BIAINILI -URARTU

The Proceedings of the Synlposium held in Munich 12-14 October 2007

Tagungsbericht des Miinchner Symposiums 12.-14. Oktober 2007

EDITED BY

S. KROLL, C. GRUBER, u. HELLWAG, M. ROAF & P. ZIMANSKY

PEETERS

2012

06

SOCIAL DIFFERENTIATION WITHIN URARTIAN SETTLEMENTS

ELIZABETH C. STO)\,fE

Interest in early complex societies was stimulated, at least in part, by the work of Marx (1859) and espe­ially Engels (1884) in their attempts to understand the development of the inequalities which they observed

du ring the Industrial age. Although concepts such as heterarchy (Crumley and Marquandt 1987; Crumley 1987) and corporate political and economic strategies (Blanton 1998) now grace the literature, many scholars still stress the tributary nature of the economies of these ancient societies and the ability of elites to extract wealth and labor at the expense of the masses .

This paper investigates one early civilization which, by all measures, should fall at the far end of the hierarchical and exploitative spectrum. Urartu , located within a harsh upland environment where such small pockets of irrigated agriculture as exist were dominated by the state, would seem at first glance to have all the anributes of a highly centralized tributary society . The entire social texture appears military in nature, focused on a series of heavily guarded fortresses. The dominance of weapons in the artifactual inventory from these sites provides further testimony to the Urartian state's monopoly on raw power. Indeed, if the written docu­ments are to be trusted, much of the non-military population of Urartu seems to have been forcibly brought in to the area, first to work on the construction of the fortresses and then presumably to provide the residential population to support the military elite who resided within them.

This paper questions whether this picture of a society built through exploitation of the many by the elite few is truly valid for Urartu and, if not in this case, whether it can be assumed to be true for any early complex society. Complex societies have economic advantages which result from the size of their economies , but this wealth can only be realized if there is a stable, reliable source of labor. Theoretically , there are two possible approaches to the problem of maintaining this labor force. In one, more voluntaristic , the population as a whole receives a share in the wealth of the state , whereas in the other that wealth is used to maintain the coercive framework necessary to repress flight or rebellion on the part of the masses.

Excavations in the domestic qUal1erS surrounding Urartian fortresses , while rare, provide a body of archaeological data which can be used to test whether or not their denizens , even though they may have been forcibly removed there from their homelands elsewhere, were provided with a sufficient share in the wealth of the Urartian state to prevent them from thinking too seriously about running away. My aim here is to investi­gate the degree to which those living outside the fortre sses were dependent or independent of the centralized state economy and to what extent they had access to wealth. Some aspects of the lifestyles of the population of the outer towns are reflected in architecture . The presence or absence of stables for cattle or sheep, storage rooms, bread ovens and the like all testify to the degree of economic independence enjoyed by their occupants. Moreover the small finds recovered from domestic areas can be divided between purely utilitarian items and those which are not - the latter providing a measure of the degree to which their occupants shared, albeit at a lower level , in the wealth of the state.

Domestic Quarters in Urartu

Domestic quarters have been excavated at four Urartian sites (Fig . 06 .01). Of these, the most limited exposure is at Bastam, where an area of 600 m2 has exposed parts of as many as four houses, sharing party walls. The stratigraphic position of the finds is well de scribed and Stephan Kroll has published the ceramics

--- -

90

Her:'I :: :\:,,-, .

'-~ l;: : _~ r .. r

I

Karmir Blur g§ Ayanis £j[}

Argishtihinili

o 5 10 20 30 40 50-- - Meters-

Bastam

Fig, 06.01. Urartian domestic architecture from Ayanis, Argishtihinili, Bastam and Kannir-Blur.

and small finds found within them (Kleiss (ed.) 1979, 1988). The publications of the excavations at Argishti­hinili (Martirosjan 1974) and Kannir-Blur (Martirosjan 1961) provide less detail. At Argishtihinili, poor qual­ity structures were found between the walls of the western citadel and a number of imposing houses were excavated in the walled area between the two citadels. The latter have been published, but the less formal architecture found beyond the fortifications remains largely unpublished (Martirosjan 1974: figs. 34-36). In all instances , it is difficult to determine the stratigraphic position of the objects found, some of which clearly derive from post-Urartian contexts. For Karmir-Blur Martirosjan (1961) published the excavations of domestic structures from the outer town, but once again the stratigraphic position of the finds is sometimes confusing.

