest to fluctuations the prices of gold and silver relative in to each otherand,in boththelong and the shortterm, to land, slaves, grains,oil, and wages (which also changed relative to each other). If these price changes did not respond directlyto supply and demand, they did so administered through prices,which also had to respond at least politicallyto supplyand demand.Moreover, "evidence is abundant of the accumulation of human and material capital, including circulatingcapital not directlyinvolvedin the productionprocess . . . and fixed capital" (SilverI985:i63). Documentationfromlate 3dand early 2d-millennium Mesopotamia analyzed by Larsen(I987) suggeststhatpublic and privateaccumulation were both complementary one time and alternaat tives over time-and, I mightsuggest,varied with less and more prosperousphases of the economic cycle. The Polanyi/Finley view was challengednot only regardinglocal marketrelations but also regarding long-

PowellI977, Foster andLarsen I977, Gledhill i982, and ZagarellI986.)

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248) reported "little

sociodoubt that long-distancetrade was a formidable deprecated economic force"and that "we have wrongly element in the historical developthe entrepreneurial mentofat least the more complexsocieties." Moreover, developed between resource-poorsouthern Mesopotamia and resource-rich highland areas of Anatolia and the productiveactivities Iran necessarily transformed in of all societies participating the exchange network polity or without the development of an overarching empire." will Of course, the primitivist/substantivists not be of persuadedbyyet anotherstatement the oppositeposition (nor should they be convinced by any mere statement). Indeed, even those closer to my own position too as Moreover, one ofthem mayfindit rather extreme. I a has suggested, may be confounding statementabout "reality" with my choice of a conceptual approach to that reality.I do not wish to argue that the "market" in existedindependently otherinstitutions theBronze of in Age-or, forthatmatter, our own. I onlywish to take a position in this ongoingdebate, within which I also situatethe inquirybelow, and I wish to go a step beyond it to insistthat "world market"forcesalso impingedon local institutions and policy formation then as now.
as Kohl (i989:228) remarks, "the intercultural trade that

distance trade. Adams (I974:247,

It is of importanceto recognisethat the phenomenon of expansion and/orcolonisationappearswithin in an early contextof emergent culturalcomplexity various regionsof westernand centralAsia. Territorial expansion,whethercolonial, imperial,or military, appearsto be embeddedin the process of emerging state polities. As examples they referto Egyptian"colonies" in the Sinai and Palestine in the Naqada III period,Sumerian expansion and "colonies" to the northand on the Iranian plateau in the Middle Uruk period,Proto-Elamite replicationof these,also on the Iranianplateau, and the Harappan "colony" at Shortugaiin Central Asia. They caution that farmore researchis needed beforewe can the "causes" of this territorial expansion: comprehend Areas of culturalcomplexityare constantlyconfronted both an internaland externalcompetition by that extendbeyondthe need forresources.Increasing energy expenditures maintainingan adminisfor trativebureaucracy, networksof comestablishing and commodity munication,increasingagricultural production, and sustainingthe costs involvedin local conflicts, of which inevitablyemergein efall forts towardcentralisation, could all lead to expansionist tendencies.... Ancient societies were dependentupon human, animal, and plant productivity, so could be the solution to decliningmarginalreturns accomplishedby territorial expansion and the exploitationof new resources,land, people, etc.... the CentralAsian Bronze Age joins the communityof BronzeAge civilisationsin replicating this process of expandinginto a distantperiphery. alliNonetheless, they suggestthat "conflict,warfare, ance, and the manipulation of political power" are as as important the "typical" and "universal" explanation in termsof the economic need fortradeand controlof resources.This may be more the effect than the cause of expansion insofaras the "primary agents" are to be sought in political processes. I am inclined to answer that political processes may well be the direct agents but the above-mentionedand other economic imperatives are more likely to be theircauses. categoMany oftheserecentappeals to core-periphery ries and several world systemsor to one world system are, however,only halting. Some engage in seemingly arcane discussions with Wallerstein(I974), who never claimed and indeed denies (i 9i) that his "modern extends back beyond A.D. I450. Thus, world-system" Woolf's(i990) examinationof the Roman empireseems to get lost in Wallerstein'sdistinctionbetween "worldsystems"and "world empires,"which I regardas more Notwithstandingits title, misleading than clarifying. Rowlands, Larsen, and Kristiansen's(i987) book is replete with assertions about the limitations of coreanalysis.2 periphery
2. The two last named had, however, become more enthusiastic about world systemcategoriesby i 992, when theypresentedpapers in panels with me (and see Kristiansen I993a, b).

and ConceptualizingCenter-Periphery WorldSystem(s)

Some more conceptual writersamong the modernist/ have had recourseto at least some aspects of formalists world systems theory. A new wave in archaeologiand/or world cal studies is applying center-periphery systemsanalysis to the study of complex societies of the past (see Rowlands, Larsen, and KristiansenI987; Champion I989; Chase-Dunn and Hall i99i; Algaze A half-century earlier,Childe had alreadywrittenthat ifthe economyof the EarlyBronzeAge cities could not of expand internallybecause of the overconcentration purchasingpower, it had to expand externally(Childe ors to exchangethe needed raw materialsformanufactures."Accordingto Childe, this tradewas fromthe bea ginning political tradebetweenelites in the centerand in elites in the periphery which the center sought to to induce the periphery render a surplus.This is how up he explained,forinstance,the commercialventuresand associatedmilitary campaignsoftheAkkadianKingSargon I in 2350 B.C. Recentexcavationat Habuba Kabirain northern Syria ofa southern a Mesopotamian colony "represents deliberate Lower Mesopotamian penetration the Euphraup and luxuries fromthe Syrio-Anatolian regions and to regulateexchangeof goods fromthe east and south-east passing this way" (Moorey i987:44). Hiebert and Lamberg-Karlovsky (I992:3-4) write: tes . . . to secure direct control of vital raw materials I942:I39). The center sought "to persuade their possessI993; Allen I9992; Woolf 9o90;and Sherratt I99.2, n.d.).

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Kohl (i989) invokes the "use and abuse of world sys- and our contemporary moderncapitalistworld system. temstheory"onlyto arguethat"nowherein the ancient It is the same system,but, as Gills suggests,it has not its world may one properlyspeak of 'world' structures of remainedthe same throughout evolution. The criterion identifying single world systemis a for unequal exchange,of 'world' labor markets,or of economic dependence and underdevelopment" (Edens and that no part of this systemwould be as it is (or was) if Kohl emphasizes thatmanu- otherpartswere not as theyare (or were) (FrankI990; Kohl I993:4). In particular, coreshad no special advantages, facturing and especially Gills and Frank I990, i99i). The interactionbetween no technological monopoly, over raw-materials- one partofthe systemand anothermay be onlyindirect and the various parts may all have reexporting peripheriesand takes pains to deny any "de- or chain-linked, velopment of underdevelopment"(Frank i966) in the acted to and upon the same global ecological conancientworld (Kohl I987a, I989, i992; Edens and Kohl straints.Gills and I (I990:27-28; i99i:84-86) have explained: I993). However,as Ekholm and Friedman(i982:90-9i) relationsare not necessarpoint out, "center/periphery in ilydefined termsoftheir[rawmaterial-manufactures] The captureby elite A here (with or withoutits reimport-export pattern. . . Center/periphery relations distribution here) of part of the economic surplusexrefer, rather,to different structuralpositions with retractedby elite B theremeans that thereis "interaccumulation" betweenA and B. This spectto total accumulation" ofcapital,from which they penetrating derive differential or advantages and disadvantages.Elsetransfer exchangeof surplusconnectsnot only the two elites, but also their"societies"' economic, where,Kohl (i992) demonstratesthat threeregionsin That Transcaucasia cannot be considered in isolation from social, political,and ideological organization. each otheror from Mesopotamia and Persia to the south is, the transfer, exchangeor "sharing"of surplusconand regions in European Russia to the north. "Influnects the elite A here not only to the elite B there. also links the "societies"' respective ences, sometimesinvolvingactual movementsofgoods Surplustransfer and peoples, were feltfromall directions.But such 'inprocessesof surplusmanagement, theirstructures fluences'. . . do not constituteevidencefora worldsysof exploitationand oppressionby class and gender, tem . . . in any Wallersteiniansense" (p. I33). Despite of and theirinstitutions the state and the economy. repeated disclaimers, Kohl is among those who best or Thus, the transfer exchangeof surplusis not a sodemonstratethe existence, albeit with multiple and but rathera profoundly cially "neutral" relationship, and of shifting cores,peripheries, hinterlands, "the West systemicone. Throughsharingsources of surplus, Asian EarlyBronzeAge world system" (Edens and Kohl the elite A here and the classes it exploitsare sysI993:59-60). to temicallyinter-linked the "mode of production," This shadowboxing with a nonexistent opponent and even more important, the mode of accumulato seems less than fruitful. seems better just to use It tion in B there.By extension,ifpartof the surplusof elite B here is also traded,whetherthrough world-system categorieswhere and when theycan help equal or more usually unequal exchange,forpartof the surclarifythe "reality" of the ancient world. Gills and I most of historyand plus accumulated by elite C there,then not only B (i992) emphasize that throughout therehave been sets ofinterlinked and C but also A and C are systemically linked prehistory hegemonic cores with theirrespectiveperipheries and hinterlands. through intermediary Then A, B, and C are the B. connectedin the same over-arching However,severalcores seem to have experienced nearly systemically syssimultaneous(cyclical?)ups and downs,and theirdowns tem of accumulation. led of to have often to shifts hegemony other, sometimes This means that surplusextraction and accumularecentlyemerged,cores. Moreover,hegemonymay be tion are "shared" or "inter-penetrating" across otherof defined a "hierarchicalstructure the accumulation as wise discretepolitical boundaries.Thus, theirelites ofsurplusamongpolitical entities,and theirconstituent in participate each other'ssystemof exploitation of classes, mediatedby force.A hierarchy centersof acvis-a-visthe producingclasses. This participation a cumulationand polities is establishedthat apportions economic exchangerelationsvia the may be through privilegedshare of surplus,and the political economic marketor through political relations(e.g.,tribute) or and combinationsof both. All of these relations powerto this end, to the hegemoniccentre/state its through classes" (Gills and Frank 199I). characterize the millenarianrelationship, inruling/propertied for here is the distinction betweenvarious anImportant stance,between the peoples of China and InnerAsia. cient world systemsand the one centralworld system. This inter-penetrating accumulation thus createsa Thus, forinstance,Algaze (I993) points to two different causal inter-dependence between structures accuof Bronze Age world systemsin what is now West Asia/ mulation and between political entities.Therefore the Middle East. Instead, Gills and I (i990, I99I) and the structure each componententityof the world of Wilkinson (i987) insist that we can identifya single systemis salientlyaffected this inter-penetration. by world systemin the Bronze Age, differing only in that Thus, empiricalevidence of such inter-penetrating Wilkinsondates its originat I500 B.C. and we see it as accumulation through the transfer exchangeof or well over a millennium earlier.We all agree,morever, surplusis the minimum indicatorof a systemicrelathatthereis an unbrokenhistoricalcontinuity between we tionship.Concomitantly, should seek evidence the centralcivilization/world systemof the BronzeAge that this inter-linkage causes at least some element

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Volume 34, Number 4, August-October 1993 (Frank then spread to encompass much of Afro-Eurasia b; Frank and Gills I992, I992-93, I99ia, I990, I993; emerges only with the rise of "modernworld-system" WesternEurope at its core afterA.D. I 5oo and still includes much less of the world some centurieslater.Beforethat,forhim therehad been several otherregional "world-systems"in Eurasia, not to mention in the "new world" beforeits incorporationinto our preexisting world system afterI492. He rejects this notion a explainingthe difference hyphenmakes: "My 'worldsystem'is not a system'in the world' or 'of the world.' since It is a system'that is a world.' Hence the hyphen, of 'world' is not an attribute that system." For us it is, in that the very system whose core emergedin West Asia over 5,ooo years ago was not only worldlikethen later. but developedto become world-embracing 2. Capital accumulation was the motive force of (i%9i), Amin(iggi), Wallerstein history. system world and others consider continuous capital accumulation the differentia specificaof the "modernworld-system," were tributary, arguingthat previous "world-systems" we with politics and ideologyin command. In contrast, see capital accumulation as havingplayed a (ifnot the) centralrole in the world system for several millennia I990, i99i). (Frank iggib; Gills and Frank familiar analystsof structure to 3. The core-periphery especiallyin Latin America,and the "moddependence, I967, i969) is also applicaern (see world-system" Frank ble to the world systembeforethat. regionaland perhapsworld-systemwide 4. Temporary for hegemonyalternateswith long periodsof rivalry heand hegemonyis associated with cores as anagemony, lyzed in the literatureon the "modern world-system" delski and Thompson i988). In my view, however,this succession of core hegemony and rivalryin a single world systemalso shiftedaround Eurasia formillennia beforei500. Indeed, "of crucial importanceis the fact that the fall of the east precedes the rise of the west" (Abu-Lughodi989:338) within this same world system i992). (Frank iggob, Gills and Frank ascending (A) and 5. Economic cycles of alternating descending (B) phases like those of the "modern I974, I980; Frank (Wallerstein world-system" I987a, b) associated with capital accumulation, changes in coreposition, and alternatinghegemony and riperiphery valryextendback many centuriesbeforeI492. Modern "Kon"long" cycles are of the more or less so-year-long dratieff" type. How farback they go is still in dispute.
( systemI 99 I: I 92), Afro-Eurasian world ofa mucholder

in of economic and/orpolitical restructuring the respectivezones. For instance,historicalevidence of a fiscal crisis in one state or a zone of the worldsystem(e.g.,in Rome) as a consequence of an exthird-century change of surpluswith anotherzone would be a clear indicatorof a relationshipat a high level of sysEvidence of change in the mode of temic integration. accumulationand the systemof exploitationin one of zone as a functionof the transfer surplusto anotherzone would also constituteevidence of systemic relations.Evidence of political alliances and! in or conflictrelatedto participation a systemof of transfer surpluswould also be consideredeviAccordingto these dence of a systemicrelationship. if "societies," empires,and civilizacriteria, different extions,as well as other"peoples," regularly in changedsurplus,then theyalso participated the same world system.That is, "society" A here could and would not be the same as it was in the absence of its contactwith B there,and vice versa. Trade in high-valueluxuryitems,not to mention may, contraWalpreciousmetals in particular, than lerstein(I974, i989), be even more important systemicrelalower-valuestaple tradein defining tions. This is because the high-value"luxury"trade exchange.These commodis essentiallyan inter-elite ities, besides servingelite consumptionor accumulation,are typicallyalso storesof value. They embody which reproaspects of social relationsof production, and duce the division of labor,the class structure, the mode of accumulation. Precious metals are only the most obvious example,but many "luxury" commoditieshave played a similarrole (Schneider I977). Thus, tradein both high-value"luxury"items and staple commoditiesare indicatorsof interaccumulation. penetrating Despite the emphasis on "economic" tradeconnections to cement the world system,Gills and I (I990, I99I) also explicitlyaccepted the world system connections "politiestablished and maintained throughrecurrent cal" conflictamong "societies" emphasized by Wilkinson (i987). The recognitionof such conflictas a mark in ofparticipation one world systemis all the more iminsofaras much of it has been over "economic" portant resourcesand controlof traderoutes.At the same time, trade in metals and/orweapons may increase military capacity, and that in turn may enhance control over sources of economic resources,including trade itself. alliances have Moreover,political conflictand shifting betweenhealso been the expressionof the alternation within the world systemand/orits gemonyand rivalry regionalparts. Thus, as I have suggested elsewhere (Frank i992, Frankand Gills i992), the world systemat least since as the BronzeAge can be characterized follows:

Gills and FrankI990,

I99I,

i992).

the ForWallerstein,

since i5oo (e.g.,Wallerstein I984, ModelskiI987, Mo-

ing back to nearly A.D. iooo, but they recognize that these probablynested in longerones. Gills and I (i992) have argued that a patternof still much longercycles goes back to at least I700 B.C. Of course, these much cylonger"long" cycles may also contain othershorter durai. Contra Wallerstein (I974, 1991), our now single cles, includingperhapscycles of Kondratieff-type Kondratieff-type cycles for worldsystemhas historicalcontinuity at least s,ooo tion. Going (I992) has identified and in Roman times that were Roman empire/econowithits core in West Asia and Egypt, years,emerged

reachcountI9 ofthem, (i992) Modelski Thompson and

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B: I200-IOOO a mywide.I now believe that we can identify cyclical B.C. A: iooo-800 B.C. patternof long ascending and descendingphases in a B: 800-550 B.C. the singleworldsystemback at least through 3d millennium B.C. Indeed,the synchronization thesephases is of A: 550-450 B.C. a revealing indicationofthe extentofthatworldsystem. B: 450-350 B.C. That distantpartsof Afro-Eurasia A: 350-250/200 B.C. experienceeconomic B: 250/200-IOO/50 expansions and contractions nearly simultaneously B.C. would seem importantprima facie evidence that they A: IOO/50 B.C.-A.D. I50/200 in participate the same world system. B: A.D. I50/200-500 A: A.D. 500-750/800 Similarly,for Edens and Kohl (I993:36I) "the existence of an ancient world system is postulated by the B: A.D. 750/800-IOOO/IO50 largelysynchronousprocesses of rise and collapse reA: A.D. IOOO/IO50-I250/I300 cordedthroughout this area; it is difficult deny that to B: A.D. I250/I300-I450 one here is witnessing historically connected processes." This synchronism suggeststo them "the action ofan interrelated oftransregional set social forces opera- The latest two millennia are reviewed separatelyand to tive over vast regionsof westernAsia fromthe mid-3rd with reference the emergenceof Europe with little Summarizing, then,we can list the followingamong theidentifiable-and researchable-criteriaofparticipation in a single world system: extensiveand persistent tradeconnections,persistent recurrent or political relations with particularregions or peoples, includingespecially core-periphery-hinterland relations and hegerelationsand processes,and the sharing mony/rivalry of major (and minor)economic,political,and perhapsalso culturalcycles.

the millennium B.C." through mid-2nd

(p. 25).

to entday withreference Latin Americain Frank(I993). of each other,have since testedand confirmed existhe tence and most but not all of the timingofthese cycles, bothusingdata fromChandler's(I987) census ofgrowth and decline in city sizes. Sherratt and Sherratt (iggia) have dated periods duringthe 2d millennium B.C. COinciding almost exactly with our phases. Kristiansen (I993a, b) has similarlydated expansions and contracWilkinson (i992) and Bosworth (i992), independently

change in Frank and Gills (1992-93), with reference to Central Asia in Frank (i992), and extended to the pres-

The Identification Cycles of

We should not, of course, expect to findcomplete synchronizationof phases across the entireworld system, especially in its Bronze Age beginnings. seems quite It enoughto be able to demonstrate even suggest"subor stantial"synchronization economic good or bad times of over verywide areas that are usually consideredquite independent of each other. Moreover, other worldsystemiccyclical characteristics complicatethe pattern. Expansionand contractionseem to begin in one partof theworldsystem, usually in its core,and thento diffuse fromthere to other parts, including core competitors and periphery. Therefore, cyclical decline tendsto mean the relativeor even absolute decline of the core power. This decline offers to opportunities rivals,even on the periphery the system,some of which advance both of absolutelyand relativelyand perhaps even replace the previous core. Incipient exploratory expansions of the world system tend to occur duringperiods of contraction,and the new areas become the basis of subsequent majorinvestment (FrankI978a). These out-of-phase elementscomplicatethe identification past systemwide of cycles,especially in the distantBronze Age, but this is not to say that therewere no such cycles.

of phases (A, expanding;B, contracting) world system relationsand Ratnagar( 98i) on "encounters"between cycles fromI700 B.C. to A.D. I700 as follows: the Harappa civilization and points west and, on these points west, Edens (I992) and Edens and Kohl (I993). B: I700-I500/I400 B.C. Chernykh (I992) proposescycle datingsformost of EuA: I400-I200 rasia on the basis of the researchof two generations B.C. of

Gills and I

(i992)

have identified alternating its cycles includes that of Dales (I976) on Iranian-Indus the

temptto refineand where appropriate revise the cycle phase datingswe have proposed.Doing so may involve sacrificing attentionto the "hegemonialshifts"thatwe emphasizedin principlebut shortchanged practice.In in compensation, perhaps,I will tryto pay more attention to war. Melko and Wilkinson(i992) have made a convenienttentative accountingofalternating periodsofmore war and more peace. (Other,more extensivesurveysof war perhaps should but here will not be used.) It may be useful to compare these with phases of economic expansionand contraction. have elsewhere(I987a) disI betweenA-phase(expansive)and B-phase(detinguished fensive)wars. Since then, Goldstein (I988) and others have soughtto demonstrate that forthe past 5oo years major (thatis, large-scale,"world") wars have occurred at the ends ofthe A phases ofKondratieffo-yearcycles. 5 Still, taking a longerview, there is theoreticalground forarguing thatthe greatest incidenceofwars-and also oflarge-scalemigratory invasions-should occur during B phases, that is, when enhanced competition for a smaller economic pie generatesmore militaryconflict, bothinternal/national external/international. and Additional evidence on the Bronze Age world system and

tions in Europe during the ist millennium B.C., and Randsborg (I99i) has done so for the ist millennium A.D. I shall bringall these and more to bear on an at-

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archaeologistsin the then Soviet Union. Other refer- Mesopotamia,and Iranfrom the sth through 3d milthe ences to more or less precise dates of economic expan- lennium: sions and contractions here and there are scattered During a shorttime around 3000 B.C.,apparently sothroughthe works of various other archaeologistsand phisticated, complex systems. . . appearedacross others.Because of the gap between theirexpertiseand an area stretching fromthe Nile and Aegean in the mine, I oftenprefer let them speak forthemselvesby to west to centralAsia in the east. It is not impossible quotingthem directly. that these regionaldevelopmentsmay represent a loosely integrated and relatedseries of changes. [P .25] [These] may in partbe attributable an interplay to the Extentof the World Systemin Exploring betweenlocal and externalforces.In this regard, one the Bronze Age of possible effect theiroutcome may have been a "primitiveaccumulation of capital" and its role as a Edens and Kohl (I993:58) write,"One must definethe forceforsuch change. Such a conclusion would inspatial parametersof one's world system,while at the clude a measure of "marketforces"in these periods. same time emphasizingthat the procedureis to some [P. 30] extentartificial that the system'sborders in were never Between the late fourth and thirdmillennia,a hermeticallysealed and that they expanded or confaint, highlybuffered "marketmechanism" may affects the analysis." tractedover time. This difficulty have operatedfordifferent periodsof time and in difthe Not surprisingly, farther back we go in prehistory, ferent regionsalong these networks.[p. 34] the more difficult becomes to identify it the changing geographical extentand temporalcycle ofexpansionand Moorey (i987) pursues the 4th millennium trail from of notingthat scholars contraction the world systemwith any kind of confi- Mesopotamia via Syriainto Egypt, were alreadyaware of it overa century ago. He analyzes dence. the mid-4thmillenniumexchangevia Syria Edens and Kohl (pp. 58-59) go on to identify spa- at least indirect of Gerzean-period as Egyptiangold foroil, silver,and lapis tial limits to which theyrefer follows: lazuli from Mesopotamia,which musthave receivedthe the fromthe easternMediterRoughly, area stretches afield. He also asks but on present latterfromfarther ranean in the west to the Indus valley in the east evidence is unable to answer whetherand to what exand fromsouthernCentralAsia and the greater Cautent this long-distance exchange alteredproductiveaccasus rangein the northto the Sudan and Arabian tivities in Egypt.He notes the power and status that and peninsula in the south.... Intriguingly perhaps would have followedfromcontrolof the distribution of not entirely accidentally,[a millenniumlater]the po- imported local exchangenetworks luxuryitems through litical bordersof the Achaemenid empire,includeven beforethe Gerzean period. Edens (i 992) reviews ing those areas, like mainland Greece, wherethe Perdevelopmentsin southernMesopotamia and Elam, the sians expanded,coincide fairly closely with the Central Gulf region including Dilmun = Bahrain, limits of the West Asian EarlyBronzeAge world syssoutheasternArabia and Oman, and the Indus region, tem. suggestingthat the roots of the Persian Gulf trade These limits of the Bronze Age world systemcoincide presumablylie in the 5th millennium B.C. and that fairlyclosely with ours (Frank I990; Gills and Frank maritimeproducts already appear consistentlyin the I990, I99I, i992; Frank and Gills i992). We have ad- Mesopotamian archaeological record for the late 4th vanced the thesis that the present world system was millennium. Certainly by the 3d millennium (Edens bornsome 5,ooo yearsago or earlierin WestAsia, North i992:i2o, emphasis mine), is Our argument and the EasternMediterranean. Africa, a the Gulf traderepresented materialconnectionbethe similar to that of Wilkinson (i987), who identified tween these fourregions,and potentiallya mechaof the birth "centralcivilization"through establishment nism by which emerging conditionsin one region ofsystemicand systematicrelationsbetweenEgyptand effected changes in others.However ... MesopotaMesopotamia around I500 B.C., but it pushes the date mian dealingswith lands to the east also involveda of of the formation the world system back to at least culrangeof diplomaticexchanges,elite marriages, 3000 B.C. by analogyto the upstreamconfluenceof two Toturalhegemony, political clientship,and warfare. a ormoremajorbranchesto form singleriver. Moreover, getherwith trade,all these activitiesdefinedcenterwe have suggestedthat already in the 3d millennium periphery relations,whose nature and intensity and MesB.C. the worldsystemincludednot only Egypt altered as constituentsocieties changed opotamia but also the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, specificallyto Anatolia, Iran, the Indus Valley, Transcaucasia, and -and presumablyvice versa! Referring parts of Central Asia. All these regionswere in direct Dilmun, Edens (I 99.2:I29) suggests that its "political "bilateral"or at least indirect "multilateral," systematic economy [had]a dialectical relationship"with Mesopotamia. Urbanization and political organizationin Bahand therefore systemiccontactwith each other. of Marfoe(i987) examines the emergenceof the Egypt- rainwere a function the Gulftradeand in turndeteraxis Levant-Syria-Anatolia and its extensionto Arabia, minedDilmun's demand forcereals fromMesopotamia

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lance. Coppercame fromCyprusand the Levant as well as Oman, Iran,and Afghanistan. The rarer came from tin were copper, Anatolia,the Caucasus, and Iran. Scattered tin, and gold ores, as well as lead ores, which were sources of silver, the latter rarelyavailable alone and found mainly in Anatolia (Marfoe I987). Wood came fromMeluhha on the Indus, Magan in Oman, and Dilmun as well as the Siwaliks and Punjab. Egypt imported wood fromthe Levant. Egyptand/orNubia in turnexportedgold, and so did Arabia, Armenia,and probably the Indus Valley. The latter exportedtimber,copper, gold, ivory,stones, and beads to Mesopotamia and importedfood, textiles, silver, and earthenware.Steatite vessels were also traded,apparently both as containers B.C. onwards. ofothergoods and as tradeitems in themselves.Pottery Kohl (I989:227) notes that"profit-motivated tradeex- did not travelover verylong distances,presumably betendedfarbeyondthe political bordersof any state and cause of its weight,which made cloth and reed containconnected... [all of these]into a singleworldsystem." ers more suitable. Foreign trade in the mid-3d millennium, he argues Ratnagaralso itemizes tradein preciouscommodities (I978:466), was "an exceedinglycomplex process, in- such as ivory,steatite,carnelian beads, dice, bird figupearls, and lapis volvingthe movementof finishedluxurycommodities, rines,conch shells, monkey figurines, raw materials, and staple products,and was probably lazuli (the latterfroma single source in Afghanistan). conductedboth by state agentsand by privateentrepre- Trade in silver seems to have had a special role as a neurs.... It does show that developments in southwest- medium of exchange,unit of accounting,and store of value. Archaeological finds of weights and seals from ernAsia were not limited to the alluvial plains and ... widelyseparatedcommunitieswere linkedby complex, distantlocations also attest to widespreadtrading netwell-defined exchangenetworks."The alluvial plains of works,using overland,riverine,coastal, and sea transMesopotamia are and were notoriouslypoor in metals port, and in combination. individually Evidencesurvives and timber,which they had to importfromoftenvery ofindividualshipmentsof20 tons ofcopper,and exports distant sources. Following Larsen (I974, I976, I987), Al- fromAssur to one small town have been estimatedat len (i992) draws a map centeredon Assur, which im- some Ioo,ooo textiles over a so-yearperiod. A useful portedgold and silver fromAnatolia and tin and other summary and mapping of Bronze Age long-distance metals from Afghanistan, while exportingtextiles to tradein and betweenthe West Asian and EasternMediboth and reexporting CentralAsian Afghani and/orIra- terranean regionsis providedby Klengel (I978). Signifinian tin to Anatolia. It also importedtextiles and per- cantly,the regionsreferred here are almost entirely to haps grain, mainly wheat and barley, from southern to the south of the east-westmountainrangesthatrun Mesopotamia and paid forit with gold,silverand other across much of Asia. metals importedfromAnatolia and Afghanistan. Allen Chernykh(I992) argues, however,that the develop(personalcommunication,Septemberi992) points out, ment of metallurgy was an increasingly interconnected however,thathe centredhis map on Assur not because and sharedprocess throughout most of Eurasia northof it was a center-it was a "semi-periphery"-but because theserangesand concludes that"the worldsystemitself we do not know where its center/core was. Mesopota- has turnedout to be farmore extensivethan appeared mia, in turn,exportedwool, textiles,and grainto vari- earlier"(p. 304). He also suggeststhat "fromat least the ous partsof the even more resource-poor millennium B.C. until the thirdmillennium B.C., Persian Gulf. fifth This regionwas a fulcrumforand dependenton trade the peoples of the EMA [EarlyMetal Age] culturalzone with Oman and with the Indus region,which in turn seem to have sharedthe same developmentalcycle: the had connectionswith CentralAsia. formation decline ofculturesat variouslevels generand Edens (I990), reviewing the evidence for Indus- ally coincided" (p. xxi). In his closingchapter, returns he Arabian interactionduringthe Bronze Age, mentions to "the contemporaneity the decline and formation of timber, textiles,and foodstuffs surveysthe archaeo- ofvarioussystemsover the vast expanses ofEurasia and and logical recordfortradein ceramics,glypticseals, metal the Old World as a whole . . . [when]a whole chain of objects, mostly copper/bronze celts or flat axes, stone similarsystemsarose almost simultaneously, fromthe weights, beads, softstone vessels, raw materials(mostly Atlanticto the Pacific: the European,Eurasian, Caucaonly transshippedthroughHarappan hands), semipre- sian and CentralAsian provinces, along withothersoutcious stones, ivory,tin, copper,gold, and silverfroma side the U.S.S.R." (p. 302). wide varietyof sources; shell; bitumenasphalt; and biIn the 5th and 4th millennia B.C. there was already otic formssuch as zebu and sorghum. "highly developedcommercialexchange"and theexport Ratnagar on (i98i) concentrates thetraderelationsbe- of "huge quantities" of copper and gold frommining tween Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley but also dis- and metallurgicalcentersin Thrace and the Carpathocusses othertrade,partlyadministered and partlyfree- Balkan regionto oreless consumerregionsin Moldavia in and participation the transshipment supplyto Mesopotamia of copperfromelsewhere. Thus, relations among otherwisedistinctivebut related and therefore presumablymutually affectedregions have leftmarks in the archaeologicalrecordfrom the 4th and even the sth and perhapsearliermillennia B.C. Many were based on differences and complementarities in naturalresourceendowments, which generated trade, migration, invasion,and in generaldiffusion. Kohl if (I978:475) asks rhetorically the "world" system already stretchedfromthe Balkans and the Nile to the Indusin the 4th millennium, and Oates (I978:48i) reads the archaeologicalrecordto display "international"horizons fromat least the middle of the sth millennium

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Volume 34, Number 4, August-October I993 southward (as Dale suggests) and eastward instead. Friedman(i992) links the latterwith the emergenceof system between the Indian the tradingand migratory East Coast and SoutheastAsia and the Lapita expansion into Melanesia and Polynesia.Does this implytheirininto thisworldsystemalreadyin theBronze corporation Age?

of he writes an A markedeconomic decline has been noted in various abundance of metal findsin sites thousandsof kilome- partsofWestAsia from middleofthe 3d millennium the the tersfrom sources.However,and despitethepolitical B.C. Edens and Kohl (I993:23-24) note that othershave Soviet Union, also observed "a set of fundamental synchronisms of restriction his researchto the former at he also offers least glimpses of earlier north-south across much ofwesternAsia. . . in easternIran,Central trade relations with Anatolia, Iran, and Afghanistan Asia, and the Indus ... in the mid-3rd millenniumB.C." across the mountains. These, in turn,would also have and "the collapse of these expressionsofurbancomplex sys- society,now extendingthroughout and migratory Eurasian trading linkedthe northern Iran, into the Gulf tem into the West Asian, Gulf,Arabian,and NorthAfri- and, in a modifiedway, also southernMesopotamia,by can ones. the openingcenturiesof the 2nd millenniumB.C." Kohl Do we then have two world systemshere,the more (I978)quotes Oppenheim's (I954:I2) observations about "traditional"one south of the mountains and the one Ur to theeffect thatin thelate 3d millennium"a process Chernykhclaims to see north of them? Or were they of gradualand slow restriction the geographical of horipart and parcel of a single one? At least two kinds of zon marks the entiredevelopmentof commercialconevidence supportthe latterview: the evidence of exten- nections.We may well assume that the frequency and and in- intensity contacthad reacheda peak earlyin the third north-south trade,migration sive and recurrent of diffusion acrosswhat millenniumB.C." Jawad(i965) insistson the ecological, vasion,and cultural/technological Chernykh(1I99I:35) calls the "Caucasian bridge"from economic, social, and political differences northern of Anatolia eastward and the substantial coincidence of from Mesopotamia at thistime,but thesewere southern for timingofthe economic cycleswe have identified the apparently to insufficient exclude the northfromthis has southand those Chernykh establishedforthe north. same (cyclical?)process.Accordingto Kohl (i984a:242), This temporal coincidence may be traceable to ecorelationschangedover the greater logical and/or other systemic commonalities, but it "International" is not verylikely to be the result of chance. There is, half of the thirdmillenMiddle East duringthe first nium with the collapse of the proto-Elamite "hegethen,evidence forthe existence of one immense AfroEurasian world systemin the earlyBronzeAge. One of mony" in southernand CentralIran . .. accordingto tasks ofresearchand analysis is therefore archaeologicalevidence fromCentralAsia, Baluchithe important to inquire into its origin and to explore its (cyclical?) Iran and the Indus Valley ... stan, southeastern over time. across the Iranian plateau, in the Gulf area (particuexpansionand transformation civilizations of Much ofthe development the outlying larlythe Oman peninsula),Mesopotamia, the Anatoin China, India,Persia,Mesopotamia,Europe,and so on, lian plateau and the Caucasus.... But it is unclear relationsin the later third can only be accounted for in terms of their relations what happened to foreign with the peoples of CentralAsia, manyofwhom,moreand earlysecond millennia with the collapse of Akkadian rule and the subsequent rise of and demise of over,migratedinto East, South, and West Asia. I have CentralAsian waves of Dales (I977) the highlycentralizedUr III dynasty. arguedthat instead of regarding and settlements oftenalso bearingadvances in productive migration, explainedthe collapse of proto-urban borderlands the the warfaretechnology,as intrusionson the surrounding throughout Indo-Iranian (during "civilized" societies,we should considerthe possibility so-called urban phase) as due to the cessation of overlandtradeand developmentof dithatthe "pulse ofAsia" (to recall the phraseofHuntinglong-distance was at its center(Franki992a). Yet the centon [I907]1) rectmaritimetradebetween Mesopotamia and the an Indus Valley. His theoryonly represents untralityof Central Asia is all too neglected. Much the same may be said, however, of Southeast Asia as the provenhypothesisbut deservesserious considerand of fulcrum trade,invasion,migration, culturaldiffu- ation. sion throughthe Indian Ocean, the South China Sea, and the Pacific Ocean, perhaps already in Bronze Age Dales (I976) finds a definiterhythmin trade patterns times but certainlysince the Iron Age. Indeed, there betweenthe IranianPlateau and the Indus Valley in the tradeand culturalinteraction is some evidence that with the early-2d-millennium 3d millenniumB.C. Strong Pakistan,easternPersia, decline of Harappan relations to the west they turned betweenCentralAsia, northern ElsewhereI99I:36) mountain ranges. (

and the western Ukraine and on the Dnieper and the dropofmetal producVolga (p. 50). With the significant tion in the earlyBronzeAge, the "disappearance[ofthis complex] . . . was as unexpectedas its appearance" (p. 5'). Kohl (i984a) suggeststhatthe archaeologicalrecord "silk route" connecbespeaks some formof prehistoric tion with China 2,000 years beforethe classical one. to Chinese scholarsalso refer the same even earlier(see Franki992a). but shiftChernykh(i992) examines interconnected metals east-westtradenets involving ingpredominantly and theirproductsacross much of Eurasia northof the

BronzeAge Cycles in the 3d Millennium B.C. and Earlier

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and pointswest characterized first the halfofthemillen- B.C. and even more spectaculardecline around or after nium. For instance,TurkmenianAltynTepe flourished 2000 B.C. Urbanizationin southernTurkmenistan from but then declined.At the same time,the AfghanSistan 2600 to 2200 B.C. was followedby population shiftsor site of Shahr-iSokhta was destroyed and abandoned,if dispersioneastward fromthere and other Transcaucaonly because the main stream of the Helmand River sian areas. Ratnagar(i98i) summarizesthe "relativechronology changedcourse; its Helmand Valley civilizationhad "totallycollapsed by 2500 B.C." However,the reasons may of the third millennium" for Barbar, Umm an-Nar, also have been transregional. Dales refers widespread Shahdad,Yahya, Shahr-iSokhta,Bampur5-6, Kulli, and to abandonment sites fromCentralAsia through of Sistan, Harappa. The periodof maximum recordedactivitybesouthern and Baluchistanand an gins betweenthe Mesopotamian periodsEarlyDynastic Afghanistan, northern almosttotalbreakin traderoutesand spheresofinterac- I and II, in 2750 B.C., foreverysite/region exceptShahr-i tion across their trade routes and then a shiftalso of Sokhta and Harappa, where it begins about one to one maritimetradepatternsaround 2500 B.C. and a half centurieslater.These periodsof activityend These observationswould imply a half-millennium- mostlywithinthe Mesopotamian EarlyDynastic III. In long A phase duringthe first half of the 3d millennium fiveof these instances,the fall-off date is between2450 followedby a half-millennium-long phase. Can we re- and 2350 B.C., the latterforKulli alreadyin the AkkaB fine these 3d-millenniumphase lengths and dates to dian period.For the others,mostlyfarther east, the pemake them more consistent with the approximately riodof decline fallsbetweenthe Akkadian and the postA one-quarter-millennium-long and B phases that we Akkadian period,around 2250 B.C. Only Harappa, still have observedfrom near the beginning the 2d millen- farther of east, continuesuntil 2ooo or perhapseven i8oo nium? To start with, it may be importantto pursue and Barbaron the Gulf until i800 B.C. However, "the Dale's observationthat the cycle phases seem to have archaeologicallyattestedtrade contacts of the Harappa moved fromwest to east. However, the phase marker and Mesopotamian civilizationsare the most numerous was not absolutelysynchronous earlierin West Asia in the ED III and Akkadian periods,"from25oo to 225o but than in Central Asia and, finally,the Indus Valley. B.C. (Ratnagar i98i:204). ElsewhereRatnagar (n.d.)notes Though Dales does not say so, this phase markerseems "dramatic"declines ofboththe sown area and the yields to begineven farther west and earlier, namely,in Egypt. of wheat in the Lagash area of Mesopotamia beginning Thus, there may have been a shorter(half-millennial) between 24oo and 2IO0 B.C. and continuing until I700 cycle whose phases were not altogethersynchronous B.C. She also notes the time of troublesin Egyptfrom over the entirearea. Moreover,if this cycle was already 2250 to 2035 B.C., when famineand foreign incursions operationalin the 3d millennium,thenit may also have made everyPharaoh's hold on power short-lived. Since in the invaders included especially Libyans, the implicaexisted,at least incipiently, the 4th millenniumB.C. two or more centuriesofthe 3d mil- tion is thattheywere includedin or entering Perhapsthe first this world lenniummightbe regarded an A phase. However,the system. as period 3000-2800 B.C. saw yet anotherof the 2oo-yearEkholm (I980:I65) has observedthat long waves of migrationout of Central Asia that have in the periodaround 2.300-2.200 B.C. thereoccurred been notedbyGimbutas (1 980, I 98 1), amongothers, and serious economic crises that affected much of the Chernykh (1I992) and I (FrankI992a) associatethese Middle East and the EasternMediterranean. Everywaves with B phases ofworld-systemwide crisis.Albeit where thereis indicationof decline in quality and referring only to the Scandinavian region,Kristiansen quantityof productionthatwas usually state monopand the cessation of (i982:260) notes "disintegration" oly and orientedto export.Correlatively, therewas interregional exchange between 32oo and 2800 B.C. He an increase of local violence oftenculminating in also suggests,however,that what he calls the "domiwarfare obliterating and destruction. These largenant trends"of several "time-spacecycles" at the local scale crises are oftenexplained by barbarianinvalevel "constitutea regionalcycle" and thatseveralsuch sions, but it is just as likely that the violence is inregionalcycles in turn"may constitutedominantinterternal,the only migrants being "capital" and labor regionalor 'global' cycles" (p. 262). Chernykh (1I992:305) forcedout of theirhomes by acute survivalprobnotes destabilization throughoutthe Early Metal Age lems. The collapse of "supralocal" space leads to communitiesfarther northin Eurasia duringthe second acceleratingcompetitionbetween and withinpolitquarterof the 3d millennium.The 27th to 25th century ical units, that is, to warfare and intensified class was a time of "major culture-historical change . . . restruggle. flectedin various spheres(political,ethnocultural, productive and technological),themselves clearly interre- Melko and Wilkinson(i992) note periodsof heightened lated" (p. 98). Change was manifestin western Asia, warfare and around Mesopotamia in the 27th, 25th, in Asia Minor,and the more northerly regionsof the Cir- and 23d centuries(but none yet in the otherregions). cumponticarea. "The period of greatestdisruption was Urbanizationin southernAfghanistan also culminated the probably twenty-sixth twenty-fifth to centuriesB.C. after2500 and abruptly disappearedafter2ooo B.C. Set(on the basis of a seriesof calibratedradiocarbon dates)1" tlement in southwestern and southern Iran peaked (p. 305). Edens and Kohl (I993) note that in the Indus around and/ordeclined afterthe second half of the 3d area massive urban growthoccurredfrom2600 to 2500 millennium.In and aroundOman on the Arabianpenin-

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Volume 34, Number 4, August-October I993 may also be observed duringthe 3d millennium. On late-3d-millennium Harappa's Central Asian frontier, appear in Bactria,Margiana,and the Kopet settlements Dagh piedmontin areas perhapspreviouslyless settled. New evidence shows that, except perhaps in the lastnamed, urban settlementonly shiftslocation through the late BronzeAge and increasesinto the IronAge. Acthe previous impressionof an urban collapse. He also arguesforthe probableexpulsion of Harappans because of competitionfor minerals fromAfghanistan.TurkincludingSistan, and the menia, southernAfghanistan Indus Valley had had widespreadcontacts and interdependenciesfromthe end of the 4th to the middle of the 3d millennium,and formalmaritimetrade linked the Indus Valley and southernMesopotamia via the Persian Gulf. The Kulli, the closest westerlyneighborsof the Indus Valley Harappans,may have played a middleman role in this trade.Moreover,accordingto Shaikh (i992), The pre-Indusconnectionswere all overlandwith Iran and Turkmenia ... [and]gave rise Afghanistan, and in settlements Afghanistan to intermediary Iran-such as Tepe Yahya, Shahr-iSokhta and Mundigak.All these threesites lost theirimportanceand came to theirlast stages of theirlife when Mohenjodariansor the Mature Indus people began to forge ahead in theircivilizationaladvance by capturing the world trademarketof that time. They now directlyapproachedthe mineralsource areas. [p. I9] It was the directcontactwith the Gulf countries which led to a new phase of expandingtradeand conas by sequent enrichment . .. Mohenio-darians well as . . . the people of the Gulf. [p. 2I] There was a shiftin the traderoutesfromnorthto reliance . . . on sea south in this period,and greater routes. [p. 1I The coast fromMesopotamia down the Gulf all with along the Arabian sea to Gujarat is littered sites bearingevidence of the Mature Indus period. [P. 31 The Oman sites not only point to connectionswith the Indus valley,but theyhave a markedrelationIran sites. [p. I21 ship with southeastern The rise of the Gulf sites seems to coincide with the rise of Indus cities in the east. [p. 6] The important thingis that sea connectionswere evident only in the Mature period,neitherbeforenor after [p. 31 it. It was because of the Indus-Mesopotamiacontacts sites along the thattherewas a rise [of]intermediate [p. PersianGulf makingthem international. 2] My only doubtwould be whetherit was the Harappans' expansionand directcontactwith the Gulfthatbrought wealth as Shaikh says or whether it was not general economic expansion that broughtabout the contact.

sula peak copper production,best documented at the Maysar I site, was late in the 3d millennium. evidencemay pieces of chronological These scattered systemwidecycles duringthe 3d to not suffice identify of millennium.All attestonly to something an A phase from halfand a major B phase spreading duringthe first the West Asian world system west to east throughout in the late 3d millenniumB.C. Shennan(I993) also finds cyclicalincreasesor decreasesin populationand occupathe tionwhich last 5oo yearsor more each from late 4th to the late 3d millenniumin CentralEurope. However, much but not all of CentralEuropeand the Danube Valley experienced(B-phase?)major population decline in the firsthalf of the 3d millennium. These variations largelycoincide over so wide an area that he regardsit as unlikelythat local factorswere responsible.On the otherhand, he also identifiesregionaltrendvariations and even opposites (thatis, A phases) among regions. Yet it seems importantto tryalso to suggest some even ifonlyin a tentative cyclicalpattern, sortofshorter way and to incite othersto refineand reviseit. As Kohl to remindsus, "it is important realize that thereis no accepted or orthodoxSoviet datingsystem" universally (Kohl I98i :xxviii).Elsewhere as well, "3rd-millennium dating . . . changes a lot fromyear to year,depending on who has foundwhat most recently"(MitchellAllen, personal communication). I shall nonetheless hazard some kind of cycle datingscheme with these and other cautions in mind. On the basis of the evidencereported above, I would suggest a B phase in the 27th to 26th centuriesto the west and the 26th to 25th centuriesto the east. That the 26th and 25th centurieswitnessed is some recovery suggestedby the markedactivityRatnagar reportsin the more easterly regions beginning around 2750 B.C. and ending mostly around 2400 B.C., in increasedwarfare but Melko and Wilkinsonregister Edens writesme (perMesopotamia in the 25th century. sonal communication,August 25, i992) that the evidence suggests a 3d-millenniumA phase, at least for westernAsia, beginningaround 2600/2500 B.C. Urban growthin the Indus Valley and trade between it and However, other regions also expand soon thereafter. Edens finds the end of this phase rather "arbitrary." Nonetheless,I would suggestthat anotherB phase may have begun after2400 (per Ratnagar)and/or2300 (per Ekholm). The 23d centuryagain had heightenedMesoin potamianwarfare the Melko and Wilkinsontable,and this B phase would seem to last until towardthe end Chandler's (i987) of the 3d millennium.Unfortunately, data on the numberof cities and theirsizes as recorded by Bosworth(i992) and Wilkinson (i992) are quite inconclusiveforthis earlyperiod.WilkinsonfollowsGills and me (i992) in beginningwith the 2d millennium. The data extend to 2250 B.C., with eight cities in the nine in 2000 B.C. and eight again in region,reporting i800 B.C. plus one in India (forwhich, however,none primein were recordedduringits Harappan-civilization the 3d millennium). trade,and perhaps Some notable shiftsin settlement, relations, "centers of gravity,"if not center-periphery

contravenes to cording Kohl(I984, I987a), thisevidence

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BronzeAge WorldSystem Cycles | 395

In the Gulf region,settlementand economic activity fromthe Arabiancoast to Bahrain; seem to have shifted the evidence here includes the growthof Qala' to some 5,000 and the exportof grainstaples fromMesopotamia to Dilmun in the closing threecenturiesof the millennium. Crawford(i99i:i5o) suggests that Gulf states' tradebetween in rivalry and forthe carrying mercantile Sumer and Oman as well as with Meluhha may help As explainthis shift. we have seen,forEdens (I992:I2729) population growth,urbanization,and social comcausally and plexityin Dilmun on the Gulfare probably dialecticallyrelatedto Mesopotamia,with which it exchangedcopperforcereals. These became not a luxury but a staple importinto the Gulf duringthe last centuries ofthe 3d millennium.The Barbarregionis the only into one in Ratnagar'saccount whose hightidepersisted the 2d millennium.The period 2000-I750 B.C., that is, in thenextA phase, "was theperiodoftheDilmun trade par excellence," accordingto Edens (I 992: I32). By then, however,the Indus connection seems already to have languished;only a few archaeologicalfindsofHarappan origin in the Gulf region date from this later period that Gulf trade "greatlydiminished (Edens iggo). After in volume and the natureof goods exchanged. .. forat least several centuries"(Edens I992:I32). In conclusion of this review of the 3d millennium B.C., we may ask with Ratnagar to what extent the eclipse of the sea trademay explain the collapse of the Harappanurban system(I98I:25 3): and urban systemof If the efficient wide-reaching the Harappans was generatedby trademechanisms and dominatedby a merchantclass become powerful in by its successfulparticipation an extensivetrade and if the "markets"forthis mercantileurnetwork, ban systemdwindled,. . . the wealth and power of Repercusrulerswould have been seriouslyaffected. sions of a fall in the quantum of tradecould also have been feltby the ruralpopulation [ifonly of the through move back to the countryside newly unemployedurbandwellers.This may be how Harappan civilization]was phased into oblivion. The datingof the decline and fall of Harappa is still in disputebetweenthe late 3d and the early2d millennium B.C. Carbon-I4 dates suggestan end between 2ioo and the end of 2000 B.C. (Ratnagari98i:2o6), that is, during what appears to be a more generalizedB phase. In that case, perhapsHarappa was "phased into oblivion" also B as a consequence of this late-3d-millennium phase most of the world system in West Asia. throughout "The evolution of the Indus Valley civilization must be explained historically:that is, by reference those to societies of West largerprocesses which all interacting Asia were experiencingin the latter half of the third millenniumB.C." (Kohl I987b: 356). It would of course be desirableforothersbetterqualifiedthan I to refinethe economic cycle and exploreits relationto shiftsin hegemonyand who occupied which musical chairs within the world system in West Asia and elsewhere duringthe 3d millennium B.C. Such re-

search and analysis mightalso assuage Kohl's continuing doubts about core-periphery relations.Sherratt and Sherratt (iggia) begin this task forthe late 3d millennium but concentrate the 2d. on

2d-MillenniumCycles
The extentand shape of the world systemat the beginning of the 2d millennium and its expansion/contracthe tion and hegemonialshiftsthrough late BronzeAge remain less clear than would be desirable. Kohl (1987a:23) contends that there was no direct contact from one end to the other-indeed, that"therewas not a singleBronzeAge worldsystem."A late-3d-millennium shiftto the Gulf region,which continued gravitational into the 2d millennium,has alreadybeen noted.In Mesnorthward and became more opotamia,activityshifted with many smaller political units, until decentralized, the rise of Babylon.Then "the centralarea of the Near and from East, fromthe Zagros to the Mediterranean, the Gulf to the Taurus and sometimes beyond to the Black Sea, appearsto have formed naturalunit . .. and a therewas a developednetworkof routesand exchanges within the region. Egypt is conspicuously absent" (Larsen i987:53). However, there may have been connections with Cyprus and/or the Aegean. Kristiansen betweenem"Regional interaction (I993a) goes farther: pires of productiveirrigationagriculturein the Near noEast, commercialcity states in the Mediterranean, mads to the north, and ploughlandagriculture minand eral exploitationin temperateEurope created a rather unique world system fromappr. 2,000 B.C. onwards." He notes an "intensification connections"and "a reof gional hierarchyof indirect C/P [core-periphery] relations." If we follow Chernykh, however,this "unique worldsystem"and the "intensification connections" of extendedall the way across Eurasia northof the mountains as well. On the otherside, we have seen thatwith the decline of Harappan civilization the Indus Valley seems to drop out forabout a millennium,at least in regularcontactswith the west, althoughthereis some evidenceofa turnsouthward and eastwardthathas been linked with the emergenceof trade and migrationbetweenthe Indian East Coast and SoutheastAsia and the Lapita expansion into Melanesia and Polynesia. Gills's and my (i992) cycle phases began with a B
B.C.,

previousA phase, especiallyifthe 3d millenniumended with a B phase. The evidence, however,is ambiguous, and confirmation disconfirmation phase datingsby or of recourse to Chandler's city census remains uncertain until much later in the 2d millennium. His census shows ninecitiesin 2ooo B.C. andin i800 B.C. However, a cityis added in India that Wilkinsonregards spurias ous; it comes at the time of the extinctionofthe Harappan civilization,which may have continuedits decline duringthese firsttwo centuriesof the 2d millennium. The decline of(southern) Mesopotamia is markedbythe loss of threeof its six cities in the Chandlercensus,but

phasefrom I700 to I500/I400

and thisimpliesa

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Volume 34, Number 4, August-October I993 of disintegration hegemonieswas accompaniedbyinevitable economic disruptionsand the "disappearance... of all vestigesof social reform-or experiments-of the his Hammurabiera" after death about I750 B.C. (Oppento heimI977: I 5 9). MelkoandWilkinson (i992) refer an "implosion" in Mesopotamia but not until the i6thnotes the onset of a B.C. Silver (I985:I6I) I5th century "Dark Age" decline ofurbanlife,but his laterand rather to "precise" dating from i6oo to I347 B.C. is difficult accept. Bosworth and Wilkinson both find that Chandler's a citycensus confirms B phase duringthis period,especially in Egypt,which drops fromfive major cities in i8oo B.C. to threein i600 B.C., and in India. Increases however,forAsia Minor and the Aegean are registered, towardthe end of this phase. The Sherratts (IggIa:369regions"an in70), however,witness in more westerly friccrease of scale and tempo,with the corresponding political consequences of [which] were to create new, expansive power-centreson the edges of the sytem, which soughtto achieve independenceand extendtheir controloverthe centre."This increasein scale, which is not uncommonin periodsof crisisin the modernworld system(FrankI978a), helped set the stage forthe next A phase.
B.C. the i6th to the i2th century the regards periodfrom as one of "stability":"A whole chain ofnew metallurgithe from Pacificto theAtlantic, stretching cal provinces, tools of The technology castingthin-walled was formed. spread and weapons and the productionof tin-bronzes explosivelythroughthis entirezone." In the i6th and isth centuries,fromthe Dnieper eastwardtherewas a sharpincrease in the amount of miningin new copper and tin ore areas in the Urals, Kazakhstan,and the Altai and on both sides of Lake Baikal. "The huge scale of miningin a numberofthe mines is astonishing"(p. I 90). For instance,2 million metrictons of ores were mined and some ioo,ooo tons of copper were smelted at just deposits (p. I93). In the eastern two Kazakh copper-ore Donets basin therewere "speUkraineand the northern cialized settlementsof professionalminers, metallur(p. gistsand metalworkers" I93). There was a i,ooo-km trade route for tin (p. I94), and copper ore was transthe ported300 km through mountains(p. 202). "Steppe and forest-steppe peoples had a uniformeconomy and wereveryclosely connectedto one another.Cultures,it appears,were usually not isolated but consistedof open systems:economic, ideological and kin-basedinterconnectionsand exchangewere not only possible but,very actively encouraged" (p. I94). Chernykh(pp. probably, betweenEurincreasedinteraction 25 6-6i) also reports asian and European provinces between the I4th and I2th centuries. An A phase of the Tumulus culturein North-Central Europebetween i6oo but especially I 500 and I250 B.C. also appears in diagramsby Kristiansen(I993a). In Eu-

cities in Egyptincreasedfromthreeto five.The A and B phases and theirdatingthatwe have suggestedare at by least not disconfirmed evidencefromChandler'scity firmI200 B.C. date forthe final the census.Before rather crisis of the 2d millennium,however,the city census data neitherinspireadditionalconfidencein our dating dating. alternative noroffer much guidancefora definite around 2ooo B.C. Beginning A Phase, 2000-I800/I750 a regioncenteredaround Bactria and Margiana in B.C., Central Asia flourishedfor some 250 years,ending in I992). B.C. (Hiebertand Lambert-Karlovsky i8oo-I700 to (According Kohl, as I have pointedout, the evidence now disputesthe thesis of a total collapse ofurban settlementtherein the next period.)The Gulf tradeflourished in the period,and economic activityincreasedin Cilicia and Cyprusand then also in Crete and the Aegean, where Minoan civilization began developing in relations close economic and other (core-periphery?) with Egyptand the Levant. More of the Mediterranean into the world system. and its coasts were incorporated on systemcentered the Larsen(i987) describesa trading middlemanrole of the relativelysmall Mesopotamian city of Assur, which flourishedapparentlyindependentlyduringthe igth centuryB.C. and then was absorbedinto a larger political unit until Hammurabiunified the whole area around Babylon. Harappan civilization,whose decline in the previousB phase has been noted above, may, however, also have hung on considersa possible end not longer.Ratnagar(i98i:207) during(and mightraise some doubt about) thisA phase, in B.C. wars of unification and so mightthe 2000-I970 Egyptand perhapsthe Sumerianwars in the Mesopotamian regionin the igth centuryB.C. B. C. Chernykh B Phase, I800/o75o-I600/I500 remarkson "the destabilizationof ... ethno(I992:305) cultural and political systems . . . between the eighwhen obB.C. and the sixteenth century, teenthcentury vious signs of universal cultural crises and mass the can be observed. .. throughout eastern migrations and in the eastern European steppe and forest-steppe" and on the simultaneouscollapse in disMediterranean tant China, followed later in the i6th centuryby the emergenceof the Shang state. "A whole chain of culand new ones were formedin their turesdisintegrated

betweenI700 and 1400 tion of growth,

B.C.