The sample of domestic structures from Ayanis (Figs. 06.01-02), although covering a smaller area than the excavated domestic structures at either Kmmir-Blur or Argishtihinili, will form the heart of this paper since there we have direct access to detailed infonnation on the architecture, ceramics and objects recovered from each of the nine house areas investigated to date. Both published (Speakman et al. 2004; Stone 200S; Stone & Zimansky 2001, 2003, 2004) and as yet unpublished material from Ayanis will be included in the following discussion.

91 06. SOCIAL DIFFERENTIATION WITHIN URA.RTL " SEITLDIE\"TS

N

'\

Fig. 06.02. Plan showing the excavated areas at Ayanis.

House Size and Construction

Urartian domestic architecture differs from most (but not all) public buildings at Ayanis in that it was _onstructed using stone foundations which formed the lower portion of the superstructure. Although sharing th i~ feature, the houses at Argishtihinili and Ayanis can be divided into two broad categories. On the one hand Jiere are buildings with clearly rectilinear plans and foundations using quite large stones with flattened outside .?dges. These houses are typically free-standing. Others have less rectilinear plans, using smaller more rounded _:C' nes and often shared party walls. Some houses, of both types, must have had second stories over at least p::m of the structure since we have found objects and pithoi overlying and within wall collapse. At Ayanis there exist clear stratigraphic data indicating that the l~rger, more formal houses (probably no more than six to 'en structures) were built first, while the latter filled in the spaces between them (Stone & Zimansky 2001: ~ 50 . fig. 11) and the slopes above them. Fig. 06.01 shows that the houses excavated at Karmir-Blur (Martiro-Jan 1974: 9) and Bastam (Kleiss 1988a: Abb. 11) appear to fall into the less formal category, although at

_. armir-Blur there is a huge, largely unpublished, residential complex which would fall into the first category 'ere these houses free-standing (MartirosjanI964: 262). The houses built between the two citadels at Argishti­

tin iJ i belong to the more formal category (Martirosjan 1974: fig. 31). We suggest that the more formal buildings were constructed by the Urartian state architects, whereas the

yhers were built by their residents. The more formal buildings at Ayanis are all between 250 and 500 m2 in _lze. whereas the less formally constructed are more often in the 100 m2 range. The same size differential can

92 ELIZABETH C. STON"C

be seen at the other sites, where the formally built structures at Karrnir-Blur and .-\r) htihinili range between 250 and 600 m2, whereas the less fonnal houses with party walls at Karmir-B lur and Bastam are all less than 200 m2 and again mostly in the 100 m2 range. J

Differences in the size of houses clearly existed and match the differences in construction technique. Nevertheless, all houses investigated within Urartu are quite substantial , generally at least 100 m2• Elsewhere in the Near East, houses of this size would fall somewhere in the middle of the range of domestic structures and houses larger than 400 m2 are exceptional.

Although the variability in construction technique might be seen as a reflection of social or ethnic differ­ences among their residents - or at least their builders, the basic principles of construction are all purely local. Although the Ayanis temple inscription hints that many or most of the residents might have been deportees who were brought to Urartu from elsewhere in the Near East, the houses all share basic aspects of plan and construction. As will be seen below, differences in size are not necessarily associated with differences in func­tion. Similar domestic features are to be found in both formally and informally built structures.

Domestic Functions within Houses

In our evaluation of domestic life within Urartu it is useful to consider the degree to which the residents of the settlements might have been dependent on or independent of the Urartian state for their sustenance. This can be determined by an examination of the evidence for domestic activities such as food processing, cooking, storage and the maintenance of livestock. We are aided in this endeavor by ethnoarchaeological research which has been carried out by our colleagues from Ege University in the local village of Agartl. Although the building plans show less evidence for continuity, the domestic features - bread ovens, stables, troughs, rock­cut pits and the like - are very similar.