. . .

the

A Phase, I600/Ioo500-I200

B.C.

Chernykh (I992:3o6)

in 2000 but aroundi800

B.C.

The laterdatewouldbe

place" (p. I90).

B.C.

ceasedbyaboutI750 virtually

There is evidence of decline fromthe i8th century elsewhereas well. Accordingto Edens,the Gulfwas apparentlyin a period of decline; maritimetrade had
B.C.

ruptedfor several centuries,"marking a period of reSimultanegional social disruption"(Edens I992:I32). ous crises of linked hegemonieshave also been notedin Gills's and my account, among them the conquests of Anatolia and Mesopotamia by the Hittitesand Kassites while the Hurriansand Hyksos overranthe Levant and This was anotherof the recurrent (cyclical?)200Egypt. but primarily not periodsofmassive migration year-long notes"an expansion phase. Kristiansen (I99I:30) only out of Central Asia that I have noted in my study rope, of the latter(FrankI992a). This periodof simultaneous Suddenly,within a generationat about I500 B.C. the

interandremained

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BronzeAge WorldSystem Cycles 1397

Thus this A phase, which Gills and I dated onlyfrom I400 to I200 B.C., probablybegan at least one and perChanhaps two centuries earlier.Bosworthinterprets dler's citydata to "lend strongsupport"to the proposal of this period as an A phase. Wilkinson treatsit as a data, and notes fourpo"rally,"' despitesome misfitting litical-economic"peaks" in the period I600-I400 B.C. and six peaks in the succeedingperiod I400-I200 B.C. However, from I360 B.C. to 1200 B.C., the number of major cities declines by one, and thereis one less city Asia Minor, Egypt,and in the Aegean/Mediterranean, of the Levant. The beginningsof the introduction iron, especiallyin weapons but also in tools, initiatedthe beand the finalcrisisof the of ginnings a major transition BronzeAge. B.C. Gills and I (i992) have called B Phase, 1200-I000 attentionto Childe's (I942:i85) beliefthat "the Bronze Age in the Near East ended round about I200 B.C. in a dark age. . . . Not in a single state alone but over a largepart of the civilized world historyitselfseems to be interrupted; writtensources dryup, the archaeothe logical documentsare poor and hard to date." Liverani (I 987:69, 7 I) commentson "the collapse ofNear Eastern Civilization . . . [whose] crisis is ratherextended and takes place at roughlythe same time over a largearea" dominantbut inter-linking hegemonieswere the Hit- (p. 69) and observesthat the scarcityof surviving docutite empire,based in Anatolia and dominantin . mentation"is not fortuitous . . [but]is itselfan effect northern Mesopotamia, and the empireof New King- ofthe crisis(eclipse ofscribalschools and palace admindom Egypt.The periodwas clearlymarkedby the istrations)"(P. 71). For instance, 576 years of Kassite prominenceof inter-linking hegemonies,including in domination Mesopotamia came to an end in I I 7I B.C. Babylon,Assyria,and Mitanni,all of which took a The Aegean-basedMycenaean civilization came to an fullpartin the well developed diplomaticdiscourse wave end about the same time. Another200-year-long of the period.There was fora time somethinglike a of migrationbroughtIndo-Europeanseastward toward concertof powers among these inter-linking hegemo- the Tarim Basin and Aramaeans, Dorians, and others nies. The Mycenaean tradesupplantedthe Minoan into the Levant and Greece (Franki992a). in the East Mediterranean. Chernykhechoes this theme when he writes that and "theseprocessesofwidespreadmigration therelated The Sherrattsiggia:372-73) summarize: ( collapse of culturalsystemsreached a peak in the eleventh to tenthcenturiesB.C. Archaeologically speaking, This [I400-I200 B.C.] periodrepresents climax the of bulk maritimetradein the BronzeAge. It differs this is the boundarybetween the Bronze Age and the and critical fromthe isth-century patternsin the disappearance Iron Age, and one of the most significant of Cilicia and Crete as major centresin theirown periodsin the historyof the peoples of the Old World" and the emergenceof Cyprusas a major inter- (I992:306). He notes "a sharpdecline in the production right, the ofbronzeartefacts throughout Eurasiansteppeat the national trader.. . . The systemthus seems to have differentiated two components:a major longinto end ofthe LBA [LateBronzeAge]" (p. 262) and fromi2oo to IOOO B.C. a "collapse of the system" in the Iranodistanceinternational route markedby porttowns and emporia such as Tell abu Hawam, Ugarit,EnAfghanprovince,where "the settledway of life of the changedto mobile pastoralkomi, lalysos, Kommos, and stationslike Mersa Ma- local populationapparently ism" (p. 272). Therewas a similardecline in bronzecasttruh,and operatedby ships with large cargoes ... the northeastern Balkans and the Carheavily capitalised and partlystate dependent;and a ing throughout series of cycles operatedby long-distance pathians (p. 262) and a sharp increase in mobile ships of smallercapacityin the west, some controlledfrom subsistencestrategies(p. 243).

fullyfledgedchiefdom structureemergedin northern Europe . . . [in] a period of conspicuous wealth [that] lasted, with some ups and downs, from i0oo to IIOO B.C., but, alreadyin the laterpart,. . . declined." Kristiansen (I993a) also points to expansion fromi500 onward,alongwith a shift tradeofnorthern in Europewith theMediterranean an area from easternaxis via theDanube and the Black Sea towardsthe westernMediterranean and Italy. For the Sherratts (I99Ia:370), also, "these two centuries [I400-I200 B.C.] are somewhatarbitrarily separated fromthe precedingphase, and mark the climax of the palatial tradingsystem and the political frameworks withinwhich it was carriedout." Along with Gills and me, they underline the expansion of the Hittites and Assyriansbut also a majorphase of urbanizationin Cyprus,the importanceof Rhodes, and a shiftfromCrete to the Greekmainland.They also remarkon the related "intensive diplomatic activity." Similarly, Liverani (I987:67) reports an exceptionally high frequencyof treatiesin the isth to I3th century.Kassite Babylonia was, accordingto Edens,in its phase ofgreatest prosperthe ity,these centuriesmarking longestperiodofpolitical integration and economic prosperity its history. in New citieswere foundedand old ones expanded.Babylonia extendedits administration over Dilmun and maintainedwide-ranging relationswith lands to the west in a struggle with Egypt,Hatti, Mitanni, and Assyria for client states in Syro-Palestine. Nonetheless, the Mesopotamianregionexperienceda long peace fromi 38o to I33I B.C. (Melko and Wilkinson i992). Gills and I (i992:637) have observedthat

mainland centresbut many underless centralised however,should be control.... Not all this activity, imaginedas the peacefulgrowthof commerce.Faccompetitionare evidentin the torsof international insecurity the Levant revealedby Amarna letof ters . . . [and]Egyptand the Hittitesclashed at Kadesh in I284.

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Volume 34, Number 4, August-October 1993 effective provincesdetachedthemselvesfrom peripheral state control(Edens i992). Gills and I have noted that at the same time the Myby cenaeans in Greece and the Levantwere overrun new waves of invaders-Dorians, Aramaeans, and PhoeniPolitical power cians. The Hittiteempiredisintegrated. Egypt was unstable and short-lived. almost everywhere was invaded by the Sea Peoples. The Mesopotamianregion experiencedthe Aramaean wars beginningin the iith century,and fromthe i2th centuryonwards the Aryanwars ragedin India. the Chandler'sdata on cities also support B-phasedesignation according to both Bosworth and Wilkinson. Cities cease to grow,the numberofmajor ones declines a bit,and Hittiteand Aegean cities disappearaltogether. Wilkinsonnotes a markeddecline ofpolitical-economic "peaks" fromsix between I400 and I200 B.C. to only one between i2oo and IOOOB.C. and observes "a more ... of noticeablecharacter disintegration thanin preceding centuries." These "dark ages," however,are oftenconsideredto have lasted up to 350 yearsand well into the Ist milleninconsistenciesand nium. Jameset al. (I99i) identify hiatuses in regional datings of the crisis,which sometimesleave 35o-year gaps duringwhich on the evidence and nothingseems to have happened.Sherratt virtually Sherratt(i99ib) accord James et al. more success in the dating problems than in resolving demonstrating of themby theirreadjustment the relationbetweendating sequences in Egyptand elsewhere.However,to the of extentthat theirshortening the crisis period is well taken,Gills's and my designationof IOOOB.C.as the end of this B phase and the beginningof the next A phase also gains in credibility. for In summary, the BronzeAge and especiallythe 2d millenniumB.C., thereseems to be substantialevidence fora cycle with long phases of expansionin production, trade,and cities, apparentlyaccompanied by more extensive hegemonic rule and greaterpolitical stability, and phases of slower growth,contraction,crisis, and even darkages, markedby economic and urbandecline, more massive migrations/invasions, sharpened social both "domestically"and "internaand political conflict tionally,"and accelerated ethnic and cultural diffusion or fusion.In the 2d millennium,this cycle is markedby dated 2oooalternating phases that can be tentatively I800/I750 (A), I800/I75o-I600/I500 (B), I600/I500I200 (A), and i2oo-iooo (B) B.C. These phases and their over seemremarkably manifestations synchronized an imfromEurope across Afro-Eurasia mense area stretching and the Mediterranean throughWest and Central Asia a to eastern Siberia. This outline may offer basis and withrefor attention, framework devotingmuch greater gardto the 2d millennium B.C., to questions that have time had to be leftunanswered:Was therea west-to-east lag in cyclical displacement?What were the relatedrein positionsand the ups and gionalshifts core-periphery within this vast world downs of hegemonyand rivalry Did the systemalreadyhave a hegemonialcensystem? ter,and if so, where,when, and how did it shift?

remains from Babylonia tinue (p. 3II):

Kristiansen(I993a) links the "collapse" of the Mediterraneanand Near Eastern regional systems shortly to afterI200 to Europe and refers evidence ofmercenarfromCentralEurope ies and latersouthwardmigrations and the Balkans. In Europe, agriculturebecame more more dominantand political organizationless chiefly, and decentralized, more "populist,"witha more"democraticideology."Jameset al. (I99 I:279) speak of "centuries of darkness" and write that "the term 'Dark Age' when the archaeological seems like an understatement
. . .

are examined." They con-

There can be no doubt that in many partsof the Old Worldtherewas a dramaticcollapse at the end of the Late Bronze Age. The centralizedeconomies conthe trolledfromthe palaces disintegrated, old trading marketsbrokeup, diplomaticcontactswere lost were abandoned.However, and major settlements
Age can be discerned . . . [including] cultural decadence [a la Toynbeel . . . climatic catastrophes ...

tationsof the events at the end of the Late Bronze

the causes .

. .

are unclear....

Ten separate interpre-

and invasions by outside barbarians-notablythe

Sea Peoples....

convincingbecause theycannot themselvesshow why the civilised societywas unable to cope.

Such "external" causes are rarely

Kristiansen (I987:84) notes that "with the decline ofinternationalexchange networksof prestigegoods at the to transition the Iron Age, the whole systemof center/ relationscollapsed. The variousregionsdevelperiphery oped autonomous cultural and economic traditions." Sherratt(n.d.:I3) also remarkshow "in the final censlackened.The Nordicrenorth-south links temporarily gion developed on its own, without plentifulsupplies and south." Elsewhere,Sherratt of metal fromfurther
Sherratt (iggia:373-74) point out that turies of the second millennium .
.

. the long-distance

tradingsysthe collapse of large-scaleinter-regional tems began in the most heavily capitalisedareas, reached outwardto involve all and its effects the palace economies which were dependenton destroyed them.... Ugarit ... was permanently after1200 BC, along with neighsome time shortly boringAtchana and Carchemish.The recessionin had further Syriawhich followedthese destructions and economic difon effects the Hittitehinterland, ficultiesexacerbatedlocal unrest,leading to the deof struction Bogazkoyitselfat this time. The Assyrians underTglath Pileser i (c. i ioo) took advantage of this unstable situationto invade Syriaand the Levant,beforethe shiftof power to semi-nomadicAradecentralisation maean tribescaused a fundamental a of local economies (and,incidentally, new set of inland routes made possible by use of the dromedary). In Babylonia,Kassite decline began with the Assyrian invasionin i225 but culminatedin theirousterin II57 as decentralized was increasingly B.C. Political authority

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BronzeAge WorldSystem Cycles 1399

Doubt also persists about the extent and timing of the participationof India, Southeast Asia, China, and in Manchuria-Korea-Japan this 2d-millenniumBronze Age world system. It remains less than clear whether the regions in India that were incorporatedinto the world system in the 3d millennium "droppedout" or onlytemporarily "involuted" in a darkage of theirown analogous to what would befall Western Europe two millennia later-or, alternatively, perhaps turnedeastward,toward Southeast Asia, in the 2d millenniumas in the Ist. Events in the Chinese regionseem synchronized for a time with those elsewhere, according to but does this reallymean participation Chernykh, this earlyin the world system?

and the Mediterraneandeterminedthe later course of Europeanhistoryby establishingthe structural foundations upon which it came to rest,e.g., the limits of the Roman empirein Europe" (KristiansenI993a). in Transformations West Asia are summarized by Ghirshman(I954): The first half of the first millenniumB.C. was a turnThe centreof "world ing point in human history. politics" or of the age shifted. . . [from alluvial valleys in the south] more to the north. . . the struggle forworldpower was centered. .. [upon]threeprincipal actorsin the drama: the Semitic Assyrianswith theirvast empire;Urartu,a powerful kingdomofAsiatic origin,tenacious opponentsof the Assyrians... and finallythe Aryans,the Iranianswho, after long a and arduous struggle, over theirtwo adtriumphed versariesand, with the spoils, foundedthe first WorldEmpire [underthe Achaemenidkingsfrom the 5th century onwards].[P. 75]

the World Systemin Exploring Iron Age the Early

Extendingthis explorationof the spread of the world systemand the identification its long cycles through of There was a shiftin the centreof gravity exof the Ist-millennium-B.C. Age is at themomentmore Iron porting countries.Assyria,which was a greatconproblematic(at least forme). Among the academic reasumer,had no iron mines; fora time, especiallydursons forthis is that forthe Ist millennium B.C. Chering the earlierhalf of the eighthcentury B.C., it was nykh'sreviewof (northern) Eurasia offers less detailed a denied access to the miningcentresof the southern its guidethrough cycles. Othersources are also less syscoast of the Black Sea and Transcaucasus by the tematic and/or complete, particularlyregardingthe neighboring kingdomof Urartu.Inevitably turned it more easterlyregions of the world system. Especially its attentionto Iran [whichobtainedthis metal from forthese regions,Chandler's city data as analyzed by regionsinaccessible to Assyria].[p. 88] Wilkinsonand Bosworthare also less complete or relimoreambiguity able, displaying with regard the idento Karl Jaspers (I949, I955, I957) called this mid-isttification and/ordatingand the regionality the cycle millennium-B.C. of period the "axial age," regarding as it phases. The real-world reason,probablyunderlying the the turning point in human history.He also noted, as academic ones, forthese problemsis thatthe worldsys- have Teggart(I939) and McNeill (i963), thatthe prophtem itselfseems to have experienceddramaticexpan- ets ofthegreatreligiousmovementswerebornat almost sion and transformation duringthe Ist millennium.In the same timein the 6th century B.C.: in Pythagoras India became more (re)integrated, South- Italy,Thales in Greece,Ezekiel and the second Isaiah in particular, and east Asia and China definitively joined the world sys- the Levant, Zoroaster in Persia, Buddha and Mahavira tem. Developmentsin the east seem to have been more in India,and Laozi and Confuciusin China. These three rapid,albeit less well recorded,even while the west of scholars and othershave suggestedor at least implied the growing world systemwas experiencing longerand that this simultaneitywas probablyno accident. AcB better-recorded phases. Althoughregionalrisingsuns cording McNeill (i 963:3 38), "ifthe social and psychoto duringsystemicB phases are not unusual, in this case logical circumstancesof the submergedpeople and urtheirlarge-scalebut poor recording a sort of bifurca- ban lower classes were in factapproximately in similarin tion of the world systempresentsadditionaldifficulties all partsofWesternAsia, we should expect to findclose forthe explorationof the extentof the systemand the parallels among the religious movementswhich arose dating of its cyclical phases-at least for me and for and flourished such milieux. This is in factthe case." in now. Therefore, also to avoid lengthening but this essay Indeed,Gills and I have suggested thatthese similar"sobeyondall bounds,I extend it into the Ist millennium cial and psychologicalcircumstances"may reflect simiB.C. only summarily and briefly. lar economic circumstances and at least an immediately In general,duringthis period,economic and political precedingcommon economic crisis. The emergenceof crisis seems to prevail more in the west, while regions universalist religionsmay also be an indicationofa high to the east may have been layingthe basis formore ac- level of real economic linkage and perhaps the attainceleratedgrowththat may foreshadowits approaching ment of a new level or stage of economic integration, inclusionin the centralworldsystem.A bird's-eye view forit is also in this "axial" period that China seems to of these world-system-extending transformations as have become a permanent is partof the centralworldsysfollows: tem. The midmillenniumsaw yet anotherof the halfBeginningwith Europe, "it might be suggestedthat millennial-recurring waves of Asian migration, this one the structural divergencescreated duringthe firstmil- laterremarkedon by Herodotus. lennium B.C. between northern Europe, centralEurope Less well-studied the apparentincorporation is also of

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Volume 34, Number 4, August-October 1993 SoutheastAsia commenced earlierthan Wheeleror Rashke allowed.... By the earlyChristianera these traderoutesreached out to bringtogether previthe ously ratherseparateSoutheastAsian exchangesystems,linkingthem into a vast networkstretching fromwesternEurope,via the Mediterranean basin, the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, to India, Southeast Asia and China . . . [in] what has been called the WorldSystem. Gills's and my (i992) cycle phases forthis periodare rather uneven in length,and theirdatingsare uncertain. Moreover,the B phase from8oo to 550 B.C. is not reflectedin Chandler's city-sizecensus. This is partly, as Bosworthsuggests,because these and later datingsare excessively influencedby events in West and Central Asia and neglectpossible moreimportant developments farther east. Therefore, may be well briefly review it to these datingswithout,however,attempting advance to veryfarbeyondthem. A Phase, iooo-800 B.C.? Sherratt and Sherratt (IggIa:375) remarkthat "the systemwas revitalised... in the ioth century," particularly along the spice route fromArabia and by Levantine-centered trade of "panMediterranean and Sherratt scope," and Sherratt (I993) extendthis analysis.Kristiansen to (i982) refers Phoenician expansionthrough Atlanticto Franceand Britthe ain in the gth and 8th centuriesB.C. Gills and I (i992) have similarly underlined the Phoenician expansion the through Mediterranean duringthisperiodand noted the rise of and then the challengeto Assyrianpower on also increasedagain in distantEnglandand Scandinavia (KristiansenI993a). Indeed, the increase was of such in enormousproportions the west in its final phase as to suggest"overproduction" and the use of Armorican axes as currency. However, "it can hardlybe doubted in thatlarge-scalemetal consumptionand inflation the west was somehow relatedto the decreaseofmetal productionin the east.... A new axis ofexchangeemerged fromnorthern (during Ha[llstatt]B2-3), stretching Italy on over Switzerlandto the Lower Elbe and further to Scandinavia, Northern Germany, and Pomerania." Dietler (1988:i29) arguesforthe important intermediary role of the inhabitantsof the Rhone Valley in articulating and perhaps even initiating such long-distance tradeand fostering north-south "dependentrelationsof nature." Wilkinson findsthis phase a center-periphery confirmed the city data. Bosworthagrees and finds by for corroboration Assyriabut suggeststhat"perhapsthis A phase mightbe extendedas Nineveh, the seat of Assyrianpower,peaks somewherebetween 800-650 B.C., when it reaches i20,000 people-the first cityon Chandler'slist to breakthe ioo,ooo mark."Indicationsbythe Sherratts(I993) could also extend this phase into the 8th century.Continued growthis evidentespecially in Assyria,and there are new developmentsin northern Mediterraneanregions in the Aegean, Villanova Italy, the and Spain. The numberofmajorcitiesfrom Mediterranean to India remains the same at ten, however,and

SoutheastAsia. Bronze may have been in use therealready in the early 2d millennium B.C. However, the SoutheastAsia scholar George Coedes (I968:7), following van Stein Callenfels,dates the arrivalof bronze in 300 around around B.C. andin theislands 600 Indochina forbronzemay also be verylate,because B.C. This dating iron findsdate fromas earlyas 750 B.C. Archaeological contactsand tradeof tin findsalso establish significant and gold betweenthe islands and theMalayan Peninsula and mainland fromthe middle of the Ist millennium Indian influencein Southeast Asia fromthe early 2d of millennium,the "recorded"beginning its "Indianization" is in themid-istmillennium(Coedes I968, Glover voyI 99 I). Indiantextsattestto "speculativemercantile guilds financedby merchant ages forcommercialprofit, in many partsof India" in the 4th centuryB.C. (Glover
I99I).

B.C.

to I (RamanI99I). Although have citedreferences

their merchants traveled and carried silk over the "southwesternroute" from Sichuan throughYunnan across Burma into India. This route became prominent there B.C. againin the Ist centuries andA.D. Moreover, was "considerabletrade" between Chinese and Yue to the south in China and Indochina beforethe end of the 3d centuryB.C. A Qin emperor sent five armies of after22I B.C., afterwhich merchantsfromboth sailed at least as farsouth as Annam. The next expansion of the "Nanhai" tradewith SoutheastAsia and with India B.C.-A.D. came duringthe Han Dynastyin the 200/I00 I958). 2oo A phase(Wang The writingsof Ptolemy and the famous Periplus of Sea attest to regularmaritimetrade bethe Erythrean tween the Roman empire and the west coast of India. However, trade was equally or more intensiveonward fromthe Coromandel east coast and Ceylon to Southeast Asia and China. For instance,Francis(I989, 1991) has done researchon Arikameduin easternIndia and its which were geared to exportboth bead manufactures, westwardto Rome and eastwardto much of Southeast adethat"it is no longer writes Asia. Francis (I99I:40) as quate to thinkofit [Arikamedu] an 'Indo-Romantrading-station'or to assess its value only in terms of its interactionwith the Mediterraneanworld. The data fromothersites [in Sri Lanka, Vietnam,Thailand, and Malaysia and possiblyIndonesia] show that Arikamedu looked east farmore thanit looked west." Chinese Eastern Han Dynastydocumentationalso atteststo signifiA.D., cant tradewith Southeast Asia in the 2d century and thereis evidence of the same fromthe 2d century
B.C.

to At the same time,according Chinesetexts,

500,000

spoils the menagainst Yue to secureeconomic

After themainland. I000

B.C.,

metalsupplies however,

Moreover,accordingto Glover (Ii99 :n.p.)

the greatexpansion of SoutheastAsian and particularlyIsland-Mainlandexchangewhich is evidentin laterprehistory I believe, closely connectedwith is, this Indo-Romancommerceand can be explained in part,at least, by a risingdemand.... [recent] finds. .. are enough,I believe, to permitus to argue that regularexchangelinks betweenIndia and

FRANK

BronzeAge WorldSystem Cycles I 40I

increasesfrom threeto fivein China. Melko and Wilkin- Syria and the Levant to Central Eurasia. Achaemenid son (i992) record both peace (8Io-745 B.C.) and war controlof Central Asian cities such as the great city in West Asia and war in the 8th and 7th of Bactraand the northwestern Indian trading B.C.) centerof (859-8Io centuriesin South Asia. Taxila was veryimportant consolidatingPersian hein Edens (personalcommunication)findsthis phase po- gemonyand accumulation. The Persian investmentin included the i,677-mile Royal Road that liticallyheterogeneousand tends to doubt that it was infrastructure an A phase. He observes that Babylonia continued to Darius built fromEphesus to Susa and the road from collapse, but we need not regardthis as contrary evi- Babylonto Ortospana (near Kabul). Persian cities, like dence. The Assyrianempire flourished only in the gth their Assyrian predecessors,were cosmopolitan, and but It century, thisagain is not disconfirmatory. was Persianarmiesweremultinational. was in thisperiod, Egypt parochial, and multiple states were in competitionin accordingto Franckand Brownstone(I986:65), that the The South Arabian spice tradeis "over- greatcaravancities ofSyria-Aleppo, Hama, Homs (EmSyro-Palestine. rated." Admittedly, persuasive evidence is sparse,even esa), and Damascus, in particular-trulycame into their thoughthere seems to have been an urban revival in own, receivinggoods from the Silk Road as well as in India and some integration China underthe Western spices and perfumesfromArabia's Incense Road and otherluxuriesbrought sea from India. Aramaeans... by Zhou Dynastyin the ioth century. B Phase, 800-55o B.C.? Identification and dating of were such active tradersin these caravan cities that the next phase are particularly and Edens their speech became the common commercial lanproblematic, " regardsit as "heterogeneous."Chernykh'scoverageof guage. Eurasiais less revealing thisperiod.Gills and I (i992) for Edens and Bawden (i988) offer "case study" of the a have notedincreasedcompetitive in pressures the Medi- continuity occupation but also the ups and downs of of terranean and rivalriesin West Asia, as well as the pre- a singlesmall locality,Tayma, in theArabianPeninsula. sumablyrelated collapse of the Assyrianempirein the Its settlementhistoryreflects the geographical, tempo7thcentury devel- ral, and product movements in the interregional B.C., but also technological/economic exopmentin India and new rivalriesin China. The Sher- changes on which it dependedthroughout the Ist milratts(I993:369-74) point to a "greatbifurcation" the lennium.Their findings in suggest(pp. 75-76) 7th century, which local production in replaces Phoenithat the largestpopulation,most extensivesettlecian tradein theAegean,and a "growing differentiation" ment and most intensiveactivityin the basin ocin theMediterranean the 6thcentury. in Then, however, curredduringthe middle centuriesof the millen"the rapid growthof the Median and the Persian Emnium . . . [in] the 6th-sth centuries . . . [which] is pires broughta new scale of integration fromthe east exactlythe periodof most intense interaction with Aegean to the Indus" (Sherratt and Sherratt I993:37I). Babylonia.... The periodsbeforeand after this midWilkinsonand Bosworthsingle this phase out among Ist millenniumflourishing presentcontrasting patBronzeand IronAge ones as the most challengedby the terns of rise and collapse of settlement . . . [and] Chandler data on cities. Wilkinson says that it is not rapideconomic and political disintegration the of in reflected Chandler's data; Bosworthdoes findan apcity. parent"period of 'contraction'and 'fragmentation' but onlyin the westernpartof the Old World.Between 8oo In the west, Kristiansen[i982] focuses on important and 6oo BC, thereis littlegrowth Babylon, for Jerusalem, events duringHallstatt D, between about 6oo and 450 or Van, and othercities drop fromthe list entirely. By B.C., in Europe. Central Europe and the Balkans were Chinese cities roughlydouble in size, and an- reintegrated morefullyintegrated contrast, or into the MediterraotherIndian cityappears." Melko and Wilkinson(i992) nean and it in turninto the West Asian world(system?). recordwars rangingfromEgypt and Mesopotamia to Thus, however, northern Europewas marginalized (KrisSouth Asia but peace in East Asia duringthis period. tiansen I982), and the Rhone-corridor tradeto Hallstatt A Phase, 600/oo500-45o/400 For the next phase, Europe broke down again in the early 5th century B.C.? Gills and I (i992) have noted the economic development (Dietler i989). In CentralEurope,the Hallstatt cultures in Greece, replacingthat of the Phoenicians,and espe- thathad first "climaxed" then "declined," accordingto cially in Persia. This period witnessed the rise of the Kristiansen,as trade routes again shiftedand/or they AchaemenidPersian empire,which stabilized much of overexploited theirperipheries. West Asia by reimposinga more unifiedpolitical order Since this phase falls within a longerperiodbetween in thatpartofthe worldsystem.The Achaemenidsfrom two of Chandler's city censuses (for650 and 450 B.C.), Darius to Xerxesachieved at least a regionalpositionof Wilkinsonobservesthat the data are ambiguousbut "at hegemonic accumulation in the world system on the least not out of sync." Bosworthsees them as broadly basis ofthe imperialtribute system.The Persianempire confirmatory suggeststhat "Frank and Gills' focus but exceeded even the Assyrianin the degree to which it on Central Asia as the locus of this A phase seems to the incorporated most important economic zones of the be misplaced,as events thereare eclipsed once again by world system in West Asia. There was at this time a those farther east" in China and Korea. Bactraand Taxshiftin the center of gravityof the world economy of ila do not appear on Chandler's list for this period. I verygreathistoricalimportance;the key area of logisti- mightretortthat commercialimportanceis not necescal linkage in the world economy/system shiftedfrom sarilyalways reflected population size (consider,for in

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Volume 34, Number 4, August-October 1993 der's death and failure.At the same time, the Qin dynastyconsolidatedits rule in China, and tradeincreased between these regions. Here again, Chandler's census dates are not veryhelpful.Bosworthnotes the prominence of Alexandriancities, includingAlexandriaitself as the thirdlargestin the world,duringthis phase, but he suggeststhat,again,the east may deservetop billing: In 2oo B.C., forthe first time the world's largestcity is in China (Chang'an, with 400,000 inhabitants)and the second largestis in India (Patna, with 350,000). China and India now also have similar large shares of urban populationin the world's top 25 cities. B Phase, 250/200-IO1/50 B.C.? Gills and I have noted anotherbriefB phase in the Mediterranean region,includingEgyptand Greece, duringthe 2d century B.C. In the 2d centuryappeared characterized all the Egypt, by signsof economic decline,such as overtaxation, official increased debt, and unrest and brigandage. corruption, The Rosetta stone characterizesthe period in termsof "pressure of taxes, rapid accumulation of arrearsand concomitantconfiscations, prisonsfullof criminalsand debtors, public and private,manyfugitives scatteredall over the countryand livingby robbery, compulsionapplied in everysphereoflife." (Edens [personalcommuniof cation] objects to this interpretation crisis in Ptolemaic Egypt.)There were also signs of crisis and slave revoltsin Rome, but therewas also imperialistexpansion westwardthat presagedimperialRome. While this phase is again too short to be reflectedin Chandler's census dates,which jump fromIo0 B.C. to A.D. 200, Bosworthwrites that "there is consensus that this was a period of 'contraction'and 'decline."' However, China had already begun its period of expansion under the Western Han Dynasty after 200 B.C. Since imperial Rome was also alreadyexpanding, perhapsthebeginning a of the next A phase should be moved forward century thisB phase into a still shorter or so. This would convert and more localized phenomenon,hardlyworthyof the name. mark A Phase, 200/I00 B.C.-A.D. 200. The high-water saw of the expansion phases Gills and I have identified the simultaneous rise to imperial grandeur of Han China, Kushan India, ParthianIran, Axium in East Africa, and imperial Rome. Their rise was followed by theirsimultaneous decline in the major B phase from A.D. 200 to 500, which was again accompanied by anothermajorwave ofinvasions,includingthatofthe legAttila the Hun. McNeill (I 976:96-iI 4) observes endary the demographic expansionduring periodofthisA phase and epidemic disease-related population decline in the followingB phase at both the Chinese and the Roman end of Eurasia. Roman writerssuch as Pliny and more recentones such as Teggarthave arguedthatwhat happened at one end of this chain substantiallyaffected from what happenedat the other.In this regard, writing Gernet(i 9 8 2: I 9) notes: anotherperspective, Just the power of the greatnomad empireof the as Hsiung-nuin the steppe zone was probablycreated

example, Hong Kong today), but Bosworthnotes that a in "China beginsas practically footnote Chandler'slist and by 430 B.C. it has seven of the world's largest25 cities and the second largest.... This dramaticrise canWhetherGills and I are guilty not be over-emphasized." of a "western" (that is, Central Asian) bias at the exbut of pense of China is worthy consideration, the "dramatic rise" of China suggestsits growingcommercialization and probablyrelations with and incorporation into the centralworld system at this time. Melko and Wilkinson (i992) record a long peace till the mid-5th in century West and East Asia but wars in the west and south after5 50 B.C. Gills andI haveinB Phase, 450-350 B.c.? Although readingsof veighed against excessively Greco-centered this relatively the subsequentphase, we have identified shortB phase largelyon the basis of symptomsof economic crisisin Greece and its relationswith Persia. Intensifiedclass struggleand wars seemed symptomatic or of an underlying economic contraction slowdown (de the Ste.CroixI98I). Rostovtzeff (I94I) characterizes 4th centuryas one markedby increasedproletarianization, landlessness, unemployment,and food shortage,by a and the contractionin the market for manufacturers ruinof "free"pettyproducers, and by an overconcentration of wealth in the hands of the commercial and landed rulingclasses. Livy notes a series of faminesin Italy in 490, 477, 456, 453, 440, and 392 B.C. The Celts invaded Italy and sacked Rome while settingup the of kingdom Galatia in Asia Minor.The hegemonicdisinof tegration this period is evidentfromthe Peloponnesian wars, the successfulrevoltof Egyptagainst Persia Persianempireca. 380 B.C. The phase is too shortto be well reflectedby Chandler's data, with a longer time span between city censuses. Nonetheless, Bosworth notes thatthe size ofAthensdeclined but thatof Rome increasedseveralfold. Kristiansen (I993a) remarksthat "the apparentcorrelation between competitivechanges in Greek, Phoenician and Etruscan trade routes with the geographical movementand collapse of princelycenters [in Northof CentralEurope]has been seen as a confirmation the dependence on long distance trade and the supply of

ca. 400

B.C.,

of and the breakaway theIndusfrom the

next 'destructive' period," when Celts moved from WesternEuropean toward the Balkans and Asia Minor and Sarmatiansin the oppositedirecin the sth century tion in the 4th. He notes the political destabilizationof the Warring States period in China and new confrontations with Central Asian pastoralists."The high-water mark of these destructive processes and the disintegraof tion and re-formation cultures in Eurasia was the fourth thirdcenturiesB.C." to B.c.? Gills's and my identifiA Phase, 350-250/200 cation and datingof the followingphase restsprimarily on the Alexandrianexpansion throughWest Asia into CentralAsia and India and the economic expansion in Alexanafter India underthe Mauryas in the 3d century

(I992:306) prestige goods."Chernykh

termsthis "the

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BronzeAge WorldSystem Cycles 1403

and strengthened importof iron and silks from by due funChina, Han expansion in Asia was certainly damentallyto the economic upsurgeof the Chinese and world.Not only were Han China's strength prestige abroad based on this economic prosperity, but . . . also the tradewith Mongolia, Korea, central India.... Asia, South China, and northern Agreed,except for the (also Western)Sinocentricperspectivethat sees the "economic upsurge" in all these regionsand even the power of the Xiongnu in Central Asia as propelled fundamentally by "the Chinese the world." Apparently economic upsurgewas not confinedor due fundamentally China, or else it would to not have so easily included all the other areas Gernet mentions,not to mentionmany more across Eurasia. Chandler's census dates again do not Unfortunately, match the suggestedcycle dates, and this makes the fit problematic. also Nonetheless,Wilkinsonand Bosworth accept this period as a major A phase. Maybe its beginearlierin China or ningshould be dated up to a century even Rome and its end perhapsa century earlierin Kushan India. Writing course quite independently, of Cher-

newed stability, which lasted fromthe second century B.C. to the second/third century A.D., was relatedto the existence of three major empires: the Han Empire on theeasternflankofthe Eurasianlandmass; Rome on the westernflank; and the Parthianand Kushan kingdoms in the centre"-before theyall again succumbed to the "truly colossal destructiveprocesses and migrations" which were "linked with the destructionof this system." These processes fall in the next major B phase, fromA.D. 200 to 5oo, and are beyondthe scope of this paper (but see Gills and Frank i992, Frank and Gills
I992-93).

nykh (I992:306-7)

that"theperiod realso remarks of

Interestingly, increases and declines in city sizes, as recorded Chandlerand reproduced Wilkinson, by also by characterize the "Western" hemisphericregionsof the "New" Worldin the "Americas" beforeColumbus "discovered"them 5oo yearsago. However,theirphases and cycles are totallyunsynchronized with the fluctuations in citysize and/orthe phases of expansionand contracand dated in the "Old" Worldand refined tion suggested above. This implies that the substantial confirmation and occasional adjustmentof cycle phases by citysizes in Eurasiais not fortuitous (Wilkinson[i992] calls it a fit too good to disregard) and does reflectsome underlying reality. If that underlyingreality is climatic change, which is only common to all partsof the "system" and to which they independently react in tandem without significant interaction with each other,should we then stillcall thempartofa singlesystem?Perhapsan ecological system,but not a social one? I hope that I have marshaledsufficient evidence to show that different regionsand peoples have also been so linked through economic, political, migratory, sociocultural, and other bothcooperative and conflictive relationsas to meet the criterionof systemic participationin a single world system.The participation the parts is so interactive of that no part of this systemwould be as it is or was if otherparts were not as they are or were-albeit they may all have also reacted to, and on, global ecological constraints. miNotably,majorperiodsofnear world-systemwide grationaccompanied several of the B phases. The significanceof this "coincidence" remains unclear. However,Chernykh notes that these are criticalperiodsin human history. The migrationat the end of the second and the beginning of the first millenniumB.C. definedthe boundary between the BronzeAge and the Iron Age; the latermigration[in the A.D. 2oo-5oo B phase] definedthe boundary between antiquityand the mediaeval period or, in Westernhistoriographic terminology, feudalism. [p. 303] We are goinginto the unknownwhen we tryto understand the reasons forsuch explosions and successions . . . to identify hidden driving the forcebehind such phenomena.We suspect that such explosions followsome regularrhythm; that,in accordance with this rhythm, various provincesat the same time eithercollapse or emerge;however,the nature of this rhythm equally unclear. [p. 296] is However,the "external" and "internal"problemsneed not have been unconnected,let alone mutually exclusive. Invaderswere more likely to succeed when their targetwas already economically and politically/militarilyweakened by its own and regionalor systemwide crisis. Moreover,the invasions themselves were often generatedby survival problems in their own areas of originand/orotherpressuresfrombeyondthem,partic-

Conclusion
This essay has soughtif not yet to collect more data at least to begin systematizingsome additional relevant data which are now available to me as a nonprofessional It on shortorder. would ofcoursebe desirableforprofessionals more qualified than I to assemble this puzzle and fully,givingmuch more weight more competently than I have to migrations, invasions, and wars. In the meantime,and on the basis of the evidence summarily presentedabove, I suggestthat substantialarchaeological evidence and importantanalyses thereofseem to confirm the existence of long cycles in what may also forthisreason be called an at least 5,ooo-year-old world system.Alternating expansive and contractivephases reachback through 3d millenniumB.C. and probably the intostill earliertimes.They are synchronic overso large and growinga part of the world that it trulyappears a world system.The question arises whetherthe sociopolitical-economic mechanism that generatesthis "cycle" is also at least partly endogenousto thissystemand the partof the world that it includes.

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ularlyin CentralAsia. These considerations, course, of to the sun's course,and because of them the differraise largely unansweredquestions both about common ent partsof the earthacquire different potentialiecological/demographic changes or cycles and the exties.... This process must,however,be supposed to tentof the "world system" into and the "centrality" of take place in an orderly cycle.... But these changes escape our observationbecause the whole natural CentralAsia (Franki992a). In a similarvein, Chernykh process of the earth'sgrowthtakes place by slow dealso argues, with regard to the connection between greesand over periodsof time which are vast comlarge-scale movementsofpeople and the collapse ofsyspared to the lengthof our life,and whole peoples are tems, that "displacement by another group is by no means always the root cause of the formalalterationin and perishbeforetheycan recordthe prodestroyed and destruction a culture.Much more often, cess frombeginning end.... This has happened to of perhaps, movementsof populationsare brought about by reason in Egypt... and Mycenae. of the internalconditionsof a society,and an increase in deep and hidden processes that requirechanges in a Major social breakdown has been related to climatic numberof social structures. Anothercause is relatedto and/orecological changes at othertimes and places in this cyclical review. Among these changes are the ecological changes" (p. 302). drought and desertification after3000 B.C., the decline A similar position is espoused by Goldstone (i99i), to writing, however,about earlymodernhistory. notes of the Indus Valley civilization,attributed drought, He waves ofstatebreakdownand prior recurrent population the Dark Ages afterI200 B.C. duringglobal coolingnot increasesacross all of Eurasia forwhich it is impossible only at Mycenae (as observed by Aristotle)but across to account in termsoflocal conditionsor particular cul- the whole world system,and the same again duringthe declines of China, India, Persia, and tural patterns alone. The "structural/demographic2nd-to-5th-century model" he offers explain complicatedrecurrent to inter- Rome and the subsequentDark Ages in WesternEurope i982, Lambi982, RaikesI984 [I967]). actions is as follows: Demographic pressures derived (seee.g.,Harding also relatesthe birthof Confucianism fromtemporarily fallingdeath rates impinge on over- Lamb tentatively stretchedresources and lead to bureaucraticparalysis. and Buddhismduringthe "axial age" to "greatclimatic This in turnis derivedfromelite infighting large- stress" (p. I46). Similarly,expansion of populationand and scale social rebellion,which lead to statebreakdown. In settlementmay also have been promotedor permitted Goldstone's "model," all of these events are thus ulti- by more benignclimates,such as duringthe A phase at Lamb(i984:234) remarks that mately-but socially and not simply physically- thetimeofChrist. generated climatic change. Perhaps,mutatis mutanby in dis, his approach may prove fruitful the analysis of studentsof historycan hardlyfail to be struckby crises involvingpolitical-economicinstitutionsin earthe apparentcoincidence of the highpoints of cullier periodsas well. turalachievementin the late Stone Age and Bronze A possible complementary explanation is suggested Age developmentof tradeand communicationacross McNeill (I976). In additionto the obserbythehistorian Europe and of sea-goingcommunicationsall along vations on population increase and decline forthe ioo the Atlanticcoasts and island chains, and again later 200 and A.D. 200-500 A and B phases respecB.C.-A.D. in in Roman times,and thirdly the high Middle some epidemic datings for earlierpecurve.And tively,he offers Ages, with the crestsof the temperature riods elsewhere. In his analysis, demographicchange the parallelismseems to go into closer detail too. and epidemics emerge from the interactionof social in with biological,ecological,or climaticfactors However,some contributors Harding(i982) also obstructural in (e.g.,"the plagues ofEgypt, short, mayhave been con- serve divergentand even opposite cultural developnected with the power of Pharaoh in ways the ancient ments at the same (climatic and historical) times in and southernEurope. Moreover,Raikes (i984 Hebrews never thoughtof and modernhistorianshave northern challenges established belief in recurrent never considered" [p. 40]), but the possible relationbe- [I967]) theircycles and/or tween recurrent epidemics in an ever more common "changes of climate" (and a fortiori Eurasian disease pool and the cycles of expansion and worldwide effects)and their supposed social consein contraction observedabove should be considered.Such quences duringprehistory general and forthe Indus and He to attention the social consequences ofecology,disease, civilizationin particular. rejectsall determinism climatic change, and even theirpossible cycles is cer- stresses the human capacity to confront climatic tainly not new. The Old Testament refersto Noah's change. However, even Harding and Lamb leave room effect on of floodand Moses's parting the Red Sea, not to mention forhuman action,includingits environmental numerous plagues which may have been promotedor climates. and a macrohistorical Thus, archaeologists facilitated climatic change. Aristotle(Meteorologica sociologist by and dyto and othersrefer possible climatic constraints byHarding i982:i) observed: I:I4, quoted namics. Yet they also insist on social structuralif not causes and explanations."There The same partsof the earthare not always moist or always world-systemic have been severalattemptsto link oscillationsin histordry,but change theircharacteraccordingto the apical developmentin particular regionswith variousnatpearance or failureof rivers.So also mainland and sea change places.... Cold and heat increase owing ural phenomena,which,in the finalanalysis,are related

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to periodic changes in global climate" (Chernykh tionable, Chernykhwrites,because the same kinds of oscillations and connectionsare not also observablein Stone Age cultures even though they experiencedthe same climatic changesat the same time. Althoughelsewhere(Franki99.2a) I have also emphasizedthe possible role of climatic cycles, particularly Central Asia, I in might here add that the problem Chernykhmentions also works the other way around: The same climatic change can affectdifferent regions differently. inFor stance, the same period of warmingcan affect agricultural possibilities in arid and humid and/orhigh-and low-lyingareas in exactly opposite ways. Yet we have foundsubstantialevidenceforverygeneralizedsimultaneous economic up and down swings over geographiareas. Moreover,these economic cycally verydifferent cles seem to have become progressively shorter overthe millennia(orhas our identification themjust become of finer?). the more so, therefore, All "the reasons forthe changesin therhythm the during Metal Era shouldprobably be sought principallyamong the new socioeconomic conditionsof the period,"includingin particular theirinteractive in participation a single but cyclically In conclusion,we may join Kristiansenin posing the main question about what any and all this means for our world systemand its social structural influencesor
determinants (I 993a):
I992:307).

of Hypotheses thiskindaresomewhat ques-

Comments
DepartmentofAnthropology, University California, of San Diego, La Jolla,Calif. 92093-OII, U.S.A. I3 III 93 Although I have some quibbles about Frank's use of Near Easterndata, to engagein such a debate would be to miss the point of his important contribution. Thus, I shall limit my comments to the substance of the paper-the contentionthat a singleworldsystemwith simultaneous cyclical phases of expansion and contraction has existedforthe past 5,ooo yearsor so. Archaeologistsstudyingthe rise and growthof early civilizationshave generally failedto give sufficient consideration the cross-cultural to of background social, political, and economic interactionsagainst which such civilizations developed. Perhaps this is explainable in partby the natureof the data available to prehistorians, which are typically limited in geographicscope. To some degree,however, the failure is also conceptual, since social systemsneither exist nor evolve in isolation. This is the centralthrustof Frank'sarticle,and he is to be commended forreminding in no uncertain us termsthatancient societies,like modernones, must be analyzed within the context of a dynamic structure of relationshipsof interdependency, principally(but not solely) economic in nature, that commonly transcend any particular regionor social group. Thus, I fullyagree with Frank'sforceful restatement of Schneider's(1977) contentionthat the world-system paradigmdeveloped by Wallerstein(I974) and his followers for the explanation of phenomena connected with the expansionof Europe and the growth capitalof ism in the modernworldis also applicable to the study of ancient civilizations.WhereI disagreewith Frankis in seeing a single world system evolving for the past 5,ooo years out of an original Near Eastern/Central Asian core with simultaneouscyclical phases of expansion and contraction. Frank,this conclusionfollows For fromhis minimalistdefinition to what constitutesa as "world system." He sees any empiricalevidence of the cross-cultural transfer exchange of surplus between or polities, even if not direct,as a sufficient indicatorof an overarching systemicrelationship.Thus, if polityA engagesin tradewith polityB and polityB, in turn, participatesin exchangewith polityC, thenpolitiesA and C, thoughnever in direct contact, are part of a single interaction systemprofoundly all affecting the polities involved.In my opinion,this formulation takes us back in some respects to the now-discredited diffusionism that was prevalentin archaeologicalcircles in the late point that what affectsthe historical developmentof polities A and C is not theirparticipation a vaguely in defined, ever-expanding "system"but rather theirdirect relationshipwith polity B. For instance, according to Frank'sformulation, the second quarterofthe 3d milin
i gth and early 2oth centuries. Moreover, it misses the
GUILLERMO ALGAZE

"world developing system" (Chernykh I992:307-8).

[in Northern Europe]relate to changesin CentralEurope and the Mediterranean? Were theysomehow connected?This is, in the last instance,dependent on our chronologies, where I do not feel able to decide (at least not at the presentmoment)if thereis a significant time gap or not between these regional changes. In any case, No single factormay account forthe observedstructuralchanges,althoughsome factors, such as climatic change,may reveal striking patternsof parallelism with changes in settlementstructure.... Climate thus represented both potentialand constraints subsistence,but social and economic to forcesremain the primemoverswhen the environment is exploitednot only close to, but oftenbematic fluctuations the may trigger collapse of an unstable economy. [That is] one of the lessons we may learn fromBronze Age sequences.
yond its carrying capacity.... In such situations cli-

related world system? . . . But how did these changes

Were all these regionaltrendsand dramatichistorical events somehow interlinked? Were Europe,Asia and the Mediterranean interdependent so that major changesin one regionwould lead to predictable changesin the otherregions,forming kind of intera

It is a lesson that seems particularly pertinentto our own times in the year of the EarthSummit.

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lennium B.C. the city-statesof Early Dynastic Sumer, mechanisms-are not independent. Therefore prefer I to the kaleidoscope of contemporaneous city-statesof consider his theorya representation system or model and Harappan cen- rather Old Syria-Palestine, KingdomEgypt, than an empiricallaw. A model does not exist in partof a anyempiricalsense,but thereis some heuristic tersalong the Indus Riverwould have formed relationworld system.Yet, thoughindividu- ship (i.e., analogy)between it and the modeled world. single overarching nor anthropoally some of these polities participatedin profoundly Frankuses neithermodern references contacts, both commercial and politi- logical researchin his discussion of the "ancient econdisequilibratory Appadurai i982, I986, cal, therewas no sustained interactionamong them as omy"debate(see,e.g.,Gregory a group,and any attemptto link the economic fortunes Miller I987, McCracken I988, Humphreyand Hughof Old KingdomEgyptand Harappan cities in the Indus Jonesi992), and I thinkthat to speak of "accumulation I when all we Valley strainscredulity. would suggestthata systemic of capital" in this contextis inappropriate connectioncan be postulatedonlywhereit can be dem- have is some evidence of prestigeitems. We can, howprocesses in termsof modern onstratedthat direct and regularcontacts existed and ever,considerformation transformed. economics, despite the qualitative differences between the societiesengagedin themwere thereby the capitalist consumption mechanisms and precapitalist A more appropriate metaphorforconceptualizing developmentof ancient societies, I believe, is Kohl's ones. This allows us some "familiarity" with past eco(i987a) suggestionof multipleand partiallyoverlapping nomic processes without equating them with modern world systems,each composed, in turn,of individual ones. Thus the cycles detectedby Frankcannot be concore groups exploitingcommunitieswithin their own fused with Kondratieff cycles. They may be related to culturallyand geographicallydefinedhinterlandsand Braudel's (i966) "cycles de longue et courte duree," with immediatelycontiguoussystems. which are more dependenton geographicalinteraction each interacting One reason thatFrank'sall-encompassing worldsystem than on laws of the market.At the same time,the curis in antiquity implausibleis his failureto considerthat renteconomic crisis is more a Kondratieff cycle than a ancient transportationtechnologies imposed restric- collapse of the world system (we are living in an A tions on the abilityof ancient core societies to project phase, accordingto the size ofthe worldsystemand the powerover long distancesin a timelyand cost-efficient volume of circulation). confashion.This means that regularinstitutionalized Exceptforthe absence of"capitalistcapital accumulacultureswould necessarilyhave tion," however,Frank's model is perfectly tacts betweendifferent acceptable. in extentand thatpremodern Geographical-interaction interdependency and links are been restricted geographic world systemswould inevitablyhave been less well in- the major causes of the ups and downs of precapitalist and more fragilethan modernexamples. This economies because they directlyaffectthe circulation tegrated and earlyhistoricworld and consumptionof prestigeitems. Social relationsare partlyexplainswhy prehistoric any systemscommonlycollapsed or declined withina rela- definedin terms of prestigeitems, and therefore tively short span of time, oftenwell beforethe perni- change in their value has importantsecondaryeffects cious realities of long-term unequal exchange asserted on social relationships(especially dominationand hevariables in the dynamicsof gemony).Other important themselvesin affected peripheries (Algaze I993). societies are relatedto the structure the of In short, Frankpresentsa persuasivecase forthe heu- precapitalist model forthe study world system-that is, not only its geographical extent ristic value of the world-systems of ancient civilizations. However, his model must be (the number of linked communities) but also the inmodifiedto accommodate the fact, already noted by tensityof interdependency among them.Assessmentof Kohl (i989), that ancient world systemswere qualita- this latter by archaeological methods is not easy (see Because Frank'spaperlacks any discusfromtheirputativemoderncounterpart. Francfort i992). tivelydifferent sion of these measures, he cannot compare cycles for their differential potential for introducingqualitative J. A. BARCELO into transformations the system.Some A phases may be Dpt. Historia de les Societats Precapitalistesi more similar to some B phases than to otherA phases. AntropologiaSocial, Facultat de Lletres,EdificiB, It makes no sense to talk about expansion and contracUniversitat Autonoma de Barcelona, 08I93 Bellaterra, tion in absolute terms. Spain. 4 III 93 of Althoughthe reconstruction cycles is acceptablein general terms,I have some concerns about the period I verymuch like this global and dynamicdescription of between i200 and 550 B.C. First,Frank seems to give socioeconomic evolution. I thinkthat Frankis rightin too much importanceto migrations;they seem to me seeing geographical interaction and interdependency poor evidence for the explanation of social processes. there is no archaeological evidence of a amongvariousregionsofthe worldas amongthe factors Furthermore, responsiblefor socioeconomic dynamics.I tend to see Dorian invasion in Greece (althoughthereis a context cycles as successive stages of a single (verycomplex) of "collapse" in some centers outside Attica and Eusystem. The goal of analysis will be the detection of boea), and it is a seriousmistaketo considerthe Phoenidue to geographical-interaction interde- cians "foreigners." or Phoenicians were presentin Syriain differences pendency variables,but thesevariables-being, as Frank theearlyBronzeAge or even earlier;theyare the "people of pointsout, the effect a combinationofsocioeconomic of Canaan." Again, as for the A phase iooo-800 B.C.