The Urartian diet had two main components: grain and animal products in the form of both meat and milk products. Also important given the harsh winters was fuel, which today comes mainly from animal dung. Independent access to cereals would be indicated by grain storage, facilities for grinding, and tandlrs for bak­ing bread. Animal husbandry would have required stables with paved floors for cattle (and horses), unpaved stables for sheep with separate areas for lambs and kids, green sandstone slabs and pithoi with holes in their bases for making cheese, and rock-cut pits filled with ash and/or troughs for cheese storage.

Most of these activities leave traces that should be readily visible within the archaeological record, although the important issue of storage presents many difficulties. Grain is likely to have been piled in rooms within sacks similar to a burned example found in the Ayanis fortress and is unlikely to have left clear traces in the unburned outer town. If parallels with the modem hold true, the storage of dung-cakes for fuel- of great importance given the severe winters in Urartu - should also be found within rooms in the houses but cannot be expected to leave clear evidence beyond the presence of fecal spherulites within soil samples (see below). Today fodder is kept on the roofs of the houses , which of course no longer exist in our archaeological sample.

We will have to rely on more indirect inference in the case of storage. The only clear archaeological evidence for storage comes from pithos fragments, although the evidence from the Ayanis fortress suggests that these were used primarily for storing liquids . Pithoi have been found in situ within houses (both formal and informal) at Bastam (Kleiss 1988a: Abb. 12) and Argishtihinili (Martirosjan 1974: fig. 38), but at Ayanis only one has been excavated in place, although pithos fragments are not uncommon. Where we are sure we have excavated the lower story of multistory houses, pithoi seem to have been located on the upper story since clusters of pithos fragments were found within the collapse of the building. The sizes of the pithos rims recov­ered from our excavations of domestic areas at Ayanis are relatively small when compared to those from the fortress. These may have been used to store water or the mixture of cooked beef and fat which until today serves as an important staple over the cold winter months.

I None of the less formal buildings at Argishtihini li (Martirosjan 1974: fig s. 34-36) have complete building plans .

93 06. SOCIAL DIFFERENTIATION WITHIN URARTl"L'\ SET'TLD1E\jS

Fecal spherulites - indicative of the presence of cattle or sheep dung - have been found in the majority of our soil samples (Gilpin 2004), and paved stables suggest not only the presence of cattle, but also fodder to feed them and the bypro ducts of the animals, both dung and milk. This view is strengthened by the evidence for cheese production in the form of rock-cut pits filled with ash. troughs, green sandstone slabs and small pithoi with holes in their bases. The existence of stables within these houses does not necessarily mean that these housed privately owned cattle. It is possible that the animals were supplied by the state in exchange for a share of their milk products.

Grinding stones and ovens (all the round, vertical landlr type) are clear indicators of bread making, but once again cannot inform us directly on whether the grain was provided by the Urartian state, was the product of the labor of the householders, or perhaps some combination of the two.

o 2.5 5 10 o 2.5 5 10

1"""'Il~_.iiii-~~_~~~~~i Meters 1"""'Il~-.~-~_~~~~~i Meters

Fig. 06.03. Plan showing domestic features (left) and objects (right) associated with Building 9. For key to features and finds see Figs. 06.06.

The domestic features indicative of grain production and animal husbandry are found in both the formally constructed and less formally built houses Buildings 9 and 13 (Fig. 06.03 and 04), although one structure apparently lacks any such features. Building 13 located high on the slope of Gtiney Tepe, consists of a large, rectangular space, open to the south-west, with a rough row of stones - but ce11ainly not a wall - closing it on (hat side. Today such structures are used as sheep-pens, with the line of stones marking the location of the poles supporting the roof. In the present day these are privately owned and located near to the house, but it is impossible to say whether this was also the case in antiquity.