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and the B phase 800-500 B.C., Greek and Phoenician expansion begin in the 8th centuryB.C. (Aubet I992, Ridway I992); therefore 800-500 B.C. must be considered an A phase, because the world systemis in expansion (Italy,North Africa,and the Iberian Peninsula are being integratedinto the system as new peripheries). Economiclifein the east is not,however,reallybrilliant at thistime (Greekmigrations the west pointto some to crisisin available resources).Again,the quantityof importedmaterialin Cyprus,Euboea, and Tyre duringthe previousphase (iooo-800 B.C.) iS so limitedthatthiscan be hardly consideredan expansionphase. It is, however, somewhat greaterthan in the period I200-IOOO B.C., this might be describedas a B + phase. and therefore This is an example of the necessityformeasures of intensity. This is a very stimulatingpaper. I agree with Frank on the global natureand long durationof the worldsystem in which we live and work. As a historian,I am convinced that presentsocial phenomena are a consequence of past dynamics. However, the global system has experiencedveryimportant qualitative and quantitative modifications that can be explained in termsof structureand operation. Whereas these world-system changes do not preventus fromcomparingthe present withthe past,theydo demanda different math(perhaps ematical?)approach.
CHRISTOPHER CHASE-DUNN

and Dunn,Clewett, Sundahli992),

trade networks (which he calls "oikumenes") for the expandingnetwork that Frank now calls the central world system. A point which is never made clear in Frank'sdiscussion but is centralin Wilkinson's is that networksare typicallysmaller than political/military tradenetworks.AlthoughMesopotamia and Egypthad been partof the same tradenetworksince at least 2500 B.C. (and perhaps much earlier),they were not linked into the same political/military interactionnet until I500 B.C. Attentionto the spatial dimensionsof different kinds of networksmighthelp Frankwith the problem ofunevennesshe encountersin his periodization of the centralsysteminto growthand stagnationphases. I am an advocate of a different subschool-the comparative-world-systemists (Chase-Dunn and Hall i99i). We acknowledge that there may have been important continuitieswithin the central system (which became and we also see similarities the global system), between different state-basedworld systems such as those that in emerged Mesoamerica and Peru.But we are interested as in systemicdifferences well as similarities.We contendthateven stateless,classless intersocietal networks can fruitfully analyzed as world systems(e.g.,Chasebe in different systemically important ways. In thiswe fol-

thesewere though Wealso

Departmentof Sociology,Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore,Md. 2I2I8, U.S.A. I9 vI 93 Frank'sstimulating essay challengeshistorians, philologists,and archaeologists look again at theregionsthey to study.Frankhas always been a masterat paintingwith broad strokes,and his latest canvas is yet anotherbrilliant portrait social realitythat will have the critics of on buzzingforyears.As a fellow trespasser the territories of otherdisciplinesI am sympathetic with Frank's to vulnerability those whose academic lives have been spentfocusingon the details of a single locale or time period.My commentwill focus not on the particularities but on the analyticaspects of his work. Among the scholarsnow applyingthe world-systems perspectiveto periods before the i6th centuryA.D., Frankis a memberof the "continuationist"school (for thecontinuities theysee betweenthe modernworldsystem and the earlierregionalworld systemthatemerged out of West Asia in the 4th millennium B.C. Though Frankand his colleague, BarryGills, began by asserting that there had been a single world system for 5,ooo years,Franknow admits that "thereprobably were several such 'systems' in the Bronze Age and later times." He is here focusingon one of these, which, combining his terminology with that of David Wilkinson,he calls the "centralworld system." Wilkinson(i992b) has mapped the spatial boundaries of both political/militaryinteraction networks and

a reviewsee Chase-DunnI992).

These scholars stress

contendthat the centralsystemhas undergoneimporof tant transformations its systemic logic of development. We agree that markets and capitalism have existed formillennia,but we contend that theybegan to play a dominantrole in the developmentallogic of the core regionof the centralsystemonly with the rise of European hegemony.We consider the distinctionbetweencapital accumulationand capitalistaccumulation a useful one forunderstanding differences the between the modernworld systemand the centralsystembefore the i6th century A.D. The alternationof hegemonyand hegemonicrivalry in Frank's scheme underwenta fundamentaltransformationwhen core statesbecame capitaliststates.It was then that the rise and fall of hegemonic core powers replaced the rise and fall of corewide empires.This is the sense in which Wallerstein's distinctionbetween and "world-economies"continues to "world-empires" be valuable. It is not clear whetherFrank's long phases of expansion and contraction phases ofhegemony, in Modare as elski and Thompson's (I988) "long leadership cycle" scheme,or phases of economic growthand contraction or both. A recent study of urban growthand city-size distributions (Chase-Dunn and Willard I993) indicates that growthand the concentration power do not alof ways occur simultaneouslyand findsonly mixed supportforFrank'speriodization.We do, however,findan interesting simultaneityof these two macrostructural variables when we compare the Mediterranean-West Asian political/military network and the Far Eastern of system.Boththe pattern urbangrowth and a measure ofthe steepnessof the city-sizehierarchies were closely correlated between 430 B.C. and A.D. I500. These pat-

lowthework Friedman Rowlands of and (I977).

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into a single A/B episode chronologicalpieces together and even findsvirtuein local A phases withina worldis systemB phase. Anotherdifficulty logical circularity: a the test foridentifying world system is the same as the analysis of its contents. Frank admits that factors such as global climate change may producesimilarsynBut until he expochronismsof regionaldevelopments. ses the mechanisms that endorse the world-system he he identification, is assumingthe analysisbefore undertakesit. of Even the identification A/Bphases remainscontenEDENS CHRISTOPHER economic,and tious. Frankuses as indices demographic, Peabody Museum ofArchaeology,Harvard politicaltrends.These indices are a mixed bag. Mesopoii University, DivinityAve., Cambridge,Mass. tamia illustratesthe problems.Settlementsurveysindi02I38, U.S.A. II III 93 cate peak urbanismearlyin the 3d millenniumand deoverthe nexttwo millennia (Adams I98I). Frank's study traces the first3,000 years of a single urbanization ancestralto themodernworld.Cor- During this time, the economic and political landscape worldsystemthatis rectionof the errorsor misconstrualsof archaeological fluctuatedbetween integration(Akkadian,Ur III, Old or historical detail is not very interesting-these will Babylonian, Kassite periods) and disintegrationinto Isinpolities (EarlyDynastic,post-Akkadian, sortthemselvesout with time. The more fundamental competing and a historicalreality. Larsa periods). Levels of political intensification issue is whetherFrankis describing of Frankenvisionsa hierarchicalstructure capital ac- controlof economic productionand circulationdid not way. in to cumulation that provided the central connection be- correspond politicalfluctuations any clear-cut surplus fromthe The bureaucraticmachineryof the Ur III state directly shifting tween center and periphery, by latterto the former largelymarketforcesand only oversawmanyaspects ofthe regionaleconomy;theIsinsecondarilyby "political" ones. Althoughmaintaining Larsa and Old Babylonianstates encouragedprivateenland and herdsto and leased crownagricultural over at least the past s,ooo years, terprise a continuousidentity firms;the Early Dynastic III economy the world systemhas experiencedmodest expansions/ entrepreneurial contractionsin extent and cycles of greaterand lesser involved a variable mix of palace, temple, and lineage not The prosperity. ambiguitieshereare enormous, least production.The permutationsof political economy all Frank's assertionthat the ancient world was permittedthe continued flow of foreigncommodities. regarding and Indeed, the competing Early Dynastic III city-states similarto the "modernworld-system" qualitatively may be analyzedin similarlanguage.Insteadofreengag- seem to have enjoyeda largervolume of tradethan the the volume of ing this perennialdebate, the followingcommentsad- subsequentAkkadian empire; similarly, duringthe Isin-Larsaperiodthanduring tradewas larger of method. dressquestions Not all regionsin contact with each othershould be the previous Ur III period and declined again with the of consideredas belongingto a single world system. For Old Babylonianperiod.The inversecorrelations trade example, the presence of silk in burials at Sapalli-depe and regional political integrationperhaps arose from demands for exotic materials during Uzbekistan [AskarovI973]) impliesa probable tributesatisfying (southern deand fromconflictstimulating connectionwith China at the beginningof the 2d mil- periodsof integration displaysof elite lennium B.C., the same period in which cloves from mand forexotic wealth in legitimizing SoutheastAsia appeared at Terqa (Syria[Buccellatiand status. polibetween settlement pattern, The incongruences Kelley-Buccellatii9831). Central and West Asia in turn enjoyedlinks with the Eurasian steppes (e.g.,Chernykh tics,and economyimplythatany singlemeasureis inadto I992), South Asia (e.g.,Hiebertand Lamberg-Karlovksy equate to definean A/B cycle. Frank'sreference the "tests" based on Chandler's city census and to the the eastern Mediterranean(e.g., Millard I977), i992), vacuous. Similarly, is ratesofwarfare therefore the and,indirectly, restofEurope.But the archaeological changing or to reference a singleworldsys- regionalpolitical integration empiredoes not guaranwarrants evidencehardly temthatencompassedall ofEurasia. Iftheworld-system tee greatercapital accumulation, and volume of trade concept is to have any point, the analysis must reveal and the wealth that trademightgeneratedo not necesto relations(center-periphery,sarilycorrespond degreeof urbanism,political strucmechanismsofinterregional of uneven accumulation, unequal economic/political ture,or militarism.Indeed,any formaldefinition the power, dependency)that are distinguishablefromthe A/B dichotomyis bound to fail because of the extreme terms. of and mi- heterogeneity the defining more traditionalones such as trade,diffusion, by In the end, Frank'smodel overreaches insistingon gration. of the the modernity the ancient world,by failingto eluciRecognizingthis,Frankattemptsto demonstrate and by connectionsbetweenregions, realityof a single world systemby pointingto interre- date the structural for for One diffi- settling overlyeclectic criteria relevantevidence. gionallysynchronousdevelopmentalcycles. avesignificant Frank Even so, Frankdoes point to potentially cultywith this is the precisionof synchronisms. at several points indulges in special pleading to fitthe nues of analysis; ifhis basic goal is to challengearchaeand decline do not resolveintoneat 250ternsofgrowth year rises and falls, but the strikingsimultaneitiesof changesat the two ends of the Eurasian continentindicate that somethingwas going on. It is also interesting this kind of simultanethatIndia does not demonstrate about the impority.I am partial to Frank's theorizing tance of Central Asia, but anotherpossibility,climate conclusions any firm studybefore change,needs further can be reached.

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of ologists and ancient historiansto rethinktheirpercep- unclear treatment A and B phases. Frank appears to tions of the past, then perhapshe is successful. assume thatsuch phases oughtto be moreor less homogeneous, that is, that everyactor in the systemshould JONATHAN followthe same rhythms. emphasizes thisin his notHe FRIEDMAN Departmentof Social Anthropology, ing thatSoutheastand East Asia todayare somehow out University of Lund, P.O. Box II4, S-22IOOLund, Sweden. I4 IV 93 of phase with the dominantB-phase tendency.He also suggeststhat the B-phase contractionis the source of Havingseen and discussed variousversionsofthe 5,ooo- shifting hegemonyin the system.We have argued,on model proposedby Frank,I am pleased to the contrary, it is decentralization the tendency that and year-system find in a journalwhereit can be discussedby archaeol- toward shifting it hegemonythat is the cause of decline ogists and ancient historians.While I agree with the and crisesof accumulationin general.Even ifthe entire most general argumentof the article-that there is a systemis in a contraction phase, thisdoes not determine of continuous global system linking much of the Old the distribution accumulativeadvantages;some areas World from the 3d and perhaps the 4th millennium mayalways be expandingat the expense ofothers.MauB.c.-and while it is surelyinteresting investigate to studies of the Mediterranean the rice Lombard'simportant possibilityof the existence of A and B phases, it ought and the Middle East argued that Rome and Asia were to have been made explicitto what such categories linked in inverse cyclical relationswhich refer. systemically Expansionand contraction not sufficient are repetitiveshifsin hegemsummaries, accounted forthe long-term and a more processual model, not unlike those found ony between the two areas (LombardI975). elsewherein Frank's work,should have been provided. The assumptionthat decentralization and/orthe fall It is because the model is not made specificenoughthat of empireis a symptomof a B phase does not hold up The veryformation the "first"citythe indicatorscan be so vague. City size, population under scrutiny. of size, and evidence of economic growth(difficult indeed states of EarlyDynastic Mesopotamia is the productof to discern in this discussion) as they appear in a few a demographic implosion relatedto increasingcompetisecondaryworks are not really adequate to such a dis- tion over (decentralizationof) control over land and cussion.Even if,forexample,the city-size category were trade.Rathje argued quite a few years ago that the deempirically reliable (and Frankis clear regarding un- cline of the Classic Maya was not an economic decline the of reliability the data), we ought to have an argument but a transitionto a more decentralized commercial about the relationbetweeneconomic expansionand the expansion.Similarly, transition the from Hallstattto La formation centralcities and urban ranking.Such an Tene "cultures" in Europe is not a fragmentary of decline argument mightaccount forphenomenasuch as Mexico but mightbe a decentralized expansionoftradeand proCity,certainly not the centerof the world system,and duction.The EasternChou and Warring Statesperiodin the Indias and Chinas of the modernworld. I have ar- China is usually associated not withB-phasedeclinebut gued on several occasions that expansion in the center with economic growth. is most oftenand systemically In sum, I thinkthat the descriptionof the world syslinkedto political decentralizationratherthan the reverseand that centralized temin termsofparallel cycles ofexpansionand contracempireswere oftena symptomof slowdown or even de- tion is fartoo general,homogeneous,and vague to encline. These processes appear to contradict the associa- able us to understandthe nature of the connections tions establishedhere forA and B phases. assumed to exist and to definethe world system.More The foundation Frank'sargument the antiquity could certainlybe coaxed out of the data if the model of for ofa unifiedworld systemin the Old Worldis the appar- were made more specific. ent evidencefora worldmarketand a worldnetworkof Frank makes an interesting suggestionwith respect exchanges. We have argued in similar terms (Ekholm to the relation between large-scalepolitical-economic I979, Ekholm and Friedman I979), but I would like to change and cultural change. Jasper's "axial age" is here suggesta certainrefinement here. It is not so much a seen as a systemwideresponseto cyclical decline. This marketas the existenceof a formof capital age,from commodity is 800-200 B.C. for Jaspers, reducedto 800-5 50 accumulation-the accumulation of abstractwealthby Frank to fit his B phase. It is characterizedby the thatis the foundation thatwe stipulated.This accumu- emergenceof universal religionsand philosophies and lation mightoccur in a multiplicity forms, of fromdif- the crucial concept of transcendence.In fact it is also ferentconstellations of markets to more centralized characterized the emergenceof science, theater, by and state patterns.Frank is ratherexcessive in classifying a strongtendencyto secularization and individualizaWeber with the primitivists and substantivists. While tion in the Mediterranean and largepartsof the Middle Weber,to be sure,arguedthatcapitalismneveremerged East, a process that mightbe likened to the emergence as dominantin the ancient world,his question was re- of a kind of modernity (Friedman I99I, I992). Here, lated to the confrontation different of kindsofstrategies, while the globality,however uneven, of this change is includingthe accumulation of abstractwealth. This is well taken,its internalproperties cannot be accounted verydifferent from Polanyiand Finleyargument the that forby the economic cycle itself(this would requireus capitalisteconomic goals and therefore processessimply to explainwhyit did not occurpreviously). specifying By did not exist in the ancient world. the nature and degree of commercializationand the One of the main problemsarises with respectto the transformation political structures of and conditionsof

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of more than a century archaeosocial existence,we mightbe able to account forwhat proved).Unfortunately, chronolotransformation logical researchprimarily devoted to refining is more like a global trendor structural gies has givenus time intervalsthat,at best,match the of (reversible, course) than a global cycle. but lengthofthose cycles (see, e.g.,the variousregionalsurThese commentsare meant to urge clarification, theyare made on the assumptionofgeneralenthusiasm veys in Ehrich i992), and thereis no realisticprospect to foran approachthat I hope will make increasingsense of a breakthrough greaterprecision.Constructsthat we out of our species's historyon this planet before are are artifactsof the evidence cannot be useful for the criticalexaminationof that same evidence. replacedin a yet longerglobal cycle. No one doubts that some areas of Frank's Greater spherewere in fact engagedin Near East co-prosperity commerce such that their fortuneswere somehow, GILMAN ANTONIO What is in question is the CaliforniaState somewhat,interconnected. DepartmentofAnthropology, extentof that web and the degreeto which geographic Calif. 91330, U.S.A. 9 III 93 Northridge, University, the fortunesof its component parts varied cyclically. two concreteclaims: that,as early This essay's special pleading does nothingto advance Frankputs forward as the late 4th or early 3d millennium B.C., the Near discussion of the empiricalaspects of these issues. Frank'sdiscussion of the theoreticalside of these isEast and adjacent areas of Europe and Asia formedan economic unit, one which expanded to sues also leaves much to be desired.He does not discuss interconnected view encompass most of Eurasia over the following 3,000 but merelydismisses a "primitivist-substantivist" years,and thatthisBronzeAge worldsystemunderwent of ancient political economies. But what of the primialternative (e.g., D'Altroy and Earle and decline tivist-formalist cyclical, synchronicpatternsof prosperity These claims mightbe I985, Brumfieland Earle I987) to Frank's modernistand B phases, respectively). (A This view would hold that marketsexisted accepted on one or both of two grounds:because they formalism? are supportedconvincinglyby the empirical evidence but were limited in scope and that elite groups maxwas more but by afforded the historical and archaeological records imized theireconomic self-interest tribute thantradeas a sourceoftheircapital accumuand/orbecause theymake sense (thatis to say,theyare important supportedby a coherentand convincingtheoryof the lation. An approach along these lines would go a long processes governingarchaic societies). Frank's essay way toward explaining the many anomalies Frank is constrainedto treatas exceptions.If tributeis the key failsto establisheitherof these groundspersuasively. Archaeologistshave various methods,none of them to the political economy, then one polity's difficulty Frankis aware ofthis another'sopportunity. the for beyondcontroversy, determining extentof trade constitutes betweensocieties,assessingchangesin theirprosperity, possibility(as in his mention of "musical chairs") but for those events. does not seem to recognize that such countercyclical and establishingdating frameworks his absolves himselfof the need phenomenacontradict generalizedswingsofprosperFrank,ratherdisarmingly, to examine such evidentiarymattersdirectly:he is a ity and decline. Widespreaddeclines and revivals cerat sociologist,contentto accept the conclusionsof experts tainlyoccurredat times (the eastern Mediterranean directlyengaged in the study of the record. Unfortu- the end of the 2d millennium is a good example that nately,when the expertsdisagreeabout details (as they Frankmakes much of),but theyare tied to historically must,givenwhat theyhave to workwith),he feelsfree specificcircumstancesand should not be elevated into to pick theversionhe likes best (insteadofrealizingthat a generalpattern. Indeed, the greatestdefectof Frank's essay is that it he must get to the bottom of the issue); when the expertshedge theirconclusions,he feels freeto disregard givesthe readerno reason to suppose thatsuch a general should exist. In his conclusions he turnsbriefly to theircaveats; when theyare unsympathetic theprem- pattern or to the demographic climaticcauses thatmightunderapproach (e.g., Harding i984), ises of the world-system Such selectivecullingofsec- lie his A and B phases. He providesno evidenceforthem he ignoresthemaltogether. the in- (apartfromthe usual selective quotation of secondary ondarysources merelypropagateserrorthrough sources), and he seems to be aware that such factors tertwined hypotheses. thata comadequate explanations, Speculative theorybuildingmightstill be usefulif it would not constitute reexaminationof the archaeologi- mon "warming can affectagriculturalpossibilities in could lead to fruitful cal record.Franknotes that archaeologyprovidesdiffi- arid and humid. . . areas in exactlyoppositeways," but does not re- he has no alternativeto suggest.Empirical generalizacult evidence, but conceding difficulties is move them. He is so insensitive to the archaeological tion, to the extent that it ignoresvariability, a poor for cannotpossibly foundation theory. thathis hypotheses record'sconstraints be tied to evidence. His 2oo-year A and B cycles, for example,would be susceptibleto evaluationonlyon the condition that the general chronologyof events could CHRIS GOSDEN If be specifiedmore tightly. one could plot changes in DepartmentofArchaeology,La Trobe University, densitiesor tradevol- Bundoora, Victoria3083, Australia. 8 III 93 citysizes or regionaldemographic umes at, say, 5o-yearintervalsin a series of adjacent regions,Frank's proposed cycles would be imaginative The initial ideas concerningworld systems,developed were designed Amin, and Frankhimself, and useful heuristicconstructs(even if they were dis- byWallerstein,

FRANK

BronzeAge WorldSystem Cycles | 4II

to elucidate a specificproblem:the creationof the modern world wherebyEurope was enrichedand much of the southernhemispheresystematically impoverished. The problemwas well definedand had a directbearing on contemporary the issues; furthermore, processes of colonialism and capitalism,such as those of capital accumulation,could be understoodthrough existingtheoreticalframeworks to (see the introduction Wallerstein problempromptedthe model. Now thereis a dangerof the model's helpingto shape historyin its own image. Frank'sarticleis based on the assumptionthatifa s,oooworld systemcan be seen to exist this in itself year-old will be of interest.I need more convincing that the is framework a useful one. world-systems I do not, however,want to throwout the baby with the bath water.On an empiricallevel Frank(alongwith has identified important an others) problem:manyareas of Eurasia have been linked throughthe movementof materialsand people over long spans of time,and these links may have had an important impact on local developments.Althoughthe existenceof interconnections is clear,theirnatureis not. Frankarguesforsome formof capital accumulation from the Bronze Age onwards, with a systemof "interpenetrating accumulation" linkingvariouscoresand hinterlands. goes farther sugHe to gest a directhistorical connectionbetween the Bronze and Iron Age world systems,on the one hand, and the modernworld system,on the other. Here it seems that he is tacklingan old problemin a new guise: the rise of civilisationitself.There is an implicit argumentthat the Bronze Age, with the rise of cities, elites, and regularlong-distancetrade, set up a structure thatwas thenunique in worldhistory and has stayedwith us ever since. However,archaeologicalevidence demonstrates widespreadconnectionsand movements of material fromthe late Palaeolithic onwards. An explicit argumentis needed as to why the Bronze Age world system formed the basis for the modern world. As far as this argumentis advanced in Frank's article,it seems to revolvearound the notion of the accumulation of value and/orsurplus. It is implied that forms of accumulation were institutionalisedin the BronzeAge in a new way. The aim thus seems to be to providea quantitativeand economic definition the for term "civilisation." However, there is also a series of confusions,the most crucial of which stems fromthe use of the terms"surplus" and "value." To simplifycrudely,it is possible to say that since Marx people have used "value" as a means oflookingat themannerin which changesin quantity, from deriving production, exchange, and distribution, turn into changes in quality,in termsof social structures, styles of life,and the uses to which materialthingsare put in the social process.The structure the accumulationof of value, its spatial distribution, the periodicities its and of use can all be quantifiedand linked to theirsocial and political consequences (see Harvey I989). However, Frankpresentsno argument to the transformation as of quantityto quality, and we are leftwith the question whetherquantitativechanges in the economy over the
I974).

In the case of the "modern the world-system,"

past s,ooo yearsall had the same social effects what and the nature of these effects mightbe. Not only are the theoretical bases ofthe approachunclearbut it is uncertain whether the methods of measuring quantitative changescan everbe usefullyapplied. Earlyin the article Frank mentions Kondratievand the cycles associated with his name, which immediately brings to mind graphs of the movement of prices (see, e.g., Braudel I984: fig. 9). However, the main quantitativedata advanced, such as they are, concernthe numberand size of cities,which are farfrombeing a straightforward index of the health of the economic system.The nature of accumulationis seen to be centralto changeswithin the system,but no measures of accumulation are ofIn fered. short,I feel thatboth the theory employedand the methodsit necessitates are based too much on the present, where the natureof the economic process and its quantitativechanges are comparatively well known and some ofthe links betweenquantitativeand qualitative change can be specified. Should we say that historyat this scale from the Bronze Age onwards should not be written? There is a real problemto be tackled here; froman early period, which may or may not startin the BronzeAge, a series ofinterconnections Eurasia was at least as important in as local developments. The use ofworld-systems theory may lead us onto the wrongtrack,producing arguments abouthow similarBronzeAge societieswereto thepresent and tempting to use methodologieswhich work us well forthe past fewhundredyearsbut cannotworkfor periodsfivemillennia ago, with theirmyriaduncertainties of datingand quantitativeanalysis.