One unique building also lacks evidence for animal husbandry. Building 6 (Fig. 06.05) was one of a series of long, narrow structures built on the lowest terrace of the settlement area on Gtiney Tepe, and is clearly one of the formally built houses. Although the entire building has been excavated, it contains no stables or landlrs.

It has one rock-cut pit near the front door, three pieces of green sandstone, mortar and pestle pieces and one

N

o 2.5 5 10 o 2.5 5 10

~1"""'Il~_~-5_~~~~~i Meters 1"""'Il~._~-~_~~~~~i Meters

Fig. 06.04. Plans showing domestic features (left) and objects (right) associated with Building 13. For key to features and finds see Fig. 06.06.

94 ELIZABETH C. STO'\E

grinding stone. It does have two small rooms with cobble or pebble paving, one of which had a complete hearth located above a fire pit, and these, together with the entrance chamber with the rock-cut pit, are where we found fragments of green sandstone. Whatever the domestic units domiciled here, they kept no animals, baked no bread, and it is difficult to identify spaces that could have been used for storage.

Domestic features have been recovered from the other houses that have been sampled in Guney Tepe, with the most complete array associated with the houses for which we have the largest sample.

o 2.5 5 10 o 2.5 5 10

~~._ril-~_ril~~~~i Meters ~~~_ril-~__~~~~i Meters

Fig. 06.05. Plan showing domestic features and objects associated with Building 6. For key to features and finds see Fig. 06.06.

Operation 1 (Fig. 06.06) includes Building 1, which is a formal building almost completely sampled, Building 3, the designation for a mass of informal architecture which is only partially sampled and probably comprised either two or three houses, and Building IS, where investigation is in its infancy. Building 1 has a paved stable, a trough that parallels with the modern village suggest might have been used for cheese storage, two tandzrs and an L-shaped room without a floor which might have served as a sheep pen. No stables have yet been found in the mass of architecture known as Building 3, but five tandzrs, one rock-cut pit and numer­ous grinding stones, mortars, and pieces of green sandstone have been recovered. Stables, if present, may have been located beyond our excavation area, although one room, with a bedrock floor and a shallow basin in one corner just might have been used as stable. In both Building 1 and Building 3 there is the suggestion that a pattern known from modern houses2 of having two taneilrs, a smaller one for heating and cooking and a larger one for bread baking, goes back to Urartian times. Rooms with tandzrs generally also have grinding stones which must have been used to turn grain into flour. Pieces of green sandstone, used today for cheese making, also tend to be found in the same part of the house suggesting that then, as now, domestic activities were con­centrated in one section of the building (Fig. 06.06)

2 Infonnation on the domestic features of the modem village has been collected by the Ayanis team for nearly a decade. A more formal ethnoarchaeological projects supported by the Turkish Tupitak funding agency is now in progress.

95 06. SOCIAL DIFFERENTIATION WITHIN URARTI.",-" SETILD fE'(TS

~ Bench

~ Floor

~ Rock-cut Pit

Wall

Stone

• Bread Oven .. Ceramic Hearth

• Grinding Stone

*" Mortar or Pestle

+

N

A N

A

{} Bone Tools

® Iron Tools

Clay Tools

"* Flint and Obsidian Tools

*

Stone Objects

ffi Bronze Objects

Iron Weapons

{} Pigment

0 Beads

0 Other Exotic Objects

• Pierced Base 0 2.5 5 10 0 2.5 5 10 15

i Meters ~_~_~~~~~iiiiiiiiiiiiii_! Meters~-- ~--Fig. 06.06. Plans showing domestic fearures (left) and objects (right) associated with Operation 1.

From north to south are Buildings 1, 3 and 15.

A similar pattern is found in Buildings 11, 12 (Fig. 06.07) and 14 (Fig. 06.08), all of which fall into the ilformal construction category. Buildings 11 and 14 were built on sloping bedrock and had two stories in the

-= \\'nhill portion of the house. It is in these basement areas where we found evidence for bread-baking,) cattle :. bles, and cheese-making. Our excavations uncovered less of Building 12, but it too has a paved stable area

. -Jd grinding stones. Green sandstone fragments were found in the area between Buildings 11 and 12, but we

'\0 tandu has been found in Building 14, although one room has all the hallmarks of a tandu house. It has numerous ashy deposits all . _,ing on an area by the wall where we excavated a burned pit. Associated with this were many fragments of the very coarse lightly baked _~ th at is used to make both hearths and tandirs. We suspect, but cannot prove, that a tandu existed in this room but was destroyed at the

· of the abandonment of the building.

96 ELIZABETH C. TO:--'T

o 2.5 5 10 15 20 -~~_-~'iii-_~~~~~___iiiiiii~~~~~1 Meters

N

A

N

A Fig. 06.07. Plans showing domestic features (above) and objects (below)

associated with Buildings 11 (left) and 12 (right). For key to features and finds see Fig. 06.06.

10o 2.5 5 o 2.5 5 10

~~~_iIl-~-riil~~~~1 Meters ~~~_iIl-~-_~~~~1 Meters

Fig. 06.08. Plans showing domestic features (left) and objects (right) associated wi th Building 14. For key to features and finds see Fig. 06.06.

97 06. SOCIAL DIFFERENTlATlON WlTHIN ll~,ARn ....S ::-ETTLE.\ !ESTS

::mnol tell from which structure they originated. Too small an area has been uncovered in Building 9 for any _ 1cius ions to be drawn, but several grinding stones were found. together with large amounts of ash whose ~' :Tomorphology suggests that they were the rake outs of fire installations where animal dung was burned.4

.-\n examination of the faunal evidence5 indicates a fairly consistent pattern throughout the Outer Town. residents subsisted primarily on beef, with smaller amounts of mutton or goat. This contrasts with the

_ ,J-e nce from the fortress, where ovicaprid bones are considerably more common than cattle bones. Never­-: . ! s. given the differences in sizes between the two species. the primary meat eaten both by those in the ~ ss and those in the Outer Town would have been beef. Moreover, the one population group living in the _:er Town who might have been unused to the consumption of beef, the residents of Houses 11 and 12, ". "re some 15% of the pottery was Assyrian suggesting perhaps that they were occupied by deportees from

. - : area, consumed an amount of mutton comparable to that consumed by the inhabitants of the fortress. In :: ·i ti on. although between 20% and 40% of the ovicaprids consumed by the residents of the Outer Town at

-' . . nis were goats, only 5% of the ovicaprid bones found in the houses with Assyrian houses were of goats, ~-;.!in comparable to the finds in the fortress .

In short, there is extensive evidence from Ayanis that all or most of the residents of the Outer Town ~ "oyed a degree of economic independence, keeping cows and perhaps sheep, using their milk for cheese, ;rin ing grain into flour and baking it in tandlrs. Building 6, however, makes it clear that this was not the case "'Cf , II residents of the Ayanis town. This house lacks stables, tandlrs and most other items indicating domestic __ j \· ity. Their residents may have been directly dependent on the fortress for their livelihood. Records of items D'e cheese-stones, grinding stones and the like are only occasionally available for the other Urartian sites with ~ ~ , \'ated domestic quarters, however the paved stables at Bastam (Kleiss 1988a: Abb. 11-12), Argishtihinili

iJ.nirosjan 1974: figs. 39, 41, and 45), and Karmir-Blur (MartirosjanI964 : 262) and tandlrs (Martirosjan : 94, 109) and grinding stones (Martirosjan 1964: 93-97, 154-161) at Argishtihinili suggest that there too

_=least the majority of their residents had a measure of control over their domestic economy.

Wealth Items

The ceramics and objects recovered from excavations can be divided into utilitarian items and those hich may be nice, but are not necessary. Most ceramics fall into the former category, with one exception,

t rartian red polished ware. At Ayanis we have made a distinction between the true red polished ware with its ' bin )' slip, and red unpolished ware which, though sharing many of the same shapes, had a red slip which was _'lpolished. Our analyses, using both petrographic thin section and neutron activation, indicates that red pol­,hed ware was made to a very consistent standard that is different from the mass of the ceramics from Ayanis.