A. F. HARDING

DepartmentofArchaeology,University Durham, of DHI 3NU, U.K. I5 III 93 Durham,

Frankrightly suggeststhata conventionalarchaeologist would have considerablequalms about charting "Bronze Age world-system cycles." He lists manyofthe difficulties involved-uncertainties of dating, ambiguity of both archivaland site evidence,uneven coverageof the different partsof the BronzeAge "world"-and to some conpeople theywill seem insuperable.We are therefore in siderably his debtforgivingus this articleand simulThere is us taneouslyproviding much foodforthought. no doubt that it will serve as a landmarkand that his "tentative findingsand propositions" will be extensivelyexamined and, perhaps,revised. A numberof difficulties face the European prehistoto rian in attempting assess Frank'sideas, not least the fact that he has very little to say about Europe itself. several of the key items that he quotes Unfortunately, are unpublished.For me most difficult, however,is the factthat it is hard to know whetherthe statementshe makes are trueor false; thereis littlein the archaeological recordon which to base a judgement,and since he reliesmainlyon the archaeologicalstatements worldof

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Volume 34, Number 4, August-October 1993 disqualification "the profession"nor the timidity by of specialistsbut whetherdata are used accuratelyand in context.Dependence on secondarysources leads Frank to repeaterrors and misconstrueevidence.For example, indexingthe rise, collapse, and incorporation various of societies into a worldsystemaccordingto citycensuses or quasi-historical accounts of warfareis simplistic. Taking such extrapolationsuncriticallyoverlooks the complexity inherent in archaeological and historical analyses. Nor is it clear why changes in urbanism or conflict the local or regionallevels necessarilysignal at the developmentof intersocietalstructures. The majortheoretical problemwithFrank'sargument is thatit equates correlation with causation. Frankis at pains to correlatelocal sequences of rise and collapse. Some of these correlations likely represent panregional phenomena;others, however,are epiphenomenaor simply illusory. Establishing and dating local cycles are complex archaeologicalproblems,demonstrating intercausal relationshipseven more so. For expenetrating A ample, the panregionalphenomenaforming and B cyThe cles are subjectto conflicting interpretations. Uruk in settlements Iran, Syria,and Anatolia are regarded as colonies by Algaze (I989) but as refugees fleeingsouthern Mesopotamia by Johnson (I988-89). Contra Ratnagarand Shaikh,Shaffer Harappan (I982) doubtswhether civilizationwas substantively affected contactswith by Mesopotamia and the Gulfand whetherHarappa should even be regardedas a "state." Discussions of collapse elementsofsocietiespersisted also show how important B through phases; curiously,Frank's approachincludes neither these discussionsnor the fundamental contributionsofBraudel(BraudelI980; Lamberg-Karlovsky I985,
I986;

enthusiasts,paying little attention to systems-theory ahead. opinions,we are not reallymuch farther contrary is In some ways thisapplicationofgrandtheory rather like the conceptof the Grand UnifiedTheoryforphysiit formulated, will providea cists: if it can be correctly phenomall framework understanding the remaining for ena ofthe academic universethatwe inhabit.It is likely, less tidythan in my view, thatthe truthis considerably this,and in the contextof an archaeologicalanalysis of theBronzeAge one would need to be convincedthatthe cyclical movementsreallytook place on a global scale. the for Frank'scriterion identifying existenceofa world systemis that "no part of the systemwould be as it is or was if otherpartswere not as theyare or were," and he lists trade connections,political relations,and the in of sharing cycles as "criteriaofparticipation the same worldsystem."In thepartofthe BronzeAge thatI know best, the "barbarian"world of Europe and its relations it with the Mediterranean, is common knowledgethat matters,and the controall of these are controversial not dispelled simplyby quotingfrom versyis certainly openlypartisanin approach. Kristiansen's writings, How can one answer such questions? Are the data adequate? This will of course dependon time and place, answers. and different observerswill arriveat different It is certainlypossible to believe, as Frank evidently does, that the evidence fromthe Near East, Mesopotamia, and India is strongenough to supportthe idea of economic and political cycles in the Bronze Age. I am work on metallurgy less happyabout using Chernykh's to legitimisea vast "Eurasian worldsystem";the issues are complex and involved in the spread of metallurgy of the mechanisms involved in the transfer knowledge not necessarilybest describedin "global" terms.In the on case ofEurope,we are mainlydependent archaeologievidence of cal site evidence-desertions, destructions, and so on-and it is correspondtrade fromartefacts, that are both supinglyharderto createinterpretations to by ported adequate data and sufficient the explanatory purposeforwhich theywere created. Were therecycles at all? The idea of a cyclical relaat tionshipbetween Europe and the Mediterranean the by end of the Aegean Bronze Age was firstformulated that as Bouzek (i969: 86 fig. 3I) in the demonstration the number of settlementsin Attica declined around B.C. the number in central Europe rose dramatiI200 cally, and vice versa in the 8th centuryB.C. Bouzek's historiof interpretation this phenomenonis a straight on cal one, relying a combinationof climatic and demobut it is nonethelessa kind of ancestor graphicfactors, theoriesofcycleswhich thisartito themoreformalised cle presents.

and Cowgill I988; TainterI989; Willey Yoffee

kinds of "trade," unequal That there were different and progressive accumulationofpowerin development, cores duringantiquity is clear, but except for metals Frank does not explore what materials were being moved,when, by whom, and forwhat purpose.In contrastthe discussions of Edens (i992) on tradeand consumptionof utilitarianshell and grainin the Gulf and Mesopotamia,Kohl (I978) on chloritevessel production, exchange, and consumption linking Mesopotamia to and easternIranand Afghanistan, Joffe (n.d.)on Mediterraneancrop productionin the Levant and consumption in Egyptshow how tradein particular goods resultedin and the impact on theirvaluation and commodification societies and elites of theirproduction,exchange,and consumption. Without referenceto mechanisms and Frankis leftonly with pathwaysof material transfers, while explanationis homogenizedto "total correlations, accumulation." "Total accumulation" is an essentialist feature acting as a primemover if not a deus ex machH. JOFFE ina. It is eithera reifiednotion of societyor a partially ALEXANDER articulated of Harvard Semitic Museum, Cambridge,Mass. 02138, theory elite behaviorthatignoresthe conroles of historyand culturein social evolution. U.S.A. 22 III 93 tingent Sanderson(I99i) has shown that world-systems theory of thatexclusivelyemphatheory Frank's reconstruction presents a number of method- is a form evolutionary ological and theoreticalproblems. At issue is neither sizes exogenousfactors.Frank'suse of it ignoresthe in-

1991).

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BronzeAge WorldSystem Cycles I 4I3

of ternalfeatures local sequencesand acts as a latter-day form of diffusionism.His global perspective breaks down boundariesbetween units,but at its core thereis only a basic Marxian notion of a rulingclass. By taking local and regionalphenomenaofrise and collapse out of sacrifices contexthe deliberately explanationin contexand homogenizing tual termsin favorof a reductionist framework. Contingentfactors of local historyand culture affectedsocial evolution and the developmentof intersosuch as world empiresand world syscietal formations cultural competition between Assyria and Babylonia worlddevelconditioned local, regional, and,ultimately, opment. The pivotal roles of religion and ideology in the Inca and Aztec expansions have been discussed by and Demarest(I984). Helms (I988) has shown Conrad that "trade" is frequently initiated by and forreligiopolitical elites whose goal is not "total accumulation" but the accumulation of specifickinds ofpower.A concept of power comprisedof social, religious,economic, basis for and political aspects providesa more satisfying explainingancient tradeand the evolution of intersocietal interactionthan a purely materialist framework but littlesuggests cientworldas theydo in the modern, priorto that the world system was tightlyintegrated the ist millennium B.C. and the advent of panregional empires. World-systems concepts have been diluted and reformulated historiansand archaeologistsbut retain by an undeniable appeal. It could be arguedthat theirusefulnessis less interpretive thanheuristic. Frank'scontributionis thus a challengeto specialiststo look outward. It is healthy and necessaryfornonspecialists,particuperspeclarlythose with strongly developedtheoretical to degenerate tives,to contribute debatesthatfrequently into squabblingover minutiae. But Frank cannot leave the details and explanationsof local changesto the specialists or ignoreexistingdiscussions. His earlierwork has contributedconsiderable insight into the present. Withoutgreater attentionto the detail and character of the past, the structure and process of the ancient world and its connectionswith our own will not be revealed.
A. BERNARD KNAPP

cited in the acknowledgements(all of whom, by the Asia, not in the Mediway,workin westernor southern this aror terranean NorthAfrica)would have benefited ticle immenselyand made it requiredreadingforany As BronzeAge archaeologist. it stands,it makes a critiwhen but oftenmisleadingcontribution cal, innovative, it seeks to treatareas beyondancient westernAsia and the Indus, and I thinkit is wrongto tryto include the in Lapita phenomenonand Oceanic prehistory this particular argument(see e.g., Allen I984, Gosden et al. AlthoughFrank's paper purportsto treat everything from the Mediterranean to South Asia, the focus is throughout on Mesopotamia, central Asia, and the work). Indus,only occasionallyon Europe (Kristiansen's Even then,the discussion of the "ancient economy" debate overlooksYoffee's(I98I) key articleand most relevant studies on the Mediterranean(e.g., Earle I985, which playsa keyrole Knapp i985). The Mediterranean, of in any consideration a Bronze Age world system,rereferences the adto ceives verylimited coverage(brief and paperofSherratt Sherratt superb mittedly [i99ia; see now I993]). Frank's focus on westernand centralAsia (South Asia does to the exclusion of the Mediterranean notreallyfaremuch better;WheatleyI975, forexample, his resultsfrom relianceon Edens and is not considered) Kohl rather thanon anypast social or politico-economic reality.Withoutfullerconsiderationof the Mediterranean world,"the Bronze Age world system" is farless comprehensivethan it should be. Contra Edens and Kohl,forexample,the BronzeAge worldsystemextends notjust to the easternbut to the westernMediterranean (see Bietti Sestieri I988, Muhly, Maddin, and Stech see Mediterranean on the eastern I988, Knapp I990; Cherry I986, MuhlyI986, Manning I993, Knapp I993). withtheIronAge, Frankacknowledgesthe difficulties of the treatment which is verygeneralized,underreferenced,and misleadingcomparedwith thatoftheBronze Age. It would have been useful, certainly,to have a statementof the problemswith the Iron Age (following but otherwiseits incluthe "B phase, I200-I000 B.C."), In sion in this studyseems entirely inappropriate. fact, contains B.C." the section on the "B phase I200-I000 mixtureof "fact" and fiction(e.g., the an unfortunate Dorian "invasion" is mythological,and one must be skeptical of any invasion or migrationpostulated as a primarycause of cultural change, as Frank himself one points out). Furthermore, cannot just cite Jameset this al. (i99i) without pointingout how controversial studyis, even if it does highlightproblemsassociated with the close of the Bronze Age (see reviewsand reply
I989,

tems (Kohl i984).

The xenophobia Egypt of and the

and BellwoodI987, Bellwood Kuhni984).

in I982, Mann I986). Cyclesexisted thean(Runciman

School of History,Philosophy,and Politics,Macquarie University, Sydney,N.S.W. 2I09, Australia. I7 III 93

Frank'spaper has greatpotential,and his knowledgeof But world-systems theoryhas few counterparts. the attempt to interweaveelements of that theoryinto the vast area of "Afro-Euroasia" and the Mediterranean the throughout Bronze Age is veryweak at the seams, seriously overextendedin time and space, often selfindulgent,and replete with "factual" errors.The last complaint is minor and obviously beyond any single writer's but fullercollaborationwith an archaecontrol, ologist ratherthan reliance on comments fromthose

Other,more minorpoints of omission or commission include the following: (i) The issue of tin sources is an much more complex than Frankportrays (for overit view ofmaterialfrom Asia to England,see Muhly I985; on Taurus tin, see articlesby M. Hall and S. Steadman, A. Yener and M. Goodway, E. Pernicka et al., and L. Willies in the Journalof MediterraneanArchaeology
4[23 and 5[i]).
(2)

in Cambridge Journal and 2[I]). Archaeological I[2]

Woodandother materials were organic

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Volume 34, Number 4, August-October I993 becomes that of sand castles constructed top of one on anotheror a house of cards. How many levels can be built beforeeverything collapses in on itself? and Frank,of course, is aware of these difficulties is honest enough to spell most of them out at the beginthe ning.Nevertheless, remainsundeterred he from formidable task he has set forhimself:the delineationof cyclical A and B phases of expansion and contraction acrossan essentiallyever-expanding singleworldsystem (in the realm of believers,Frankis a staunch monotheist) that stretchback into the mists of the 3d ifnot the 4th millennium B.C. There are limits to an admirable of boldness of scholarship,and Frank's recognition the severe methodological and epistemological problems that he is forcedto confront does not excuse him or make more credible the storythat he tries to relate. I am sure thatothercommentators will criticizeFrankon one or more of these recognizeddifficulties, particularly those relatingto chronologicaluncertainties, and I do not want to appear as one more tiresome gainsayer. Again, it is salutaryfora nonspecialistto tryto reveal broad patternsof economic decline and resurgenceto more timid archaeologistsmiredin the complexitiesof theirdata. One scholar'sparochialism, however,may be another'sjustifiablecaution. Frankrecognizesthe difficulties but somehow fails to accept theirgravity. discuss two underevaluated Let me just briefly problems: First,what is not known archaeologicallyis frequentlymuch more impressivethan what has been discovered. Many areas or regions remain essentially archaeological terra incognita. The decline of settlement in southernTurkmenistanat the end of the 3d or of the beginning the 2d millenniumB.C. was interpreted as part of a broad patternof settlementabandonment easternIran ("prehistoric Turan") until Sothroughout viet researchersin the early '7os began to document east in Bactria massive Late Bronze settlementsfarther our unand Margiana.A similarsituationcharacterizes derstandingof settlementpatterns today in most of Iran (and here one should observethat our northeastern is for lack ofunderstanding not soon to be rectified obvious political reasons),particularly the Gurganplain on onto the Meshed-Misrian but extendingnortheastward Turkmenistan.Hundredsof preplain of southwestern historicsites, some exceptionallylarge, have been recordedforthese areas, but practicallynone have been or morethansuperficially investigated excavated.These before one begins gaps in the recordmust be appreciated ofto paint one's broadcanvas. Secondly,archaeologists ten use termssuch as "trade" in impreciseor contradictoryways. By no means does an archaeologicallydocumented movement of materials constituteevidence of market exchangeorthe economic activitiesmostconducive to Frank's cyclically expanding and contracting world system;such materials can move by a varietyof means which have different social and economic consequences. Wheneverpossible, one must tryto get a handle on the scale or quantity of materials being exchanged. Archaeologists notoriously inflate the of significance theirown discoveries,and the literature

also traded widely throughoutthe eastern Mediterraand discussion in Knapp nean (see detailed references I991). (3) The tradein silver,units of account,etc., was also common in the Aegean, especially in the Cyclades (e.g.,Stos-Gale and Macdonald I99i. (4) Any discussion in ofthe development and impactofmetallurgy western discussion Asia during BronzeAge must incorporate the of Cyprus (see Muhly I986, I989, i99i; Knapp I986, I988, I993). Frankhas ingeniouslyexaminedBronzeAge cycles of production,consumption,and exchange in a manner thatI fullycommendand with a scope thatwill be enviable to most archaeologistswho work in these regions. He is fullyaware of the shortcomings have belaboured I here and rightly states at the outset that simplyoutliningthe extentoftheBronzeAge worldsystemis enough. My criticismsstem fromthe fact that,with collaboration, this article could have been a major contribution to Bronze Age archaeologythroughout the Old World and fromthe belief that the role of the Mediterranean in the Bronze Age world systemhas been seriouslyunThe latteris the faultnot of Frankbut deremphasized. of the archaeologistshe has consulted. For example, whoever told Frank that Childe has been "discredited by the profession"is seriouslymisguided him/herself (cf. Sherratti989). It is now time forsomeone to take up the challenge of fillingthe gap leftby Frank,a role that the Sherrattshave already taken very seriously (i99ia, I993; Sherratt i992).
PHILIP L. KOHL

DepartmentofAnthropology, WellesleyCollege, Wellesley, Mass. 02I 81, U.S.A. I 5 III 93 Frankhas writtena bold, explicitlyprovocativearticle that is meant to stimulate prehistorians seek interto connectionsamong disparateculturesand to detectcyclical contractions and expansionsof economic activity overvast areas ofAfricaand Eurasia from beginnings the of the Bronze Age throughthe end of Classical Antiqof this function forcuity.Insofaras his essay performs ing archaeologiststo climb out of their trenchesand far search forbroaderpatternsof interactionstretching it beyondtheirlocal areas ofresearch, is to be applauded; insofaras it fostersthe illusion of a real, empirically Bronze Age world system orascertainableprehistoric the course of world history, must be reit chestrating ceived more critically. one level, the problemis one At ofreification: Frank'sworldsystemhas become real and not just a model that is useful when it clarifiesunderand expendablewhen it does not. His "reality" standing wags the tail of the evidence when, for example, he of writes that an earlier identification a B phase from I700 to I500/I400 B.C. "implies a previous A phase." At anotherlevel, Frank'smodel relies on the highlyselective utilization of largely secondaryif not tertiary sources that attempt to reconstruct broad patternsof mateinteraction from veryincompleteand problematic the rials,primarily archaeologicalrecord.The metaphor

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is replete with impressive-sounding phrases such as "massive movements" or "large-scale exchanges" which,when examinedcritically from or perhapsan excessively empiricistaccount, almost disappear. Resort to an "invisible trade" in perishablecommoditiesmay be justified,but it may also be invented.At the very least, it reflects limitationsof dealingwith archaeothe logical evidence. If one remains more of a skeptic than a believer,the question becomes: Is Frank'smodel useful?Despite my for admiration the boldness of the endeavor,I am afraid that my answer is largelynegative.With many significant reservations, which I need not reiterate here,I have arguedforthe utilityof a world-systems for perspective the Bronze Age. It all depends on the looseness of the model one employs and its scale. Frank's terminology and search forevanescent cycles imply a fargreater articulation of economic activityover vast areas than I believe characterized Bronze Age, at least in its bethe ginning phases. Much depends upon our understanding of the productionand exchange of metals, and Chernykh's work is critical,with real differences emerging possibly in the 2d millennium B.C. But here too I am much more impressedwith what needs to be done than with what we now know (e.g.,our understanding the of exchangeand productionof tin-bronzes). Frank'seffort, unfortunately, misleads us in seeing all rises and falls as systemically interconnected. Historyshould be written on a grandscale; culturesare open, not closed, syswith otherculturesand particitems,always interacting pating in shared historical processes larger than themselves.However, thereis no god in the formof a worldsystemthat directsall these processes.
KRISTIAN KRISTIANSEN

introduce B phase fromI 750 to I 600/ I 500 B.C., which a to according the most recentdatingsrepresents Mythe cenean shaftgraveperiod and the flourishing central of EuropeanBronze Age cultures.The next A phase, from to I200 B.C., is recognizable.The subsequent I600/I500 "Dark Age" afterI200 B.C. is of course the nearlyuniversal collapse in the Mediterranean and the Near East, but again it representsa flourishing period in central Europein termsofagrarian expansionand metal production.What we see here,then,is a more complexpicture in which centresand theirperipheries need not follow the same pulse. Collapse in the centremay be followed in byflourishing the former The same applies periphery. to some of the A and B phases of the Ist millennium B.C. Thus the B phase of 800-5 50 represented continued commercialexpansionand colonizationin theMediteranean, while there was decline in large areas in westcentralEurope.This phase should probably have its end date changedto 600 B.C. Also, the two phases 450-200 B.C. might be lumped togetheras representing one B phase of Celtic migrations centralEurope. in AlthoughEuropeanBronzeAge and IronAge researchers will recognize the shiftsidentifiedby Frank,they of may not in all cases follow the interpretation them as A or B in the European"hinterlands." Ups and downs depended upon structuralposition within the worldof systemhierarchy core-periphery relations.This sugresearchshould concentrate gests thatfurther upon understandingthe nature of these structuralrelations. Frank'swork has provideda valuable platform such for discussions.
C. C. LAMBERG-KARLOVSKY

Because of the enormous geographicand chronological scale of the analysis, I suspect that few archaeologists will feelcomfortable with Frank'snotionofa worldsysFrank has set out to "test" the existence of a single tem in the BronzeAge. In fact,however,Kohl (i989) has world systemoriginating the Bronze Age by demon- proposeda "world system" involvingCentralAsia, the in strating empiricallya common pulse of economic ups Iranian plateau, and Mesopotamia, and Edens (i992) has and downs running the through system.This apparently attemptedto link the "world system" of Mesopotamia simple and yet enormous task is in itselfan important with that of the Persian Gulfand the Indus Valley. Tosi contribution the widening discussion about world- and I arguedforwhat Caldwell (i964) called economic to systemtheory.Most case studies up till now have en- "interactionspheres" uniting Central Asia, the Indus, compassedonlypartof the system,assumingwiderreg- the Iranianplateau, the Persian Gulf,and Mesopotamia ularities.Thus the primary "test" of the existence of a within a marketnetwork(Lamberg-Kalovsky Tosi and single ancient world system going back 5,ooo years is I973, I975). The question remains: What were the preindeedthe demonstration cyclicalregularities time cise "political-economic of in fortunes" thatbrought distincand space, definingits geographicaland chronological tive culturesinto contact? limits. I shall therefore comment upon the interpreta- Even when large areas and several centuries are tion ofA and B phases fromthe perspective the Euro- lumped-which, given the relativepaucityof evidence, of pean Bronze Age, as it represents the core of the argu- is essential formaking a case fora Bronze Age "world ment. (I leave it to others to discuss the geographical system"-Frank's thesis remains highly strained.His limits of the system.) essay and the recent writingsof Kohl and Edens give While I can recognizethe first phase of the 2d mil- the impressionthat both finishedcommoditiesand raw A lennium,which corresponds the first to flourishing a resourceswere being tradedin bulk over vast stretches of real Bronze Age, employingtin, there is no reason to ofEurasia and thatthis commerceresultedin economic

National Forestand Nature Agency,Ministry the of Environment, Skov-ogNaturstyrelsen, Haraldsgade 53,

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dependencies, political hegemonies, and exploitative Bronze Age is evident in the earliest systems of land and Whiting relations.Only Edens (I992) has made an tenurein Mesopotamia (Gelb, Steinkeller, core-periphery to effort quantifyhis argument,countingthree items i989). While such studies as Larsen's (I976, I982) give and cyl- clear evidence for the existence of capitalism, others, made of shell: lamp cups, cosmetic containers, inderseals fromaround3000 B.C. to the early2d millen- such as thoseofSaggs(I989) and Moran (I992), illustrate modes of in the coexistence of kin-ordered and tributary to nium. Withoutattempting controlfordifferences areas excavatedin the various time periodsor the differ- productionat a time when capitalism was being pracent functionalcontextsfromwhich the shells were re- ticed. While I see the ancient and the moderneconomy as covered,he concludes that this small numberof items that I many attributes, do not findthe cyclicity spread over the course of a millennium represents sharing worldsysof "transformations the Mesopotamian political econ- Frankaddressesveryconvincing.Contouring omy attendanton Akkadian and later imperialism"(p. tems and embellishingthem with a cyclical patternis and the scale of the analysis is dizzying. but this grandconclusion adventurous, I25). I applaud such efforts, seems to me to emergenot fromthe archaeologicaldata Perhapstoday's economic world system,modernhegemonic rivalries,and the developmentof underdevelopbut fromwhat the writtentexts explicitlysay. Mesopotamia speak of ment cause us to see the same featuresin the past. I Late-3dmillenniumtextsfrom tradewith Dilmun (the Persian Gulf),Magan (Oman?), have little doubt that theywere there,but it was at so a and distant Melluhha (the Indus?). Yet archaeological differentscale as to make thembearlittleresemblance excavationshave not recovereda single Mesopotamian to those of the present. in of or Omani artifact the territory the other,nor has a single artifactof incontestable Mesopotamian origin been recoveredfromthe Indus or fromCentral Asia. J. R. MC NEILL Thus the archaeological evidence fora "world system" HistoryDepartment,GeorgetownUniversity, D.C. 2005 7, U.S.A. 2I VI 93 is meager and tends to concentrateon a limited reper- Washington, types-etched carnelianbeads,Gulf toireofelite artifact vessels,lapis la- Frank's cycles get shorteras time goes on. Is there a carvedchlorite seals, intercultural-style zuli, etc. At the same time, the textual evidence indi- reason forthis,or is it just that thereis more informacates that cereals,textiles,and copperwere extensively tion in more recent times? Is there any dangerhere of as phases? mere eddies in the current distinct at traded, least betweenMesopotamia,the PersianGulf, dignifying bias here? I wonder if seaborne Is there a terrestrial and Oman. Other materials,such as Magan onions to in Mesopotamia,were tradedbut apparently lesserquan- tradeand connectionsare not being slighted.Was there tity.Generouslycombiningarchaeologicaland textual not perhaps a southern crust (Indonesian archipelago, data spread over a broad region and several centuries Indian Ocean, Gulf,Red Sea) to the world system,mirilluminates?And rim the readily allows assumptions to become conclusions. roring northern thatChernykh as What is needed is carefularchivalstudyin conjunction did the East Africancoast not participate, it did conwith a quantifiedstudy of an archaeological resource spicuouslyafterthe rise of the Islam? Does an expansionofmetals tradeand metal use indiwithinthe "world system."Studyallegedlycirculating or militaryexiing the textsfromone periodat one site (and preferably cate prosperity, mightit not represent us fromone archive)is the approachthatinformed that gency,so much of the metal beingdestinedformilitary in the Ur III period the textsfromLagash,forexample, use? on (necessarily Doesn't relying citypopulationfigures economyofthe temwiththe agricultural deal primarily ple, those fromUmma with the activitiesof merchants of highlydubious accuracy)as phase indicatorsneglect of and state-runagriculture,those from Nippur largely or at least undervaluethepreponderance human expewith a private economy, and those fromUr with the rience? Cities may have waxed and waned forreasons can other than economic upswings and downswingsof manufacture products(Gelb I968). Prosopography be of enormous utility; thus Larsen's (I982) study of security considerations,for instance. In the modern an Imdi-ilum, Assyrianbusinessmanresidingin central worldcities sometimesswell preciselybecause therural Anatolia, is an example of capitalism in the igth cen- areas are impoverishedand food fromafarcomes only tury B.C. that united this region with Mesopotamian to cities. The debate with Wallersteinover whetheranything communitiesto the south. debate continues beforeI450 counts as a world systemseems unpromisThe ancient-vs.-modern-economy zone to turn on the outmoded notion that historicalstages ing to me; call it ecumene or intercommunicating it characterized by specific social/economic/political or worldsystemor world-system, existedand was untypes succeeded each other in linear fashion. Gelb til quite recentlythe cockpit of world history. (I987:7) long ago arguedthat "it is impossibleto speak The I8th-I7th-centuryB phase is no mere cyclical of one type of economy to the exclusion of all others, swing but the chariot revolution. Are technical adWolf(I982) has ad- vances, even those destined for destructivepurposes, be it templeor stateor private." tribu- perhaps part of Frank's capital accumulation? At any vanced threemodes of production-kin-ordered, themas evolu- rate, this particularB phase seems to me so strongly and tary, capitalism-without presenting tionarystages. That the three modes coexisted in the relatedto war that some mentionof this is appropriate.