R·'d unpolished ware, on the other hand, cannot be distinguished, except for its slip, from the other medium ,ill coarse ware ceramics (Speakman et a1.: 2004). Since red unpolished wares - and indeed many unslipped . \VIs and other vessels - were available to replace the red polished alternatives as tableware, it can be argued :hat the presence of red polished ware in domestic contexts is an indication of access to luxury goods. All

:her ceramics, however, can be considered utilitarian . Other utilitarian items include various iron, obsidian and bone tools. Non-utilitarian items include weap­

ns. jewelry, pigments (mostly 'Egyptian Blue'), and any bronze items. Since iron, with its simpler, more "emocratic, technology, was available at the time, the use of bronze cannot be considered a necessity.

Red polished ware makes up approximately 7% of the diagnostic sherd sample from the Outer Town, a ,f ercentage considerably lower than that from the fortress . Nevertheless, these ceramics have been found in all houses. Buildings 1, 14 and, surprisingly, 13 have the highest percentages of red polished ware. The ceramics :'rom Building 1 are especially noteworthy since many have stamps on their bases which are the same as those

, Wendy Matthews, personal communication. 5 Faunal analysis was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation and private donations. The analysis was carried out by

Celes te Ehrhal1, Naomi Cleghom and Zelalem Assefa under the supervision of Cunis Marean and Melinda Zeder.

98 ELIZABETH C. STO"\c

found in the fortress. This is not the case in other areas. Buildings 11 and especially 12 have the lowest per­centage of red polished wares, but 9% to 16% of their ceramics are identical in form and ware to commonware vessels from Assyria, and were not made from clays from the Van Basin (Speakman et al. 2004). In terms of function, Assyrian style vessels were generally quite small, suggesting that they were used in place of red polished ware vessels for serving food. The presence of 11 o/c red polished ware in trash deposits beside Build­ing 13, which we interpret as a sheep pen, is certainly puzzling.

These data indicate that all residents of the Ayanis Outer Town had access to red polished ware, including the best quality. Nevertheless there are differences, with Houses 1 and 14 (and 13) having the greatest access. The domestic areas from Bastam (Kroll 1988c: 165-167) Karmir-Blur (Martirosjan 1961) and Argishtihinili (Martirosjan 1974: 104-149) also contained red polished ware vessels, although no percentages of these wares have been published.

There is a remarkable similarity in the percentage of objects from each building which can be considered non-utilitarian or luxury items. Nearly 25% of all objects found in the Outer Town fall into this category and there is very little variability between houses. Items in bronze were found associated with all houses, although only houses 1,6,9 and 146 had bronze jewelry. Building 1 had the most decorated bronze, a ring with a snake­head on it, a bronze handle for a situla, and a decorated fragment which might have been part of the rim of a cauldron, while Building 14 is the only structure to have yielded items of silver, a pair of eanings. Items in bronze have also been reported from the domestic areas at Bastam, Argishtihinili (Martirosjan 1974: 151-152) and Karmir-Blur (Martirosjan 1961: figs. 26a, 29b, 62, 65).

Weapons have been found in all houses except Building 11. The majority of these were thin arrowheads unlike those found at the fortress (Stone & Zimansky 2001: fig. 16), but a bronze trilobate arrowhead was found in the enigmatic Building 9, and an iron sword had fallen down from an upper story in Building 14. Weapons were also found in domestic areas at Karmir-Blur (Ma11irosjan 1961: figs. 26b, 38a, 38b, 61) and Argishtihinili (Martirosjan 1974: 151-153). At Argishtihinili, however, the houses were located within rather than outside the walls of the citadels and suffered the same destruction as the fortress. This difference in loca­tion and the large number of weapons found there suggest that the residents of the Argishtihinili houses may have been quite different from those living in the unfortified and unburned outer towns.

Pigment, mostly pieces of so-called 'Egyptian Blue', was also found in all of the houses except Building 11. Although we have little evidence of how it was used in the past, today the doors, door-frames and window­frames are painted a similar color which is thought to protect the inhabitants from the evil eye. Similar blue pigment was found at Bastam (Kroll 1988b: 161) and perhaps also at Argishtihinili (Martirosjan 1974: ll2).

Other items of note were generally found associated with either Buildings 1, 6 or 14. A bulla with part of a name written in cuneiform and a stamp seal came from the trash deposits beside Building 1, and a seal was left in an ash-filled pit in Building 14. Other examples of writing are a bowl with a hieroglyphic sign scratched in it from Building 1 and a pithos with its capacity in aqarqi, rerusi and !is written in hieroglyphic Urartian from Building 14. A small glazed bottle (perhaps Assyrian) and several pieces of an alabaster bowl were found in Building 14, while a small piece of faience and an inlay fragment came from Building 6.

Five bullae were found associated with the house area at Bastam (Kroll 1988b: 160), but bullae do not seem to have been recovered from domestic areas elsewhere. Stamp seals were found at Argishtihinili (Martirosjan 1974: 109).

Clearly the residents of the outer towns of Ayanis, Bastam, Karmir-Blur and Argishtihinili were not sur­rounded by the elaborate bronzes, inlay and fine pottery which are typical of the fortresses, but neither were they denied access to items of value. Moreover, their access to weapons suggests that the rulers living within the fortresses were not overly concerned that they might rebel. Each category of sumptuary good found within fortresses - red polished ware, decorated bronze, inlay, writing - are mirrored, albeit palely, in the finds from the Outer Town of Ayanis, and indeed in the residential areas of other sites. When we add to this the grave

6 A burial with a bronze belt, 23 bronze earrings and other decorative items was found associated with Building 14. These items, since they reflect a quite different depositional history from all other objects, have been omitted from this analysis.

99 06. SOCIAL DIFFERENTIATION \\'ITHIN U~-WTL'\. \" SETTLE\ IE \ "TS

goods accompanying an early adolescent burial associated with Building 14 at Ayanis (Colour plate Ib), which included an unpolished red ware trefoil jar, a bone or ivory pendant, 23 bronze earrings and an Urartian bronze belt, it becomes clear that it would be a real stretch to describe the residents of the Outer Town as a coerced dependent population.

Conclusions

In spite of the textual indication that at least part of the resident Urartian population (men, women and cattle) had been forcibly moved from their homelands and settled in the area, the evidence reviewed above indicates the inhabitants of the Ayanis Outer Town cannot be considered an abject, coerced underclass. Instead the majority seem to have been economically independent, having access to their own animal products and grain. Although the faunal remains suggest that most residents of the Outer Town ate a higher proportion of cattle and goats than those living in the fortress, this was not the case for the residents of two houses with Assyrian pottery. If these were occupied by deportees from Assyria who would have been less used to eating beef, they seem to have had be ability to maintain a diet richer in sheep than the other residents of the Outer Town, and comparable to that enjoyed by the residents of the fortress.

The residents of the Outer Town lived in large and well-appointed houses, some of which were formally built, presumably by state architects, whereas others were less well constructed suggesting that they were built by their residents. These buildings have the same domestic features and the same size ranges as the houses in (he area today which are occupied by independent farm owners.

The clearest evidence for the relative wealth of the residents of the domestic areas lies in their objects. They all had access to items produced by professional artisans on behalf of the Urartian state, including red polished ware, decorative bronze and the like. They were also sufficiently trusted that they had their own \\eapons.

These data are incompatible with a model which sees such deportees as a downtrodden underclass, forced into labor for the state. Instead, it suggests that over time this population may well have become adjusted to living in Urartu, as their children adopted Urartian styles of dress as reflected in the Ayanis burial. Neverthe­less, they must have still retained some of their own customs, as seen, perhaps, in the dietary differences seen in the area apparently occupied by deportees from Assyria. If this is the case for Urartu, with its emphasis on r rtress and the military and dependence on a deported labor force, one must question the extent to which any ::arly complex society maintained its labor force by coercion alone.