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As he reaches classical times, Frank's resistance to seems to weaken. Oughtone Hellenocentricchronology not look to China rather than to the Aegean and Persia? If I read Barfieldcorrectly, when China was stable and prosperous the steppe peoples enjoyed their halcyon days,skimmingsurplusfromit; when it could not produce enough surplusto satisfy them,theyhad to tryto conquerit. Thus A and B phases oughtto coincidefairly well between China and at least the easternsteppepeoples, and using Chinese history definethem does not to lead one astray.One mightsay that by earlyHan times perhapsthe world systemhad acquired a centerand the centerwas China. If so, it would not be amiss to write as Gernethas writtenand to see the whole systemas dancingto a Chinese beat. Iftherewas a BronzeAge worldsystemwith common cycles,I can see only threecategoriesofplausible explanation forthem: i. A core that dominates the whole. I suppose one mightclaim China as a core by 200 B.C.,but I don't see any cores forthe whole systembeforethat. 2. Climate change. Frank brieflyconsiders climate change as a factor,and this strikesme as worth close investigation.Rainfall and snowfall are the keys: the of have always imquantityand regularity precipitation on in constraint production the ecologposed a powerful ically marginal zones of northernChina, central and southwestern Asia, and North Africa.Palynologycan offer proxyevidence forprecipitationhistory,and the is resolution oftensharpenoughforcyclesthattake centuries. If I remembercorrectly, EllsworthHuntington triedto writeAsian history witha climaticdeterminism at its heart,but he had no reliable data. Now thereare data, and the plausibilityof such a determinism can be tested. If I am wrong that there was no core, at least before200 B.C., then it is possible that climate change in a core area rippledeconomicallythroughout. other In words,ifthe whole systemwas (at least at times)driven by ups and downs in a core,those ups and downs might still have had climate as an important driving force. 3. Disease/population cycles. Another possibility briefly recognizedby Frankis that cycles of population and decline drovethe economic cycles and that growth those population cyles were defined by the periodic of eruption systemwideepidemics.Crosby(I972, i986), has shown the historicalconsequences of amongothers, new infections among populationslackingthe requisite immunities.His examples all date fromthe past i,ooo years,but the mechanism may well have relevance to the BronzeAge. Sharposcillationsin population(and in labor forceand extractablesurplus)mighttherefore be defined therhythm "virgin-soil by of epidemics"ofmeasles, smallpox,typhoid, influenza,etc., actingsinglyor in groups.In the cases of the introduction new infecof tious diseases into New Zealand, Hawaii, and the Americas, the decline lasted I20-I50 years. Recoverycame at morevariablerates.How mightsimilarphases (ifpresumed to exist)correlate with Frank'seconomic cycles? Human historytakes place in a crowded ecological context.Insofaras historyshows cycles,theirtrajector-

ies, periods,and causes may be determined elements by of that contextas much as or more than by the affairs of human societies themselves. This may offendthe amourpropreof our species, but it is true.
J. D. MUHLY

DepartmentofAsian and Middle Eastern Studies, University Pennsylvania,Philadelphia, Pa. of 19104-6305, U.S.A. I2 III 93 at As an undergraduate the Universityof Minnesota I was taughtthat scholars always worked fromprimary sources. Stringing togethera series of quotations from resecondarysources was acceptable forundergraduate searchpapersbut entirely unacceptablein worksofseriFrank'spaperis some Whatwe getfrom ous scholarship. idea of what scholars such as Chernykh, Edens, Kohl, and Ratnagarhave to say about his general Kristiansen, topic. Where does that get us? Frankwould like to believe thata worldsystem(or world-system) already was in operationin the 3d millennium B.C., if not earlier. No evidence is presentedto supportthis (or any other made in thispaper);Franksimplythinksthat suggestion it is an interesting idea and seems to feelthathis readers should take it fromthere. Such a system might very well have connected economies over a verybroad geographicalarea in the Early Bronze Age, fromTroy to Harappa,but whereis the evidencefor(and against)such a hypothesis? Frankadmits that he knows little about the periods and areas he triesto cover. He seems to see his role as thatofan agentprovocateur, and tossingout suggestions providinga framework designed to promotefuturereif search.But such suggestions, theyare to be takenseriously,must (at least to some degree)be anchoredin reality,in the surviving archaeologicaland historicalrecord. Otherwisewe end up with the proverbialscholar who reads three books on a subject in order to write the fourth. Even on its own terms this paper cannot be taken seriously.In seekingsupportfora particularinterpretationofa periodofhistory is always best to make referit ence to scholarswith known expertisein thatperiod.A numberof scholars will findthemselveshere in quite unexpected contexts. Chernykhis certainlya scholar with recognizedexpertisein several different areas of but the end of the Late BronzeAge is not one research, ofthem.In supportof the assertionthat"the Mesopotamian regionexperienceda long peace fromI 38o to I 33I B.C." (and what is that supposed to mean?), the reader is referred a paper deliveredat the I992 meetingof to the AmericanSociological Association. In attemptingto evaluate the implications of any broadlybased hypothesisit is always best to proceed from knownto theunknown.Ifworld-system the theory is problematicforthe 3d millennium B.C. as Kohl has argued,then what of the 2d and Ist millennia?It is not to encouraging be told that the period I750-I500 B.C., was a major B phase "Dark Age." In lightof the wealth

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Indeed, it is the sucratherthan a realisticdescription. cessive changes of coherence (by no means a secular trend)with the growthof scale and alterationsin economic organisation that may distinguish different phases of development. The congruenceof economic and politicalpowerin the BronzeAge,forinstance,may contrastwith a looser relationshipin the earlier Iron put downswing at ca. 800-550 B.C. This is theperiod Age and give rise to a greatermeasure of interdepenin of the greatPhoenician expansion to the farwest, the dence whose cycles are visible synchronically both coast of Spain and the opposingcoast ofNorth economic and political spheres; but even so the striksouthern Africa(but are we reallyback with Phoeniciansin Brit- ingly asymmetricdevelopment of the Mediterranean ain?), of the reawakeningof the Greek world in the age and PersianPlateau/Gulfsectorsin the BronzeAge sugin of colonization and the Orientalizingperiod (with the gests shift(or alternation)ratherthan synchronism patternof growth,with an even greater developmentof the Greek alphabet and othermajor in- its long-term for and the establishmentof As- degreeoffreedom marginal(as opposed to peripheral tellectual developments), Sherratt I972:2I; syrian control over eastern Anatolia, the Levant, and [Schneider n.d.])zones ofthesystem. of even the island of Cyprus. FrangoisSimiand's terminology "A" and "B" phases I could go on, but thereis littlepointin doingso. The may be misleadingifaxiomaticallyassumed to describe one, and I the behaviourof all parts and phases of the Old World concept is a most intriguing world-system book edited by Frank systemratherthan certaintemporarily coherentphases to look forward the forthcoming has howeverintriguing, to be of its development.Even more so, blocks of Kondratieff and Gills, but any theory, only of of evaluated in terms of the credibility its supportive cycles may be discontinuousand characteristic of limitedperiods.Cyclicityis not the sole criterion systo evidence. Frankrefers an individual shipmentof 20 and may divertattention from more tons of copper,presumablyduringthe Old Babylonian temicrelationships structures. period. I find this inconceivable. The largest copper fundamental linkThe evidence which Frankcites of interregional the cargofrom BronzeAge known to me, thatofthe Ulu at level) is well taken, Burun ship that sank offthe southerncoast of Turkey ages (often a high-value/low-bulk as is his discussion of capital accumulation within the halfthat size. about I 300 B.C., was approximately core regions.So, too, are his attemptsto integratethe of history (ist-millennium)steppe peoples and those of collision. adjacent urban areas as more than arbitrary ANDREW SHERRATT AND SUSAN SHERRATT the 3d millenniumas a similarly However,in treating of Ashmolean Museum, University Oxford,Oxford he boththe indecoherent macrosystem underestimates OXI 2PH, U.K. 8 Iv 93 pendenceof the marginand the large-scalespatial shifts nucleus, with the Gulf and the of All interpretations the processes behind the develop- in the core/periphery Since easternMediterraneanas to some extent complemenmentofcivilisationsare to some extentvisionary. many of our expectationswere generatedby writersof taryspheres of expansion. By the beginningof the 2d the stature of Max Weber and lie embedded in half- millennium, the eastern Mediterranean and central bifurcated. conscious assumptions of the uniqueness of the West Asian interaction spheres had effectively and the developmentof capitalism,it is salutarywhen While both had theirups and downs,it is misleadingto betweenthem-at least una serious attemptis made to write the storyon new look forclose synchronicity principles.It is especially encouragingto those of us til the Achaemenid period,when eastern and western in withan interest the BronzeAge when a distinguished ends of the urban world again developed to a common Even withina single sector,however,shiftsof moderneconomistis motivatedto look at our material rhythm. of because ofits relevanceto the growth theworldecon- supplyroutes(as in theEuropean"amberroutes"around Euomy as a whole. It is also timely; similar ideas are 50o B.C. and, on a largerscale, betweenwest-central B.C., both to respectability among (a few!)archaeologists rope and the Pontic steppesin the 3d century emerging urban consumers)created and ancient historians,and attemptsare being made to in relationto Mediterranean extensionsoftheperiphand overcomethe fragmented picturecreatedby disciplinary alternative complementary thislocal evidence withlocal boom and bust.Fitting the overspecialisation, regionalautonomismofthe New ery, longevityof Polanyi's to a patternof systemwide cycles is inherentlymisand the surprising Archaeology, substantivism among studentsof ancient Greece (it is guided,althoughit has its own logic which deservesto soberingto realise that R. M. Adams's [I9741 program- be spelled out. the An outsider'sview highlights relativeimmaturity matic paperon ancient tradein these pages was written as of the archaeologicalliterature a summaryofwhat is nearlytwo decades ago). known and how it is interpreted. Large-scale to It is valuable, therefore, have the question framed currently terms.This is not to say, how- information surveysare oftenliterallyold or antiquated in such comprehensive of ever, that ancient world economies had anythinglike in theirpresentation material.(ManyofFrank'smajor the coherenceof the recentworldsystem,and an initial B-phase migrationsmight disappear on modern scrusearchforsystemwide cyclesmay be a heuristicexercise tiny.)Our periodicalsare full of excavationreportsand Akrotiri (Thera)and Zakro and Knossos ofmaterialfrom (Crete),the incredible treasuresof the shaftgraves at of Mycenae,and the formation the HittiteOld Kingdom in centralAnatolia,with the Hittitespushingas fareast as Babylonca. i600 B.C., it is hardto thinkofthe period as a Dark Age. Things get even worse in the ist millennium,with a

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hot-shotreinterpretations the nature of archaeology of but notoriouslyshort on interpretive syntheseswhich can be reliablyused by visitorsfromother disciplines. Popularatlases sketch the scope but do not give the detail. This paper is valuable not least in showing ourselves as otherssee us and in indicating what theyneed to have from us. Marx and Weber wrote from their knowledgeof classics and ancienthistory, when archaeologyhad revealed only a fraction what we know toof day. If contemporary economic theorists reallydo want to know about the BronzeAge,it is up to us to tell them.

Reply
Amsterdam,The Netherlands.29 Iv 93
ANDRE GUNDER FRANK

I thank all the commentators,especially those who agreeto disagreeor even to dismissmy suggestions altoI gether. am temptedjust to plead guiltyas charged, for althoughhardlyanybodyagrees with me much, I am glad to agreewith everybody. am obliged,however,to I rise to chargesso wide-ranging mutuallycontradicand torythat it seems unlikelythat I could meritthem all. Ifmy articleis, as one commentator it, "fartoo genhas eral and vague," let us make virtueof the necessityof clarification extendthis inquiryanotherfewstepsbeto yond the limits I had set forthis occasion. Because the CA*-treatment format does not reallypermittheopposing partiesto confront each otherbi- or multilaterally, at least not in this round,I will tryfirst act as a sort to ofhonestbroker as amongthem,summarizing faithfully as possible theircases and underlining theirquite contradictory positions on several issues groupedby category.(To complicate matters,some commentators also take seeminglycontradictory positions on the same isof sue.) Then,foreach category issues, I will state,reiterate, or extendmy own position,of course partipris. Harding questionsthe B-phaselabel forI200-I000 Most commentsdeal with the methodor lack ofit in B.C. because of a settlementincrease in CentralEurope my madness. However, the proofof the puddingis in observed by Bouzek. The latter does, indeed, observe the eating,and therefore this reply will proceed from "complementary" opposites between southern and the most specificand concretetaste test,issues of cycle northern Europe in several periods,and I have referred datingand worldsystemextent,to the most generaland to thisobservation, albeit obliquely,citing"contributors abstract recipes.I apologize fornot quite followingthis to Harding Bouzekfindstheseopposites (i982)." intipedagogicalmaxim in my article,but then most com- matelyconnectedwith climatic rhythms. The Sherratts mentators not do so either. do findphase contradictions over a wider area and suggest Cycle datings and phase identifications: Some chal- that looking for systemwidecycles is inherently mislenged, most not. Barcel6, Harding, Kristiansen,and guided. However, the existence of a "dark age" after welcome critiquesofmy cycle datingsand/ I200 B.C. is among the least controverted views, and Muhly offer of orphase identifications. Barcel6contendsthat Iooo-8oo the EuropeanistKristiansencommentsthat "after12o00 B.C. was not an A phase because Phoenician expansion B.C. is ofcoursethenearly universalcollapse in theMedoccurredlater. Harding and Muhly argue that for the iterranean theNear East." Theremaybe morelegitiand same reason 8oo-550 B.C. would not have been a B mate controversy about the precise dating.In referring phase,and Kristiansen expressesdoubts,thoughhis sug- to the "controversial"datingof Jameset al. I only said gestionthat it ends in 600 B.C. implies that he accepts that the case I had already made on other grounds it. Perhapstheyhave a point about the Phoenicians,but "would gain in credibility the extentthat" theirdatto several defenses are possible: (i) Finding one or even ing revisionis well taken. Therefore, do not see why I

several participants out of step is insufficient evidence that the otherswere not marchingtogether.(2) Somebody is almost always out of step, particularlyin B phases, like some "newly industrializing countries"in East Asia today.Kristiansenappropriately suggeststhat collapse in the centermay be followedby growth the in periphery, I would amend this to "some partof the and periphery." It is this being out of step that permits (3) in evolutionary transformation and out of any system and center shiftsin the world system. Therefore, the Sherratts' suggestion thatwe are confronted evidence by of centershiftis well taken,but such shifts need not be alternativesto ratherthan complementsor indeed results of systemwidecycles. (4) I have alreadyreferred to my observationthat everyB phase since A.D. I500 has generated some explorative venture(e.g.,by thePilgrims to America in I620, by Captain Cook to Australia in that laid the basis for largerinvestmentin the I770) subsequentA phase (Frank I978a). (5) Others have obB servedan increasein colonialism during phases in recentcenturies and Schoenberg (Bergesen I980). (6) Might it not have been preciselythe emergenceof economic crisis after800 B.C. that generatedPhoenician exploration and new colonies in the Mediterranean? Muhly and Kristiansenalso demurat labeling I750I500 B.C. a B phase because of Mycenaean and Central European growth.I have expressedsome doubts about the datingsmyself, but thereis considerablesupporting evidence fromWest Asia, which is what promptedSilver's "Dark Age" label. McNeill, instead, asks for greater emphasis on war and destruction duringthis B phase, which also included the introduction the war of chariot, mostly from Central Asia. I agree and have treatedthis more extensivelyelsewhere (Frank i992). PerhapsMycenaean and otherEuropean growthin this period should be considered, along with the abovementionedlaterPhoenicianone, something a B-phase of crisis-generated at development the marginof the world system which then helped shift its center of gravity westward.I leave it to the experts.

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Volume 34, Number 4, August-October 1993 "may be a heuristicexercise" but thenthatthis attempt is "inherentlymisguided," although it has "its own logic." Multiple choice! Check "All of the above"? The about cycle datingand phase naming of disagreements mentionedabove suggestthat the othercommentators theyare talkingabout cycles/phasesthat are both real I and identifiable. can only replythat cycles may well be questionable,but unless we ask the question we are unlikelyto get an answer. Chase-Dunn wants furtherclarificationof cycles. rejectsthem.In CA* true Lamberg-Karlovsky, to form, commentson relatedtopics,he has also complainedof lack of "evidence" to Kohl (I978:479) and absence of "fact" to Zagarell (i986:427), fromwhom he has also sought"greaterclarity."If thereis more or clearerevidence to supporthis denials of the existence of cycles, it. he does not offer Perhaps he wishes to invoke the above-mentioned archaeological truism for himself. cites evidence of cycle phases Chase-Dunn, in contrast, that coincide between the Mediterranean-WestAsia and East Asia (but not India) since 430 B.C.; the graph in the paper he cites (Chase-Dunn and Willard I993) shows the same since about 600 B.C., whichnot incidentallyis when I claimed East and West Asia were united in a singleworldsystem.Chase-Dunn and Willard'stest ofthe datingitselfyieldsonly"mixed results,"and their is of construction city-sizedistributions doublyinconas clusive. They disconfirm many of Gills's and my datbut theirdata as ings and identifications theyconfirm, begin only in I360 B.C. and have such long time gaps that several cycles cannot be evaluated at all. Barcelo about "absolute" dehave reservations and the Sherratts out nominationsofA and B phases,pointing thatan "A" places may be only a "B + " and thatphases in different directionsat the same time. appearto go in different to Chase-Dunn accepts cyclesbut asks whether regard phases of economic growthand hegemonyas alternaFriedmanalso accepts cytives or as complementary. cles, albeit perhapsnot systemwideones, but expresses about these and othercomponents.His rereservations in quest formore specification a "processual model" is, is of course,acceptable,but his alternative dubious. He arguesthatempirebuildingis simultaneouswith decenboth being associated with-and decentraltralization, ization being a "cause of"-decline and crises of accuand mulation.He notes thatI maintainthe contrary, the Mesopotamian, Chinese, and European cases he mentions have not [yet?]moved me to change my mind. Thus, my answer to Chase-Dunn is that economic and political expansion seem to complement each other (Frankand Gills I992; Gills and Frank1990, 1991). This is not necessarilyto denyKristiansen'svaluable suggestion that some peripheralgrowthfollows central collapse. The alleged world system: Too big or too small. For Edens and Kohl, who have taught me so much, there was a world systemin West Asia, but it did not extend as far east as early as I suggest.McNeill, in contrast, detects a neglect of seaborne extensions of the world east, not to mention south to East systemstill farther

ingthe unusullyshort450-200 B.C. phases into a single B phase markedby Celtic migrationsin Europe. Is abon sence of disagreement other cycle datingsevidence of the good taste of my cyclical pudding,or does the archaeologicaltruism "The absence of evidence is no evidenceof absence" apply here as well? LambergThe existenceofcycles.Forthe archaeologist Karlovsky,cycling is adventurous and unconvincing. For the more climatologicallyorientedHarding,cycles exist but far from being systemwide are in opposite places at the same time, and it is phases in different questionablewhetherwe know or even can know that about themare true.McNeill questions (my)statements increasesin metals findscan be used as indicawhether torsofA phases, since theymay be relatedto war (more associated with B phases). This is a serious reservation but I have no satisfacthatI hope is largelyunfounded, and otherscholars toryanswerand hope that Chernykh can provideone. McNeill attributesimportantcausation to climatic is changes but says that precipitation more important in and that population growth, turn than temperature I affected disease, is more causative than derivative. by but for in suppose thatall of these are interrelated turn, now I have to deferto McNeill's ecological expertise, with socioeconomic which he combines masterfully with a analysis. In his recent book (dealing primarily much later period)he observesin passing that "it may well be true that one of the reasons forthe decline of and deterioration ancientcivilizationsis environmental consequent falling economic productivity"(McNeill I 992:74). McNeill findsthat my cycles get shorterover time and perhapsbecome mere eddies. I do not see this,decycles bespite my qualifiedsuggestionof some shorter tween 550 B.C. and IOO B.C. From then until I450 they become equally long again (Gills and Frank i992). I did not, as Barcelo says we should not, confusethem with the Kondratieff cycles since then,but I do not exclude cycles or of thepossibility Kondratieff-lengtheven -type within the longer ones. In this regard,a brief selfcriticism:Strictly speaking,we should speak not of cyA cles but of one cycle with recurrent and B phases whose turning points are endogenous.Failingthe latter, we would do betterto speak of "waves" (Frankn.d.). in seems to agreethat thereare correlations the Joffe cyclicaleventsreviewedhere (and we can leave the matI ter of causation till later). More than a correlation, foundalmost complete coincidence between the cycle by phases identified Gills and me (i992) and the periods Now they by distinguished the Sherratts. independently of pattern cycles writethatthe searchfora systemwide

pean vantage point: He recognizes the 2000-I800/I750 and the I600/I500-I200 B.C.A phases and suggestsfus-

about Jameset al.'s work (which reservations legitimate I also noted) should or need detractfrommine. of Discussion and revision,even rejection, my identificationand dating of other cycle phases would have a offered most welcome additional tastingof the pudoffers any,and thatfroma Euroding.Only Kristiansen

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to Africa. Here myinclination,also by reference the tru- motes the search forthem.A major case in point is my ism about evidence,tiltstowardMcNeill. Algaze reiter- inclusion in one "integrated" world systemof both the ates his perceptionof severalworld systems,to which I regions mostlysouthofthe mountainsstudiedbyEdens, have alreadytaken exception.Knapp findsmy bounding Kohl, Lamberg-Karlovsky, al., and those mostlyfaret of the world systemtoo limited in the west because to thernorth-and east-reviewed by Chernykh. KrisFor his tasteI do not pay enoughattentionto the Mediterra- tiansen, the demonstrationof cyclical regularitiesin nean and Europe. The EuropeanistsKristiansen and the time and space is the "primary'test"' of the idea of a do Sherratts not, however,complain of neglectof their singleworldsystemand its geographical and chronologidifficult know what to make of cal limits. Of course, Edens is rightin notingthat not to areas. It is therefore the Sherratts'comment that the 3d millennium wit- all contact need be systemic.But what pattern, degree, and interdependence, not nessed spatial core-periphery shiftsbut by the early2d and/orevidenceofinteraction would Edens and Algaze millennium Central Asia and the (eastern)Mediterra- to mentiondynamicstructure, nean had "bifurcated."Is this intendedto suggestthat thenaccept forinclusion in one worldsystem,and why theybecame two separateworldsystemsuntiltheywere should cyclical "correlation"not be among them? Mechanismsoftheworldsystem:Unspecified nonor "united" again in the Achaemenid period?What is the Edens rightly findsinsufficient of rationalebehindthis suggestion? presentevidenceit existent. On specification seems unlikelythat the world systemextendedfarther the mechanisms wherebyinteractionis propagatedwest and not farther east, especially until (as several somethingI said could be left for another time or to commentatorsobserve and I have already noted) the those betterqualified (such as Edens himself).I hope BarPhoeniciansextendedit into the westernMediterranean thathe will continueto providesuch specification. in the Ist millenniumB.C. McNeill suggeststhatChina, cel6 rightlyasks for considerationof the intensityof which I saw as incorporated into the world systemby interactionand/or of the operation of these mechathe middle of the millennium,was already its "core" nisms. With Edens, Gosden laments that these mechabefore end. Perhapsit was, iftherewas a singlecore, nisms are insufficiently the quantified; rightagain. (This but this does not justify rejectionofmy reservations was also,as Kohl [I978:488] noted, his "themostfrequent about Gernet's Sinocentrismor his suggestionthat the and fundamentalobjection" to his analysis.) I applaud systemdanced to a Chinese beat. I was suggesting that all appeal to evidence forthe mechanismsand intensity China, CentralAsia, and otherpartsof Eurasia were re- of interaction, direct and indirect-such as the prima to sponding a world-systemic beat,not simplyorprimar- facieevidenceof cyclical connectionsand ofEden's sugily a Chinese one. gestionof "sloping horizons" of theirpropagation from Algaze's plea forseveralworldsystemsof course con- west to east. Chase-Dunn rightly demands more attenall tradicts ofthe above. Unfortunately, in Algaze also con- tion to differences the spatial dimensions,especially tradictshimself: His definitionof a world system in of political/military tradenetworks.He complains and termsof "a dynamicstructure relationships inter- that I "never made clear" that the latterare typically of of dependency,principally(but not solely) economic" is largerthan the former and, specifically, that economic what Gills and I used to delimitthe worldsys- relations precisely betweenEgyptand Mesopotamia antedatedpotem in the Bronze Age. That "polities" A and C have litical ones by at least i,ooo years. I am sorry, since I relationswith B and not with each other or with the devoted a number of pages to this theme, and Chaseworldsystemas a whole is a caricature my argument. Dunn's clearerstatementonly supportsmy contention of It hardlyqualifies A, B, and C (or,more concretely for that the effective world system emergedearly on and Algaze and me, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Indus Val- was much largerthan political ones such as those in ley) as separate "world-systems," much less so if we termsof which Algaze identifies "world-systems." considertheirrelationsin turnwith Arabia,the Levant, Thus, the "incongruencesbetween settlementpatAnatolia, and partsof CentralAsia, not to mentionthe tern, to politics,and economy" thatEdens refers require steppesnorthof the mountainsexaminedby Chernykh. much more evidence and analysis to refine identifithe no Unfortunately, commentatorrefersto Chernykh's cation, not to mention the interpretation, possible of and my inclusion of this vast Eurasian expanse in the cycles (forwhich I never proposeda single measure,as world system,and it remains unclear of what this ab- he claims). Friedman,however, mentions three very sence of commentis evidence. similar processes-in commercialization,politics, and Of course,as the Sherratts point out, "cyclicityis not social existence-but implies, contrary Edens, that to the sole criterionof systemicrelationships,"and I no- they are congruentand synchronous.Though culture wheresuggested thatit was. But thereis no reason,con- and ideologyare now a major interestof Friedman, his tra the Sherratts, that attentionto cyclicityand the ob- lone reference them duringthe "axial age" is consisto servation cyclical "correlation"or "coincidence" over tentwith my observation(Frank I978a), which he disof a huge area in Eurasia should "divert attentionfrom putes, that, at least more recently,paradigmaticadrathermore fundamental factors"such as the ones Al- vances in science, technology, philosophy,and the arts gaze and I set out in principleand in practice.Rather, are generated B-phase economic crises. by cyclical correlationis prima facie evidence, as ChaseMcNeill suspects an urban bias. I thinkthat thereis Dunn writes,"that somethingis goingon," thatis, that less bias then lack of the clarityon my part. Cities go "more systemicrelationships"are at work,and it pro- with complex society,populationgrowth, long-distance

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Volume 34, Number 4, August-October I993 Since then therehave been some changes.For instance, Central Asia is no longer "Soviet," and in the English versionof a book by a formerly Soviet archaeologist (for which Kohl wrote the introduction) can now read we that "the world systemhas turnedout to be farmore extensivethan appeared earlier" (ChernykhI992:304). It is therefore difficult take that Kohl now says flatly to thattheworldsystemidea is not useful.Othercommentators,such as Knapp, complain that my reliance on Kohl is excessive. Perhaps! Accumulationofcapital and migration: No-but yes. Barcel6 accepts everything my model except capital in accumulation. The Sherratts, the contrary, on findthe discussion of capital accumulation well taken but take exception to much else. Chase-Dunn "agrees" that "markets and capitalism have existed for millennia," I to though deliberately made no reference "capitalism." Schneider(I977) arguedforthe importanceof tradein luxuriesand preciousmetals,and Ekholmand Friedman (i980), among othersI cited, saw capital accumulation in the ancient empires. But Friedmannow proposes a "refinement" capital accumulation throughabstract of which I in turnwould like clarificawealth, regarding tion and/orexamples. In any case, it seems that even morerecognition and attentionis meritedby the role of trade in luxuries and, of course, in precious metals in capital accumulation (Gills and Frank I990, i99i). Chase-Dunn also finds an undefined"distinctionbetween capital accumulation and capitalist accumulation" valuable forunderstanding differences the the in worldsystembeforeand after A.D. I500, which brought a "fundamentaltransformation." Since it was not my topic here, I did not mention that I no longersee any such transformation (Frank 199Ib, I993). I am also acI cused of excessive attentionto major migrations; confess to the sin of excessive omission instead. Worldsystemanalysis: Not as farback as the Bronze Age-but as farback as theNeolithic.Most commentatorssaid or implied that "modern" world systemanalysis is not applicable as early as I want to use it, and thinksthatnothingso modernis apLamberg-Karlovsky plicable to earliertimes at all. To the contrary, Gosden (the same one who questions the applicabilityof this idea in the Bronze Age?) wants us to push it much fartherstill, to the Neolithic. He is probablyrightabout world(system)(pre)history back as faras we can, reading though the Neolithic may remain beyond our reach. What we need, of course, is evidence, if not measures, of world systeminteractionand its mechanisms. Wilkinson (I987, I993, and elsewhere) traces and maps "centralcivilization" (what Chase-Dunn calls the central world system) back to interactionbetween Egypt and Mesopotamia in 1500 B.C. Gills and I adduced indirectcyclical evidence back to I700 B.C. and some other evidencebeyondthat.Pursuingthe same, I have sought to bringmore evidence to bear back to 3000 B.C. and scatteredadditional evidence for pointedto admittedly the 4th and perhaps sth millennia B.C. Chernykhof course has access to and command of vastly more evidence forthose millennia and suggeststhat the world

imperialand colonial structure, trade,center-periphery war, etc. I did not "rely" on city-sizedata to ventures, cycle phases but reportedtheirtests by other identify scholars, who use them because-notwithstanding doubts about their inclusiveness and reliability-they offer partlyprima facie and partlysubstituteevidence forotherindicatorsof connectionswhich are less likely complain that I to have survived.Other commentators lend too much or the wrongweight to migrationand war. and All of the above is contradicted rejectedin princiand, ple and in practiceby Gosden, Gilman, Joffe, most Kohl. The same Gosden who lamentsthelack strangely, interactionalso alleges of a measure of world-systemic that in principlethere is no point in pursuingone for to the Bronze Age. Gilman prefers confineus to primitivist-formalist analysisofsmall societiesand areas,but, speaking,this seems like a move in the wrong generally for direction.(It would be especially difficult me after invoked formalismin the second having [mistakenly?] issue of CA over 30 years ago [FrankI960] and rejected in boththatand substantivism these pages over20 years on wants us in practiceto concentrate the local Joffe and eschew all else, so it is not surand the contingent prisingthat he recommendsMann's (i986) analysis. I have already explained elsewhere why I do not find Mann's "politics in command" approachcommendable. and in praxis,thisMaoist In recenttimes,bothin theory approach has been overwhelmed by world economic forces,along with the politics and ideologyof Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan (Gills and Frank I990, tainly one of the mechanisms that Edens would have let to us study,but to lend priority, alone exclusivity, political power and disdain economic forceas it underlies the exerciseofpoweris false consciousnessthathas led to grief both in recenthistoryand in and about the BronzeAge. however,is Kohl's emphaticrejectionof a Surprising, "worldsystem."I notedhis repeatedcaveats and expresabout the "use and abuse" of world sion of reservations of and his recognition theneed to "adapt" systemtheory for Wallerstein'stheory use in earliertimes,but he still This has not in seems to be wriggling its straitjacket. him fromdoingmuch to advance the analytiprevented cal and practical use of world system theoryfor the BronzeAge. He concluded his own CA replyas follows
(I978:489):
1991; Frank and Gills
I1992;

ago [Frank I970].)

Frank I993). Power is cer-

tradein One purposeof this studyof long-distance Asia was to show that even the earlisouthwestern cannot be est "pristine"example of state formation as explainedentirely an internalprocess of social difbut ferentiation must be viewed partlyas a product of a "world economy" [sic: no hyphen!]at different at levels of developmentwhich stretched least from the Nile Valley and southeastern Europe in the west to Soviet CentralAsia and the Indus Valley in the east.

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systemhas turnedout to be not onlyfarmore extensive diffusionist "Afrocentrism" (e.g., "Beethoven was in but also much earlierthan we thought.Was thereone black") had gained some adherenceand notoriety the United States,and at least the pristineantidiffusionism or not? serves to debunk this tenOther commentsrise to of Sinclairet al. unwittingly Reificationvs. diffusionism. and the stratospheric in level of metatheory discussingthe dency.As Kohl has shown in paperson archaeology method in my madness: (i) Barcelo sees a model, of politicsin Transcaucasia and elsewhere,the "evidence" is whichhe approves, and Kohl says thatthisis useless and dugup or ifnecessaryinventedby archaeologists now ofcourseunwarranted reification the "worldsystem," invokedby politiciansto "prove that this land is mine" of which really exists only in our heads. (2) For Edens and needs "ethnic cleansing." Evidence: Yes, no, and maybe. The rangeof rules of "world system" involves circularityof definitionbeto cause (to translate him into plain English)you know one evidence attributed me is wide. If therewere no eviwhen you see one. (3) A "world system"is an empirical dence, as Gilman suggests,neither my sources nor I generalization, accordingto Knapp,who forreasonsun- would have gotteneven this far,and those who adduce evidence would have had nothingto criticize. known rejects this much-usedinductivemethod as in- contrary adequate fortheoryconstruction. an "empiricalgen- Additionalevidence is now supplied by UNESCO's i5(Is first eralization" different froman "empirical law," which years-in-the-making volume of the Historyof CiviBarcel6 contrastswith a "model"?) (4) "World system" lizations of Central Asia: The Dawvnof Civilization, is reallya latter-day version of old-fashioned and long- Earliest Times to 700 B.C. (Dani and Masson i992). It to since-discredited diffusionism, accordingto Algaze and refers "accumulation of wealth" (p. 232), "large-scale the nonetheless givingthe effort Joffe, former passing investment"(p. i96), and many extensiveeast-westas links between West, marks and the latter failingones. With this multiple well as north-south interregional choice, it is hard to know if I should check none of the South, Central,and East Asia (pp. i96-338). Although mentionsa "world system"or above orperhaps3, since I do relypartly, quite legiti- none of the contributors and " evion mately,on this inductivemethodin boundingtheworld "cycles, severalchapters theBronzeAge present dence in supportof the cycle datingproposedin my es"system" and datingits "cycles." I don't deny that in my head there is some world say, especially forthe 3d millennium. The chapteron remarkson a highergrowthrate, system"model," thoughit is less clear what is in the Iran and Afghanistan head of Kohl, who has writtenso much about it. But urbanexpansion,and accumulation with increasingurcontrapostmodernists, am well aware ofthe difference ban-rural "hegemonic-centre"-periphery I and disparities between my head and the rest of the world and do not duringthe firsthalf of the millennium and generally confusethe contentsof the former with the real world. declining ones duringthe second (pp. I96, 204, 206). However, I do not deny that thereis a real world out There is also additional evidence formy shortercycle thereand that,contrary Algaze, Joffe, others(now dating: The provisional A phase 3000-2800 B.C. witto and includingKohl?), duringthe BronzeAge this realityin- nessed "considerable increase in size of each regional cluded widespread interconnections and mechanisms, centre... [and]maximum expansion,"especiallyin the perhapstoo dimlyperceivedor understood, which it Helmand Valley (p. i99). Similar expansion occurredin to is useful to give the name "world system." Using this Mehrgarh until it was abandoned before2600 (pp. 254handylabel therefore need not involve any circularity. 55). Supportforthe next A phase comes fromeastern As McNeill says,call it what you will (WilliamMcNeill Iranand Afghanistan 2500-2300 B.C., when therewas in at in [1I963] and Marshall Hodgson [I974] called it the "ecu- construction Mundigakand Turang-tepe "the phase mene"), "it" certainlyexisted and was "until quite re- of most rapid expansion of urban centresand the most extensiveterritorial centlythe cockpit of world history." integration" 207) whose "timing (p. It seems equally clear to me that this inductive and stages . . . apparently corresponded or just preto, method is a far cry fromany diffusionism, discredited ceded,those ofthe Indus civilization" (p. 2i0). In Khoraor not. Moreover, since these commentators have san and Transoxaniaalso, the "pinnacle oflocal culture" to broughtit up, is diffusion be denied? The Swedish was reached in 2300 B.C. Then, however, in what I the archaeologistSinclair (Sinclair and Pwiti I988, Sinclair termeda B phase after2300 B.C., "crisis affecting et al. n.d.) and his team ofseveraldozen African millengraduate whole basin" came "towardsthe end ofthe third studentsdigging East Africaare hell-benton demon- niumB.C." (pp.2I2-I3). "Urbancivilization suddenly up of and stratingeverything they find to be pristinely"indige- collapsed.It lost all ofits features centrality, most nous," because theyexplicitlywant to counterthe false of the cities were sharplyreduced or abandoned in the are chargethatAfricans and have always been unable to space of a fewyears" (p. 2I5). Indeed,elsewhereas well do anything themselves.But why should recognition "after year for 2200 ... theurban the system begins deteto ofinterconnections have to mean (one-way)diffusion and thereis radical and rapiddecline in the large to riorate out all the Indian Ocean connections? centresin all the enclaves of CentralAsia. None of the Africa, throwing I can only reiteratewhat Kohl (I978:488) has already explanations proposedso farsuccessfully linkup thenusaid in responseto a similarcharge:"Today, the danger merous conditionsof the archaeological evidence over lies in ignoringor neglectingthe fact of diffusion, not such a wide area" (p. 200). The cycles I have proposed misusingit as a deus ex machina typeof explanationor are an attemptat such an explanation,and althoughit as a disguised formof racism." Kohl wrote beforethe may not yet be "successful,"why deny the evidence?

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It is not true, then, that thereis no archaeological eventsare led to suppose thattheremaybe some mutual evidence (Lamberg-Karlovsky), thoughthereis certainly or common causation into which we would do well to less of it than we would like. Chernykh surveyedsuch inquire.Whydoes Joffe only sit back-for he admits not evidence; I hope that the SouthwestAsianist and Euro- to correlations-but insist that othersdo so too? peanistcommentators will uncoveras much or more in Braudel,of course, confineshimselfto a much later the areas of theirown specialization. And why not use periodand concentrates the Mediterranean, there on so secondarysources (Muhly)? To begin with, just what seemed little reason to bringhim into the Bronze Age. makes a "primary"one primary? insists, in The Perspectiveof the Moreover,I was very However, since Joffe explicitthatthis articlewas not to presentanynew evi- World Braudel (i982) distinguishes between several dence but to relatethe observations othersand derive "world-economies"and one "world economy" and sets of some "empirical generalizations"therefrom. I966, I out to use Wallerstein'smodel of the former, time In but wrote a historyof Mexican agriculturefrom i 52I to and again he demonstrates the vital and even systemic I630 which reinterpreted two renowned scholars' pri- interconnections among the supposedly"autonomous" mary evidence and challenged theirlocal institutional European, Russian, Ottoman, Indian, Chinese, and explanationsand instead explained the same (better, Southeast Asian "world-economies"in a single world I argued)as local adaptationsto worldeconomicrelations, economy (albeit in the much later period he covers, forces,and cycles. I sent the draftto one of these au- since A.D. i ioo). Citingchapterand verse from Braudel, thors,and he replied that it should not be published alas only a secondary source, I have recentlydemonbecause it relied only on secondarysources. I followed stratedthe same (FrankI993). his bad advice forI3 years.When I finallysubmittedit Accordingto Knapp, my sources, evidence,and even "as is" and it was published (FrankI979) by Cambridge acknowledgments give short shriftto Europe and the University Press,the same authority reviewedthe book Mediterranean.However, Kristiansen comments that and said thatit should not have been publishedbecause "European Bronze and Iron Age researcherscan recogby now my thesis was old hat. Indeed it was, insofaras nize the shiftsidentified," and the Sherratts also do not in the intervening yearsprimary and secondaryscholar- remarkon such neglect. I certainlydid not intend to ship had completelyreversed,thepreviouslyorthodox neglectthis area, and I acknowledgedthe help of Kristiof in interpretation the data and vindicated my thesis. I ansen and Sherratt the preparation the article; but of insist on the necessityof evidence,but Thomas Kuhn's forKnapp's sake I am glad to do so once again and to work on paradigmshiftshas shown that they do not add my thanksfortheirfurther help in theircomments emergefromconfirming theses with more and more above. old evidence.Instead,paradigmsare changedby ofprimary Barcel6notes a failureto use some veryrecently puba fering different even forthe collectionand lished (secondary) sources; Joffe complains instead that perspective, use of evidence. Muhly is welcome to reject,modify, or I relytoo much on materialthat is not yet published.I even collaboratein this task. use what I can get. According to Gilman and Joffe, using secondary Usefulness:No-and yes. Is thereany point to this? sourcesis OK butnotquotingthemonlywhereand when Again opinions are diverse.For "cons" it is fartoo genconvenient.Really? Accordingto the Sherratts have eraland vague,not useful,misleading, I simplistic, highly drawn on "relevant,reliable authorities."It would be strained,unacceptable as serious scholarship,and the indeedifI had suppressedthe authority con- work of an agent provocateur."Pros" call it an imporimproper of a a trary evidence, but that is not the charge.Gilman and tant contribution, brilliantportrait, salutaryserious want me to cite writers whose paradigm different attempt,stimulating,food for thought,a landmark,a is Joffe from mine and who therefore for may not even considerthe valuable platform discussion,and explicitly provocakind of evidence I adduce. Of what use mightthat be? tive (is this the same as "the work of an agentprovocaTainter (I989), forexample,with whose neglectJoffe teur"?).Whynot compromiseand evaluate this modest chastises me, reviews dozens of explanations grouped effort splittingthe difference and settling on the by into six categoriesof theoryof the collapse of complex golden-but more humdrum-middle? Perhapswe can societies beforeoffering own. Many of these might further such compromise by noting that some of the his indeed be usefulin identifying phases. Unfortunately, entrieson the creditand debit sides of this ledgerare B all of them attributecollapse to internalfactorsalone. by the same person.Besides, Algaze attributes heuristic Even when they observe several empires collapsing at value to "world system" but thinks that Kohl uses it the same time (in a B phase?), these scholars are not better, while Kohl now findsit misleading.Even if,ac"world system"analyto moved to inquire whether there might be a trans- cording Edens, it overreaches, "societal" or common cause, as Teggart(I939) did when sis does seem to lead somewhere afterall-alas, not he examined"correlations historicalevents"in Rome where Joffe in and others would choose but apparently and China. Teggartdid not, and contra Joffe do not, whereBarcel6,Chase-Dunn, Friedman, and I Kristiansen, with causation. However,all statisti- perhapsMcNeill and the Sherratts equate correlation (notto mentionprobcal tests and therefore many scientific methods are ably Chernykh,who was unable to comment,and of based on the probabilitypremise that where there is course myself)want to go. to of smoke,thereis at least some presumption fire. ThereFinally,I did refer a "centralworld system,"comforemost scientistswho findhigh correlationsamong biningmy terminology with Wilkinson's because, as I

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thoughtI had clarified,Chase-Dunn (and Hall [i99i]) to had told me to. However, I never referred the "total to attributes me, nor is there accumulation" that Joffe any "basic Marxian notion of the ruling class" at the I coreofmy analysis.On the contrary, went to considerable lengthsto show how the powers of rulingclasses have always been seriously limited by worldsystemwide competitive and cyclical forces beyond and theircontrol.It is Joffe not I who arguesthatrulingto class politics is in command.It may be overreaching put the BronzeAge in the same lightas our own, but,as Kohl (quoted above) has said, it is impossibleto explain as process entirely an internal "pristine"stateformation of social (class) formation-in a "world economy" that "at he saw as stretching least" fromthe Nile to the Indus. Does the same not applyto the collapse ofthe complex (class?) societies reviewedby Tainter?How illumiand natingis it, then,forJoffe othersto insist,against above and elsewhere,thatBronze theevidencepresented polonlybylocally contingent Age societywas governed itics and ideology in command? Is this not a vain attemptto maintainideologyin commandhere and now? In closingthis replybut I hope not the debate,I would would have benlike to agreewith Knapp thatmy effort efited from archaeological coauthorship. And if by chance this is an elegant way of saying that it would fromexclusivelyarchaeologicalauthorhave benefited the writing ship,I would agree-so much so thatbefore first wordI suggestedto Chris Edens and Phil Kohl that theydo it. They did not choose to do so, and so I used my letter to them (suggestingrevisions to their I993 paper) as a point of departure.I only sought to follow theirlead. Beyondthat,all the usual disclaimersapply, and so do my thanksagain to all and sundry.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.[JAB] P. S. I987. The prehistory Island Southeast of Asia: A multidisciplinary,review ofrecent research. Journal World of Prehistory I:I7I-224. [ABK] BELLWOOD, P. S., AND P. KOON. I989. "Lapitacolonists leave boatsunburned!" The questionofLapitalinkswithIsland Southeast Asia. Antiquity 63:6I3-22. [ABK]
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A. A. I973. Sapalli-depe. ASKAROV, Tashkent:FAN. [CE] AUBET, M. I992. Tyreand the western Phoeniciancolonies.

and contraction, "Longwaves ofcolonialexpansion I4I5in Studiesofthemodernworld-system. I969," EditedbyA. J. Bergesen, 23I-78. New York:AcademicPress. pp. A. M. I988. The "Mycenaean BIETTI SESTIERI, connection" Mediterranean societies. and its impacton the central Dialoghi di Archaeologia 6:23-5 I. [ABK] A ANDREW. citiesand worldsystems: BOSWORTH, I992. World testofA. G. Frankand B. Gills' "A" and "B" cycles.Paperpreof sentedat the CanadianAssociation Geographers Conference,Vancouver, May 2I. im Griechenland LichtederarchBOUZEK, j. I969. Homerisches dologischen Quellen.Acta Universitatis Carolinae, Philosophica et Historica, Monographia [AFH] 29. . I982. "Climaticchangeand Central in Europe," Climatic EditedbyA. F. Harding, changein laterprehistory. pp. Press. I62-78. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University F. I966. La mediterranee le mondemediterraneen et BRAUDEL, II. a l'epoque de Philippe Paris:Armand Colin. [JAB] . I980. On history. of Chicago:University ChicagoPress.
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. I984b. "Force,history, theevolutionist and paradigm," in Marxist in EditedbyM. Spriggs, perspectives archaeology. pp. I27-34. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.[AHJ] . I987a. "The ancienteconomy, transferable technologies, A the and theBronzeAge world-system: view from northeastford: Basil Blackwell.[CG] ernfrontier the ancientNear East,"in Centre of and periphery MARY W. I988. Ulysses'sail: An ethnographic HELMS, in theancientworld.EditedbyMichael Rowlands, Mogens Odyssey and and Kristian pp. ofpower, Larsen, Camknowledge, geographic Kristiansen, I3-24. Cambridge: distance.Princeton: Press. Princeton Press.[AHJ] University bridge University FREDRIK . I987b. "Sumerand theIndusValleycivilization comHIEBERT, T., AND C. C. LAMBERG-KARLOVSKY. i992. Central Asia and theIndo-Iranian of of borderlands. Iran pared:Towardsan historical understanding theevolution in Edearlystates,"in Perspectives U.S. Marxistanthropology. 30:I-I5. MARSHALL G. S. I974. itedbyD. Haken and H. Lessinger. 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"The formation tribalsysof KRISTIANSEN, i982. Mifflin. Houghton temsin laterEuropean Northern prehistory: Europe, 4000-500 JAMES, P. J., I. J. THORPE, N. KOKKINOS, R. MORKOT, AND and explanation archaeology. in Editedby C. B.C.," in Theory I99I. Centuries darkness: challenge the A M. and of to Renfrew, J.Rowlands, B. A. Seagraves, 24i-80. J. FRANKISH. pp. conventional chronology Old World of archaeology. London: New Yorkand London:AcademicPress. Jonathan Cape. in . I987. "Centreand periphery Bronze Age Scandinavia," KARL. I949. JASPERS, Theperennial scope ofphilosophy. New in Centre and periphery theancientworld.EditedbyMiin York:Philosophical Library. chaelRowlands, and Kristiansen. CamMogensLarsen, Kristian .I955. Reason and existence: Fivelectures. New York: Press. bridge: Cambridge University NoondayPress. . I99I. "Chiefdoms, and systems social evoluof states, Miinchen: Die Grossen I957. Philosophen. Piper. and Editedby tion,"in Chiefdoms: Power,economy, ideology. JAWAD, ABDUL JALIL. I965. The adventof the era of townT. Earle.Cambridge: Press. Cambridge University Leiden:Brill. shipsin northern Mesopotamia. . I993a. "The emergence theEuropean of worldsystem in H. n.d. "Parallelisms JOFFE, ALEXANDER and divergences a in theBronze and Age: Divergence, convergence, social evolution third-millennium periphery: cases ofthenorthern The and the and B.C. in during first secondmillennium in Europe," Eusouthern Levant,"in The dynamics unevendevelopment in of millennium C. EditedbyKristian B. ropein thefirst Kristithethird millennium EditedbyH. Weiss.Forthcoming. BC. ansenand Jorgen Sheffield: of DeJensen. University Sheffield [AHJ] of In partment Archaeology. press. GREGORY A. I988-89. Late Urukin Greater JOHNSON, Mesopo. I993b. Europebefore The European worldsyshistory: tamia:Expansion collapse?Origini I4:595-6I3. or [AHJ] temin thesecondand first millennium MS. B.C. HORST. "Vorderasien Aegais:Ein Uberund KLENGEL, H. H. Editor. I978. LAMB, and i982. Climate,history, themodern den blickuiber bronzezeitlich world.London:Methuen. Handel,"in Mitteleuropaische Bronzezeit. EditedbyWerner Coblenzand FritzHorst.Berlin: . I984. "Climateand history northern in Europeand elseAkademie in Verlag. where," Climaticchangeson a yearly millennialbasis. to A. B. I985. "Production KNAPP, and exchange theAegeanand in EditedbyN.-A.M6rner W. Karlen, 225-40. Dordrecht: and pp. eastern Mediterranean: overview," Prehistoric An in D. Reidel. productionand exchange:The Aegeanand theEastern MediterraC. C. I975. "Third-millennium modes LAMBERG-KARLOVSKY, nean. EditedbyA. B. Knappand T. Stech,pp. I-II. UCLA Inand in ofexchange modesofproduction," Ancientcivilization of stitute Archaeology Monograph [ABK] 25. and and trade.EditedbyJ.A. Sabloff C. C. Lamberg-Karlov.I986. Production, and exchange, socio-political complexof sky,pp. 34I-68. Albuquerque: University New Mexico ityon BronzeAge Cyprus. Oxford Journal Archaeology of Press. . I985. "The 'longuedur6e'ofthe ancient Near East,"in 5:35-60. [ABK] .I988. Ideology, and archaeology, polity. Man 23:I33-63. De l'Indus aux Balkans: Recueil a la memoire de Jean De[ABK] shayes.EditedbyJ-L. Huot,M. Yon, and Y. Calvert, 55-72. pp. 1I990. Entrepreneurship, ethnicity, exchange: MediterraParis:Association de pourla Diffusion la PenseeFrancaise. nean inter-island relations theLate BronzeAge.Annualof in [AHJ] theBritish School at Athens85:II5-53. [ABK] structure process:Fromthe and .I986. Third-millennium .I99I. "Spice,drugs, and grain, grog: Organic goodsin to Euphrates the Indusand the Oxus to theIndianOcean. OrBronze Age eastern Mediterranean in trade," Bronzeage trade iens Antiquus 2 5: I 8 9-2 I 9. [AHJ] in theMediterranean, EditedbyN. H. Gale, pp. 2i-68. (StudC. C., AND M. TOSI. LAMBERG-KARLOVSKY, I973. Shahr-i ies in Mediterranean Archaeology Jonsered: Astr6m's P. 90.) Sokhtaand Tepe Yahya:Trackson the earliest of history the Forlag. 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W. AMBROSE, D. ANSON, GOSDEN, C., J. ALLEN, J. GOLSON, P. KIRCH, P. LILLEY, R. GREEN, AND M. J. SPECHT, 1989. Lapitasites of the Bismarck SPRIGGS. AnArchipelago. tiquity 63:56I-86. [ABK] C. A. i982. Gifts GREGORY, London:Acaand commodities. demicPress.[JAB] A. F. I984. The Mycenaeans HARDING, and Europe.London:AcademicPress.[AG] DAVID. HARVEY, I989. The condition post-modernity. of Ox-

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Peltenburg, 298-3I4. Edinburgh: pp. Edinburgh University Press.[ABK] . I99I. "The development copper of in metallurgy Late BronzeAge Cyprus," BronzeAge tradein theMediterrain nean. Editedby N. H. Gale, pp. I80-96. (Studies Mediterrain nean Archaeology Jonsered: Astrom's P. 90.) Forlag. [ABK] MUHLY, J. D., R. MADDIN, AND T. STECH. I988. Cyprus, Crete, and Sardinia:Copperoxideingotsand themetalstrade. Report theDepartment Antiquities, of of Cyprus, 28i-98. pp. on: The balanceoftrade JOAN. I978. Comment in southwestern in themid-third Asia millennium, PhilipL. by Kohl. CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY I9:480-8I. A. LEO. I954. The seafaring merchants Ur. Joul of OPPENHEIM, nal of theAmericanOrientalSociety74:6-I7. . I977. Revised edition. Ancient Editedby Mesopotamia. EricaReiner. of Chicago:University ChicagoPress. KARL. I975. "Traders and trade," Ancient in POLANYI, civiliza tionand trade.EditedbyJeremy Sabloff C. C. Lamberg A. and Karlovsky. of Albuquerque: University New Mexico Press. . I977. The livelihoodof man. Editedby H. W. Pearson.
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Plateau:Excavaon . I975. Urbaninteraction theIranian Academy of tionsat Tepe Yahya,Iran.Proceedings theBritish Old Assyrian caravanproceTROLLE. I967. InstiHistorical-Archaeological dures.Istanbul:Netherlands tutein Istanbul. of I coloniesin Anatolia.Journal 1974. The Old Assyrian theAmericanOrientalSociety94:468-75. and city-state its colonies.CoI976. The Old Assyrian I Akademisk Forlag. penhagen: of . i982. "Yourmoneyor yourlife!A portrait an Assyrian in businessman," Societiesand languagesoftheancientNear Aris Warminster: East: Studiesin honourofI. M. Diakonoff. and Phillips. [CCL] in networks theancientNear East," . I987. "Commercial in in Centre and periphery theancientworld.EditedbyMiCamand Kristiansen. chaelRowlands, MogensLarsen, Kristian Cambridge University Press. bridge: reMARIO. I987. "The collapseofthe Near Eastern LIVERANI, at gionalsystem the end oftheBronzeAge: The case ofSyria," in in Centre and periphery theancientworld.EditedbyMiand Kristian pp. Kristiansen, chael Rowlands, MogensLarsen, New apCultureand consumption: of goods and accharacter consumer proachesto thesymbolic Press.[JAB] Bloomington: IndianaUniversity tivities. of MC NEILL, The mountains theMediterranean J. R. i992. UniCambridge history. Cambridge: world:An environmental Press. versity of MC NEILL, WILLIAM. The rise ofthe West:A history I963. of thehumancommunity. Chicago:University ChicagoPress. Double. I977. Plaguesand peoples.New York:Anchor day. A MICHAEL. I986. The sourcesofsocial power. history MANN, Camthe to ofpowerfrom beginning A.D. I760. Cambridge: Press.[AHJ] University bridge of Bronze Age S. I993. "The emergence divergence: MANNING, and declinein the Creteand the Cyclades."in Development and BronzeAge. Editedby S. Stoddart C. MathMediterranean Collis Publications. ers.Sheffield: John [ABKI
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Calendar
I993 October 27-3i. AmericanFolkloreSociety,Annual Meeting,Eugene, Ore., U.S.A. Write:AFS, I703 D.C. New HampshireAve. N.W., Washington, 2ooog, U.S.A. AnNovember4-7. AmericanSocietyforEthnohistory, Ind., U.S.A. Write: Bloomington, nual Conference, Chair, RaymondJ.DeMallie, or Local ArProgram Co-Chairs,Douglas R. Parks and R. Darangements vid Edmunds,AmericanIndian Studies ResearchIn422 N. Indiana Ave., Indiana University, stitute, Ind. 47405, U.S.A. Bloomington, AAA, I703 New HampshireAve. N.W., Washington, D.C. 2ooog, U.S.A.

I994

AlCalgary, Conference, 11-14. Chacmool November

I7-2I. November

berta,Canada. Theme: Cultural Complexityin Archaeology.Write:The I993 ConferenceCommittee, of University Calgary, Departmentof Archaeology, Calgary,Alberta,Canada T2N iN4. D.C. Write: tion, 92d Annual Meeting,Washington,

January and 5-8. SocietyforHistoricalArchaeology AdvisoryCouncil on Underwater Archaeology, Annual Meeting,Vancouver,B.C., Canada. Plenary theme: Science and Technologyin an Interpretation and Presentation the Historic Past. Write:Proof gramChair,Departmentof Archaeology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada VsA iS6. March 21-24. International Conferenceon EthnicTraditionalCulture and Folk Knowledge,Moscow, Russia. Write:OrganizingCommittee,International Conference, Instituteof Ethnologyand AnthropolRussia. April 5-II.
ogy, Leninsky Prospect 32A, Moscow II7334,

AssociaAnthropological American

William RobertsonSmith Congress,Aber-